When I began recruiting in the Document Management space more than a dozen years ago, "document control" was a relatively common term. After attending a few Sharepoint presentations over the past year (and watching Bill Gates's keynote at the SharePoint 2008 conference on Monday via the web), "collaboration" seems to have emerged to be the word in that world.

Sharepoint, according to Gates, is "based on a vision of letting workers share information in a better way." *

Enterprise Content Management, according to Wikipedia, "is the technologies used to capture, store, preserve and deliver content and documents and content related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever that information exists."

On the most superficial of levels, it seems like one technology (SharePoint) is about the creation of content/documents by groups of people and the other is about storing the result(s) and keeping it safe. What happens in the "in between"? Which technology dictates the critical lifecycles and workflows? Can these technologies be used in concert to produce a winning ROI (which is somewhat jokingly referred to as "Risk of Incarceration" by traditional ECM customers.)

I keep getting phone calls and e-mails from clients and readers asking whether I've actually run into anyone who has abandoned Documentum and gone with SharePoint (and if the answer is yes, are they happy with the end result ?), whether EMC's embrace of SharePoint is a good thing (it depends on who you are-a shareholder, a developer, a customer, an eRoom enthusiast, someone whose income is/would be affected by Documentum becoming a more potent technology or more widely used), and whether I foresee any front-end vendor giving Microsoft a run for its money in this space.

Why am I being asked these questions you might wonder. Simple. I speak to more that 100 ECM professionals each week. And while I'll be answering these questions in longer, individual posts later, here are some things to consider. Post continued...

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Brilliant Outsourcing
October 27, 2007

Information? Content? Records? Buzz, Buzz!
October 16, 2007

What are we managing now? Records, documents, content...Nope, it's information, at least according to EMC.

"Where Information Lives" is its tagline.

AIIM, which was previously known as the Association for Information and Image Management, is now the "Enterprise Content Management Association" BUT, they're talking about "Information" too.

BUZZ ! BUZZ!

We're just a little confused.

But...lucky for us, we found this little slide show (complete with a commercial from AIIM) that attempts to explain it all!

Post continued...

A Conflict, a Ray of Light, and a Link to a Drink
May 21, 2007