Content Day Nordic 2010-04-14

Time for an another break in the ECM history for my brief and personal comments about the Content Day or should it be ECM Suite Day.

So what to say? First of all Sylvie G had done a very good work and the arrangement was excellent. Then it’s very interesting to how determined Open Text are in there marketing of the ECM Suite. That’s the good part – now to the reflections.

There is a lot of talk about how new media and new tools affect our life - however something that hasn’t changed is the way Open Text communicate. And I hope this doesn’t sound too hard and blunt, but it’s sometimes so “unsocial”and so boooooring . Let me give an example of how one presentation was build up, step by Step.

• Step 1: My Name is X and I’m from Ottawa (That’s all).
  
• Step 2: Let me show you a nice video (taking about 5 minutes).
  
• Step 3: A go through of the Compliance Regulations in the States (ignoring the fact that Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland are not a part of the states)
  
• Step 4: Examples from Enron (how many times haven’t we heard that story).
  
• Step 5: 25 slides of limited interest
  
• Step 6: Questions – NO? OK – bye then.
  

Again it’s easy to be mean, grouchy and grumpy and I don’t want to be that – but is it prohibited to tell a story, communicate with the audience, interact, start a dialog or put up a fight??

A good example of communication was LaGylia Frazier and her engagement; Do you hear me? Guys do you capitalize on your content? What do you want? I have this song or that song so what do you want to hear? And yes – she was the entertainer and a dam good communicating entertainer too.

AND WHERE WAS MR CRAIG “Mr Super Confidence “ HEPBURN? Having the chance of letting 200 customers hear his wisdom – he didn’t show up and there was no information about it too? Great disappointment and i'm so sorry that i told others to go to that session to see this guy.

So what is my point? Well my point is that we should try to maximize the capabilities of our communication channels. Meeting person in real life is such a luxury, why then spoil it and just broadcast your content through powerpoints instead of creating a dialogue and interact.

So how about the Content of the Content Days? That was quite OK – everyone from Open Text is talking about the ECM Suite and every customer is still wondering what it could be.

Was it worth spending one day in my short life on this event? YES – having the chance of meeting all the very, very, very, very nice user of the Open Text products are worth millions. Everyone has so much to tell, there are so much brain-energy that you could work non-stop for a week on that.

And there was a true Halleluja moment!!! It came when I and Janne B from Skanska Sweden figured out how to use Web Content Management combined with the nStein technology to solve some of the severe content problem a company facing when communicating through different people and different external channels. I think that both of us didn’t have a single clue what we were talking about when we started however after 10 minutes of discussion we had figured it all out. This is way I attend Content Days – not to see endless series of presentations but to get new ideas and true knowledge!!!

The ECM Suite Presentation - 2008

In the Community the presentations from Open Text Content World 2008 are (still) stored. I know that a few colleagues have complained about it being somewhat messy, but that’s because it’s based on finding information looking into folders instead of doing the normal profile search. However do you know what you are looking for (like Events, Content World) you will find it.

Looking at ”The OT OCM Suite Journey”-presentation the Suite is divided into five parts and four layers:

• Layer 1 at top is Experience Service (the user interface)
  
• Layer 2 is divided into Collaboration and Process Services (the applications)
  
• Layer 3 is Enterprise Library Service (the storage)
  
• Layer 4 is named Enterprise Content. Don’t know what the Enterprise Content Layer should include – perhaps it was just only something that sounded nice and looked good.

So regarding the structure of the suite – nothing much changed since 2007. However in the presentation there are some other interesting things mentioned:

• The ECM Suite is not one Application amongst other”Siloed Application”, however it’s not a Monolithic Architecture either (a Gigantic application embracing everything). It’s something in between.
  
