Document Management Systems, does one size fit all?

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Over the years document management software vendors have tried to produce a platform to meet the requirements of the entire enterprise, in all document management categories. An early philosophy was to centralize every piece of content into one repository. More conventional thinking is to have different systems to more comprehensively meet the requirements of the enterprise while unifying the user experience via portal technology.
 
The different document management categories:

  • Core Document Management – This can be considered an extension to the corporate file-share, organizing documents with a defined taxonomy (attributes, security, foldering, categorization etc). Library management controls the version control of documents, with audit trails and security providing a foundation for compliance
  • Web Content – This category focuses around web content authoring and delivery, and allows sites to be organized into static and dynamic content delivery with real-time site updates
  • Imaging Management (Transactional) – This category can sometimes be called transactional document management (documents resulting from a business transaction, such as invoices, POs, Bill of Laden, Patient Records, Loan Documents etc). These systems are designed to manage a high-volume of fixed content and as the documents can be large these system can have technology to deliver small sections of the documents to client at a time to increase performance. Report management can often be in this category, which is sometime called COLD and is a technology that ingests, separates and extracts data from reports produced from business applications
  • Collaboration – Can be considered an extension of the Core Document Management category and includes content into different collaboration methods, such as blogs, wikis, discussion groups, and web content based presentation to allow team of users to interact and work with the content
  • Capturing Content – All the above system categories need a way of getting content or documents into them, and this category is often overlooked but can be considered one of the most important aspects. The more content that is under the control of the system, the more value it has

When selecting a system, you have to compare your requirements against the different categories as you may not need all components. Also, if you do select different components from different vendors, make sure you have a way of unifying user access.

EMC World Debrief

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I attended EMC World and just wanted to give my thoughts on the different sessions and messaging around the software supported by EMC’s Intelligent Information Group (IIG). 

On the “classic” Documentum products, the message is client unification with development moving firmly towards the Documentum Foundation Services (DFS) model and away from the WDK environment. CenterStage is becoming their main focal point of the web presence and as this does not have feature parity with WebTop or eRoom quite yet, the product management team emphasized that this was a journey as many customers have invested heavily in WDK based customizations. The mobile strategy is progressing with an iPad application promised by the end of the year. Work will also be done to unify the development tools surrounding the platform to make it easier to build Documentum based applications. The xCP platform still plays a large part of the strategy with a focus for partners to build industry specific business process solutions.

For collaboration users, eRoom will have another release towards the end of the year that will support the Microsoft Windows 2008 and SQL Server 2008 platforms, along with other technology certifications.

The messaging around the cloud was definitely the primary tagline, with all product families having some sort of cloud based access in their product roadmaps.

Bruce Bolton
(bruce.bolton@portfordsolutions.com)

So that’s the update, client unification and cloud based computing is the message.
For transaction document management users, EMC’s ApplicationXtender(AX) platform is here to stay and supports a roadmap that included more workflow enhancements and again more focus is on the client tools and UI. A new connector application is planned that will more tightly integrate AX with the desktop and document access from business applications. Although the technology roadmap remains Microsoft based, the AX team have made a significant move towards web services with a feature rich services based toolkit. Also many of the new applications are based around the web services approach.

Integrations were also announced with Box.net (http://www.box.net/) for cloud based storage access and with Cisco’s WebEx (http://www.webex.com/) online collaboration tool.

EMC, IBM, and Microsoft Team Up to Improve Enterprise CMS Interoperability

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EMC, IBM, and Microsoft have been working together to develop a specification which uses Web Services and Web 2.0 interfaces to enable applications to inter operate with multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories by different vendors. The companies intend to submit the Content Management Interoperability Services specification to OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) for advancement through its rigorous standards development process.

The ultimate goal of CMIS is to dramatically reduce the IT burden around multi-vendor, multi-repository content management environments. Currently, customers must spend valuable time and money to create and maintain custom integration code and one-off integrations to get different ECM systems within their organizations to “talk” to one another. The specification will also benefit independent software vendors (ISVs) by enabling them to create specialized applications that are capable of running over a variety of content management systems.

Working together since late 2006, the three companies were joined in the creation of the CMIS draft specification by other leading software providers including: Alfresco Software, OpenText, Oracle and SAP. A final gathering of all seven companies was recently held to validate interoperability of the specification before submission to OASIS.

EMC, IBM, and Microsoft have been working together to develop a specification which uses Web Services and Web 2.0 interfaces to enable applications to inter operate with multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories by different vendors. The companies intend to submit the Content Management Interoperability Services specification to OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) for advancement through its rigorous standards development process.

Key to the new specification, EMC, IBM and Microsoft worked together to define an interface that:

• Is designed to work over existing repositories enabling customers to build and leverage applications against multiple repositories—unlocking content they already have
• De-couples web services and content from the content management repository, enabling customers to manage content independently
• Provides common web services and Web 2.0 interfaces to dramatically simplify application development
• Is development platform and language agnostic
• Supports composite application development and mash-ups by the business or IT analyst
• Grows the ISV and developer community

For more information, and to download a preview copy of the CMIS technical specification draft, please visit the IBM or Microsoft web sites or contact info@portfordsolutions.com today.