Futurist, AIIM Fellow, former chair, and AIIM E-DOC Magazine columnist Thornton May has been named as one of the 100 Most Influential People in IT by Ziff Davis. Check out the list at http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/100-Most-Influential-People-in-IT/4/.
Toward the end of the second day of AIIM, Tony Byrne of CMS Watch handed me a subway map of the the ECM vendor landscape. While it's impossible to include all of the vendors, it does give a nice sense of the lay of the land of the ECM industry. ("Digitalia" is my current favorite area. Love that. No idea why.) Kudos to Tony for taking the time to put something like this together. Secondary kudos to CMS Watch analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe for not taking credit when I asked him who had done most of the work ;)
Take a look. It's worth checking out.
Bryant
Just returned from 5 days in Boston at AIIM 2008. All in all, it was a good show. While I'll develop my thoughts further, I'll share a few impressions. In no particular order:
Look for our online Web wrap up toward the end of next week/early the following week. Interviews with AIIM award winners and further thoughts on the event.
It's once again time for the annual AIIM show and conference, held in Boston this year. With a full slate of meetings, as with every year, it's shaping up to be an interesting time.
For a glimpse at what a few of the vendors are doing, head over to www.edocmagazine.com and browse the column on the far right for a few interviews.
I'll put a few thoughts in this space next week, so check back in. And, if you're going to the show, wear comfortable shoes (which remains the single best tip I ever received about going to a trade show).
With apologies to Disney, the world of digital content is not a small one. One of the perks of being an editor is access to just about any content that one would like to review or read. There's more interesting stuff out there than anyone has time to read (or I need to take a speed-reading course).
While cleaning off my desk (scoff if you will, skeptics) over the holidays, I came across a few whitepapers that I had intended to read last year. The one I'd like to point out today is an IDC whitepaper that's been sponsored by EMC, The Expanding Digital Universe. The subtitle is "A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010."
The paper is an extremely interesting look at just how much digital stuff is out there -- and where the heck we're going to put all of it. For instance, it's common wisdom by now that digital content is growing. Duh, right? At the same time, the volume of files that contain all of this information will also dramatically increase (sensors, RFID tags, IP voice phone calls, etc.) and that will make everyone's (at least everyone who has to manage or see that these files get to where they're going) life if not more difficult, more interesting.
You can download the paper at the above link for the numbers if you're so inclined. I'll just wrap with two points I found interesting. One, related to our industry: Most of the digital universe will remain unstructured -- meaning tools and techniques will be required to add structure to this content to improve search, discovery management, security, and storage. But, hey, we all knew that, right? Two, The use of paper is still increasing -- 5% in the last five years. Having recently signed a HIPAA document in the dentist's office recently, I've had a small hand in that growth.
Best,
Bryant
Dealing with the vast numbers of documents involved in a large lawsuit is a terribly costly and time-consuming endeavor. Discovery Box offers an in-house suite of tools to control and manage the e-discovery process from the issuance of a legal hold to the settlement of the case.
In addition to an interesting product, Rike Fujitani gave the best answer -- ever -- to my question of why he helped start the company, "I want to stay in Hawiai." Mr. Fujitani noted that a large number of corporations continue to handle e-discovery wtih processes that were originally designed for paper documents. One of the key elements of the product is that frequently deposed personnel can have documents related to them grouped together and given to a legal team from the beginning, rather than that legal team (or multiple legal teams) trying to determine relevant documentation from the same group of employees. This eases the burden of the grunt work involved in the document review process usually farmed out to a legal team -- at tremendous expense. You don't really want a team of 20 lawyers at $300/hour each poring over documents to determine if they're relevant do you? Especially if those documents were deemed relevant by a different legal team working on a similar legal case.
The product is designed to work with Documentum.
Bryant Duhon
You've Got Mail, the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks movie, has been on frequently in the last few days. The movie's alright, but I was struck, watching the intro, that as recently as 1998 (when the movie was made) people were excited about the idea of getting email. So recent, yet so different than today. I don't know about you, but I groan at the thought of going through my inbox. I'm sure record managers, anyone dealing with compliance issues, and the IT guys having to manage the infrastructure of an email system groan even louder.
Beyond a movie review, I thought the following numbers from a relatively recent Radicati Group Report on email storage were interesting:
The drivers are familiar to all of you out there, primarily compliance with regulations -- SOX, etc.
The last few September/October issues of AIIM E-DOC Magazine have a slew of articles focused on email. Take a look for some great tips and advice.
One last thought on the movie, even though only 9 years ago, both characters logged into email over a phone connection -- complete with dialing sounds and that weird series of electronic beeps and burps that used to part and parcel of going online. Ah, nostalgia.
Good weekend everyone,
Bryant
Every once in a while a piece of marketing will cross my desk that just makes me shake my head and say "Wha?". The Rattlin' Rapala (The "Original Fishing Minnow", as the box says) is a recent example. For some reason, a tape backup company sent Theresa Resek, AIIM's senior manager of Membership Development, said lure as bait (sorry, couldn't resist) to purchase their product. The lure has the company's logo on the side and came complete with a tortured attempt to make the hooks and other parts of the lure (yep, it rattles) relevant to tape data back up. Egad.
Look, I love a gimmick as much as the next person, but c'mon. Make sure that gimmick either stands out or that you can make a direct connection to the product. Personally, a good scotch would get my attention, but that's just me.
This reminds me of how some companies will check all of the boxes on a demographic form asking them to identify what products they offer. The matrix in our Buyers' Guide is one example. Show directories are another. Why companies check a technology box for which they don't really offer a product eludes me. Do they think that someone looking for a particular product type is going to change their mind about what they need after being lured in? At any rate, just a minor pet peeve.
A happy weekend to everyone. For those of you in the south, don't melt. It's hot out there.
Bryant
We always say that ECM is needed by just about everyone, but it really hit home with me a week or so ago when I was talking to a friend of mine. He works for a law enforcement state agency in the midwest (he's in charge of a district lab checking drugs after police busts -- making sure the parsley is parsley). As we were BSing, we somehow got on the subject of work and he started talking about how they were about to install new case management software statewide so that law enforcement agencies could pass case data more easily (replaces a homegrown system). Seems like their paper files can be a little long after the drug analysis (depending on the type of case), and that they need to keep them for the life of the case (plus whatever the retention schedule said). Regardless, he has one of his lab guys backfile scanning boxes of paperwork when their lab work load is low. He said that'll save them quite a bit of time and effort when the new software is installed, as it will be to grab their analysis results more easily than the existing system.
Even talking to friends, can't get away from all this ECM stuff.
A note for the curious, I asked him what they do with the drugs once a case is over. Used to be, they would dump them in an open pit and burn them -- which must've been one heck of a party. Now, they drive them to a disposal site where the drugs are shredded, thrown into a pit/container, and then mixed with some concrete-like substance.
Bryant
Software as a Service is gaining steam in the ECM space. Nucleus Research has poked into this area and produced a "Benchmarking: On-Demand Solutions" whitepaper. (I don't think that one is available for general consumption, though they do have an excellent Content Management Guidebook currently available on their home page.)
At least one BPM vendor is getting into Software as a Service. At Transformation and Innovation earlier this week, I spoke with Appian, a BPM provider, which has announced an "on demand subscription service for its BPM" product. While the ASP trend showed promise years ago, it petered out for various reasons. Software as a Service bears watching as an alternative for certain aspects of your content, and BPM, strategy. In the ECM space, SpringCM, er, springs to mind as an SaaS provider. Check out John Mancini's interview with the company's Christine Mason.