• In a slide named “What Makes It a Suite” seven criteria are listed:
  - Comprehensive set of ECM capabilities
  - Clearly defined integration layers based on SOA
  - Consistent user experience
  - Access to all content from any content application
  - Common tools and administration
  - Consistent internationalization strategy and localization
  - Consistent release practices

Does ECM Suite fulfill these criteria to 100%? It is never mentioned and sorry to say the model doesn’t appear again showing how they are fulfilled.

As in a proper business case the benefits of the ECM Suite is mentioned; ”Cost Reduction” is on top of that list? However cost reduction in what way – compared to what companies pay today or compared to buying all the components as single products?

For more details there are three more presentations focused on each layer of the suite.

In the Enterprise Connect presentation a complete scenario including viewing of Cad files and collaborating with subcontractors. It looks like everything is working and fitting together. However looking at the Plugin Schedule and Road Map you start wondering if everything is so complete as it shows to be in the PowerPoint slides.

In the Enterprise Process Services the Graphical Process Designer presentation you get the nice feeling and impression that everything is quite well integrated. However looking at the Administration it’s done through ”IXOS User Management Client” – how well is that integrated with the eDOCS User Management? And why isn’t it an ECM User Management Client used for the overall management?

The last part of the puzzle, ”Enterprise Library Services” (ELS) is the most open presentation in the puzzle and the presentation doesn’t have named author or presenter. It’s like someone didn’t want to take the responsibility for the content. The key points in that presentation are (with my comments in parenthesis) :

• Everything in the Suite is build around SOA expressed throughWeb Services (meaning that you could call on a routine like old quickstart.asp in eDOCS).
  
• There is a Master Installer for installing all ELS Components.
  
• The ELS-products are Livelink ECM Enterprise Server and Live Link ECM Enterprise Archive Server.
  
• Easy and seamless Integration into Customer Infrastructure (what does this mean??)
  
• ELS enables lifecycle management for documents coming from eDOCS DM (apparently documents are not shared and stored between ELS and eDOCS they are moved from eDOCS into ELS).

Again there is a Road Map containing parts that you thing already was solved. However in this presentation from late 2008, there are another quite interesting feature on the “Road Map”. Cloud Storage support – what could that bee?

What is the overall impression about the ECM Suite presentation from 2008. Well, the concept looks like nice and even thought the parts are nicely fitted together in PowerPoint slides the major question is still; do the parts really fit together in real daily work? Another quesion is of course; will it cost a million to implement and requires a department of three, four guys to keep it running?

How Social is Open Text?

Sorry for the interruption in this ECM Suite journey. However I have something to say - so I have to put it here.

Open Text need to innovate to survive and prosper or they face extinction (average lifespan is only 40-50 years). Many companies have failed to survive. Why?

An organization’s natural mind set is to focus on protecting and repeating past successes. As a result, they become more and more inward facing.

And as they become more and more inward facing, they lose touch with their customers and the socio-cultural context in which they exist. They lose their creativity.

To put it another way: Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations’ true nature is that of a community of humans. The legal establishment, business educators, and the financial community all join them in this mistake.

This was written in a Blog post by Joyce Hostyn (except that she didn't started with 'Open Text need to invent' it should be companies, but i think Open Text is a company too). It rendered here 3 comments – however and perhaps a little bit sad, they where all comming from the Open Text itself.

After reading this and also posting a (stupid?) comment to a blog post without reaction from the author. I started to think – how Social is Open Text actually? (beeing one of the great evangelist in this area). It's quite a tricky question and there are certainly experts that could answer such a question better. However I started to analyze the public sources.

Linkedin was a bad surprise - eventhough the Open Text group had 938 members (241 from Open Text) i could only find about 10 discussions. So instead i turned to the main Web Site.

Open Text Conversations - Meet the Experts

This is the Main Public Channel where Open Text Meets there Customers. Analyzing all the posts in this forum I found the following communication Pattern:

In Average about 27% of the Posts had one or more comments. I then divided the comments in two groups; Comments from other people and Conversations where the author also replied back. So about 30% of the posts had a comment and in these comments over 70% never had a dialog, just a few comments.

