Interoperability between Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Suites is becoming increasingly important. Gartner dedicated a whole section to this topic in its recent “Magic Quadrant for ECM” report. The biggest reason for this push appears to be that one size does not fit all.
ECM Suites are intended to solve all your content management needs. In reality, however, each Suite only has a few core competencies. For example, while Microsoft SharePoint is being touted for its strengths in document collaboration, the suite has many weaknesses including archiving functionalities. As a result, ECM customers end up deploying multiple ECM Suites to fulfill their content management needs. One Gartner survey has shown, in fact, that “69% of enterprises indicated they had more than six repositories.”
Multiple ECM Suite deployments are expensive and introduce additional complexities to already difficult to use applications. While ECM vendors are not about to give you a buy-1-get-1-free coupon, they do recognize the potential in seamless interoperability between their and competing products. After all, the vendors recognize that each ECM Suite is being touted for a few core competencies. So, the easier it is to deploy multiple Suites, the better the chances of selling an additional ECM Suite to a customer who already has a competing product deployed.
AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) announced a free SharePoint webinar this week titled “SharePoint – Truth and Fiction.” You can sign up for the webinar as long as you have an account with AIIM (which you can easily create within a minute or two). AIIM describes the webinar as follows:
“In a recent AIIM study, over 400 organizations shared their opinions and experiences concerning Microsoft SharePoint. Some of the results may surprise you – they did us. We’ll talk about the primary obstacles to scaling SharePoint, its impact on the overall IT infrastructure, just how satisfied are users with SharePoint functionality, and more. If you are currently a SharePoint user, or are considering becoming one – this webinar will provide you with invaluable insights. ”
The webinar is sponsored by Oracle. So, it remains to be seen how objective the information will be. In either case, the webinar should be interesting.
If people are the most valuable asset of an organization, then hiring new team members should be the most important effort within a company. Unfortunately, the hiring process is often neglected, not properly organized, and/or left to HR. If you have been part of a team to which an unqualified member has been added, then you probably know what we’re talking about.
While there are numerous, complex hiring techniques, there are only two things you need to remember:
- Become involved in the hiring process (especially when your team is looking for new members)
- Only hire “smart people who get things done,” as advocated by Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software
Joel Spolsky has written several articles on the importance of the hiring process and how to find smart people who get things done. While his articles pertain to Software Developers, his principles can be applied to any discipline. See below for links:
- How to find great developers (Published: 09/06/2006)
- How to sort through resumes (Published: 09/08/2006)
- How to phone screen applicants (Published: 10/24/2006)
- How to interview applicants (Published: 10/25/2006)
Larry Page advises entrepreneurs to pursue a really good idea that is good regardless of the funding situation. He further stresses the importance to building a great team and being an expert in what you are doing.
A healthy disregard for the impossible or, in other words, the push for aggressive goals is another advice Larry has for entrepreneurs. Part of his argument is that aggressive goals tend to get more assigned resources. A large pool of resources, however, might not necessarily resemble the common situation in new companies thus challenge the generality of this advice.
Despite the abysmal economy, 2008 has continued to be an exciting year for the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market. To capture both the trends as well as the pros and cons of leading ECM vendors, two major research companies have published new versions of their ECM Suite reports: CMSWatch and Gartner.
CMSWatch: The ECM Suites Report 2009
CMSWatch is in its 3rd installment of the ECM Suites Report, released September 17, 2008. At over 400 pages and reviews on 38 vendors, the ECM Suites Report 2009 is the most comprehensive report of its kind. CMSWatch discusses everything a CIO or administrator needs to know about ECM, why they should be interested in ECM, who can fullfill their content management needs and what is the risk of choosing a particular ECM System. For a cost of between $985 and $4,500, the CMSWatch report is also the most expensive study we have seen. To get a sense of the content, you can review a 45 page free sample from CMSWatch by providing them with your E-mail.
