In The Continuing Disappearance of Document Management, James Till, vice president of Marketing for Xythos Software Inc., describes how the advent of Open Standards such as HTTP, SSL and WebDAV have shaken up the traditional Document Management Industry, as well as call to question complicated Enterprise Content Management (ECM) suite approaches to handling content within your organization.
I too have been stepping back from previous declarations of ECM as the solution, only because the implication is that an ECM strategy equals and ECM product. This is not always the case. In the emerging agile architecture environment, simple solutions that act as a bridges between personal productivity software running on desktops and distributed storage and workflow might fit the bill....
Don't be surprised either if you don't actually see the reemergence of document management in your own organization. Unlike systems from the past, today's solutions are meant to be integrated inside the business processes and applications that users already know and use, helping to automate basic document management functions and save employers time and money.
I had the opportunity to see IBM's transformation of Notes to J2EE, last week at a Lotusphere comes to you event. What impressed me more than the new Workplace Collaboration Services (Eclipse based java rich client with built in OpenOffice based Editors, and offline sychronization based on SyncML), was its little sister, Workplace Services Express. Rather than requiring the full Notes/Domino backend, with messaging etc., this lean thing was simply a slick portal application combined with web file access (I assume its using WebDAV) and web based collaboration tools. Drag and drop portlets for each virtual team in your organization. Instant productivity, that doesn't change the "creation" tools, just the collaboration. Finally the simple workflow and collaboration was completely disconnected from e-mail as the delivery mechanism, as was always the case with Notes. Sure there was an email portlet, but it connects to any IMAP server.
Both the web-launched rich client, and the express web based client for IBM Workplace, were innovative in allowing you to use local productivity apps, or built in editors. But the portal based express, because of its simplicity would more naturally fit in a small to medium size organization with users that are ready for web apps, with local file access. I wouldn't expect to see students using the new java "notes" client for productivity, with a built in browser and everything in one place. But something purely web based with WebDAV for file access, that makes sense.
In this emerging market of web based collaboration and file applications, a single direction is not clear. Arguably the social software arena, based on RSS, Blogging, Wiki, Ontology, Folksonomy and other parts of the "read/write" Web 2.0. is converging with the traditional content, document, and knowledge management spaces. By encouraging social interaction and creation of meta-data naturally in an organization, combine with universal access to centralized storage, documents can become knowledge in an organization.
The biggest question remains, which tools with people actually enjoy using? One theme is clear, open standards, agility, and web-based apps that enable people to leverage existing skills (personal productivity software) is a necessary bridge to a longer term goal of information management. Ad-hoc data creation vs. enterprise transactional information systems, which one wins? Both.