That's quite interesting. How come? Here is a chance of dialog but there is no one answering back.

Well - how social are these experts? Could i measure it? I put there underlying blogs into "Delicious" and checked if other people are following them and here is what "My Delicious" came back with (putting in the blog as bookmark).

• Martin's Fulcrum Musings - 2 bookmarks
  
• The Evolution of Communication (Kimberly Edwards) - 0 bookmarks
  
• Product Four (Deb Lavoy) - 6 bookmarks
  
• Marci Maddox - 0 bookmars
  
• Ap Optimization Blog (Tom Walker) - 0 bookmarks
  
• iVision (Janet Luisser) - 0 bookmarks
  
• Managedemail.blogspot.com (Jeremy Barnes) - 0 bookmarks
  
• Peter Near - 0 bookmarks
  
• ForeWebSake (Craig Hepburn) - 10 bookmarks
  
• Joycehostyn - 0 bookmarks
  
• Adam Howatson's blog - 0 bookmarks
  
• Branding 2.0 (Jennifer Mccredie) - 0 bookmarks

Delicious is perhaps not the right place and I did perhaps something wrong - but the number of people bookmarking the Content Experts is not huge.

Open Text Conversations - The Great Communicator

If you drop a comment to one of these experts who is most likely to answer? It's hard question - I think for example that no one (never?) has commented anyting that Tom Walker has written, so some of them never got the chance to get back.

But it looks like the Great Communicator is Deb Lavoy of all the posts done in the Open Text Conversation Forum - June 2009 she had a post with 17 comments . And looking at her posts - if someone is putting in a comment she often replies.

How Social is Open Text - Conclusions

If we don't look at broadcasting information (like Twitter where OT broadcasts about 820 Tweets to 1962 people) it looks there are some room for improvements. Perhaps comming back on comments from people are one way to start a dialogue.

The questsion could also be twisted around, How Social are the customers of Open Text? Do Open Text have 5 customers, 100 customers or perhaps over 1000 customers? Why are they not bothering - are they too stupid to understand, to ignorant, to uninterested or ... ?

For me it's quite hard to understand how the Experts at Open Text could put in hours and hours of work in broadcasting content and then not thinking about why no one is replying or starting to argue about what is send. Or have they lost touch with their customers and the socio-cultural context in which they exist? Or am I to blind, blunt or both? But as Joyce put it:

Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations’ true nature is that of a community of humans.

DM X – The Open Text ECM Vision

I'm still looking back in the history to be able to understand the Evolution of the "ECM Suite".

At the "Summit 2007 Be Inspired"- event the DM X client was launched as The Open Text ECM Vision.

Looking at the slides the New Rich Client had Multiple Repository Support, Enterprise Search and Metadata Management together with Enterprise Records Retention. Following picture was once more outlined:

DM X was a new client that should coexist with existing clients. In the Road Map it was a clearly stated that a next step for all versions (including Docs Open!!) was the DM X Release - to be launched during the first part of 2008.

In "Establishing a Game Plan - The Three to Five Year Strategy" Larry Roy, Director, eDOCS and DM X Product Management stated:

• The Answer for Enterprise Transparency is LiveLinke ECM 10
  
• Code Name "DM X" is the Next Generation Product Offering
  
• DM X Solutions for Construction Management, Correspondence Management etc
  
• It's a Maintenance Upgrade, like-for-like
  
• There are three Repository Options; Stay on DM, Upgrade to Live Link ECM Repository or keep a Mix of both.
  
• The second relase of DM X was planned for launch late 2008

Perhaps i'm seeing it to simple (and still Do) but looking at these slides the future is bright and simple; with DM X quite many new features will be available. You can stay on DM5/DM6 and access all the new features from there or you can upgrade the ECM Repository. Does not sound to hard to implement.

Start from the beginning

Perhaps I should start from the beginning, but the question is of course what is the beginning? How knows? And was the early thoughts about the ECM Suite the ECM Suite that we see today (market through different kinds of Power Points).

Well again, Open Text provides us with a good library of ECM history through their community-site - it's perhaps not so intuitive and google-search-friendly that you could hope for, but it's a very good source of information.

One of the first evidence of the ECM Suite that I have found is the "Integrated Product Roadmap for Hummingbird Enterprise Customers" launched in December 2006.

A sidetrack for us eDOCS customers is that already then Email Management was high up on the agenda and they actually wrote; "Open Text will continue to support the Livelink ECM – eDOCS integration strategy with leading archival vendors such as Symantec and Zantaz.". Well I don't know what happened with this - what I know is that the e-mail products in eDOCS today is coming from a small Swedish Company called Traen (former Intelligo). Excellent and Highly skilled guys. I wonder if customers had reacted if Open Text instead had written; "Our E-mail strategy will be based on the ideas and genius of a small Swedish Company -we hope that these guys will help us out in the future".

Back to the ECM Suite. Already 2006 the framework was outlined, however it was not called Suite it was Livelink ECM 10 and the perspective was a little bit up-side down from what we are used to see it today:

• Library Services, the archive and the place for metadata management.
  
• Livelink ECM – BPM, the business process layer.
  
• Enterprise Connect, everyting is accessed from the familiar MS Outlook interface
  
• Artesia Digital Asset Management suite, ability to manage rich media through eDOCS.

Don't know why Artesia Digital Asset Management was so heavily focused. Perhaps because it was newly bought by Open Text then, but it only increases the confusion. And is Artesia integrated through eDOCS - haven't heard about it. Perhaps it was written because it sounded so nice (and it makes us eDOCS customer happy).

Was it the name that was misleading, ECM 10 sounded like three new well integrated products, a kind of new superdatabase, a tool for managing the business processes and then an userfriendly, super good Outlook interface for accesss. However that's not really the case as I now understand it, it's just a model describing a bunch of services and programs and that we have to dig into.

Putting the database first was not perhaps not such a bad idea. It's easy to say that we should bring the information silos together and we put it in the basement where no one else but the Database guys care. Nothing could be more wrong. The idea of the Library Services could bee seen from an Enterprise Architecture point of view. And building an Framework for Enterprise Architecture is a bit more then just installing a new common database.

Stepping out of the Bubble

15 years ago I was heavily engaged in programming a template system for Microsoft Word 6.0. The users was used to run their Office Automation on VAX/VMS-machines but around 1995 the demand for PC-clients was strong, they where not any longer pleased with the textbased interface we could offer.

However in those VAX/VMS-machines it was possible not only to share documents but also versioning them. So when writing the template system I had to figure out to handle this versioning and sharing capabilities. At the great launch of Windows 95 and with tunes of Rolling Stones (anyone remembering the fuzz about that) a Windows 95 complient system was presented; DOCS Open 2.5 .

The rest is history, a long history about partners, many, many good colleagues and a lot of interesting, fun and lovely events. I will always remember the Summit 1998 when the possibility to have shortcuts on the start-button to DM-documents was presented, we all screamed out quite loudly and then it was something called Cyber DOCS was launched. It took years before we really understood what that was. Does anyone remember London 2005 - when Tony Heywood(?) officially launched DM 6.0 ?? It was like a declaration of war, everyone got an paper telling that now, in this very moment DM 6.0 is launched. Well - we all know what happened after that.

So I'm an old (yes really old) eDOCS user know trying to understand all the new things that are happening and I think I'm not the only one. Previously I have been "living" in the comfortable, smooth and silent environment of the Open Text Community, and i still think it's such a great Community. Open Text should have at least 5 big, golden stars for that community.

However as one can seen from the Open Text Home Page more and more people are stepping out of the comfortable community Bubble. Why? I don't know - but I should also give it a try. So here is The Open Text ECM Suite blog - for all who wants to share their thoughs about the ECM Suite.