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ECM Feature Articles

Implementing Records Management: The Morning After

Don't start uncorking the champagne the day you launch your new records management application, argues Ganesh Vednere, because in all likelihood you'll wake up tomorrow with a headache that's not just from the bubbly. Instead, Ganesh shows you how to take a hard look at the various challenges you'll face from day one, and how to plan in advance to address them...
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High Stakes for Documentum

CMS Watch principal Alan Pelz-Sharpe headed to Vegas last week to participate in the annual EMC World show. Amid partying storage sales guys and dazed content management developers he witnessed a Documentum product line-up getting increasingly eclipsed by other EMC offerings. For EMC it's a reasonable bet, but for Documentum software customers, the stakes are high indeed...
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Love Your Local Data Warehouse Manager

Within most enterprises, the worlds of "data" and "content" remain far apart, despite recurring business needs to converge different types of information. Tony Byrne argues that data specialists have a lot to teach content specialists -- and vice-versa. The trick is finding common ground, allied interests, and a common vocabulary...
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Pain in the SaaS? When your traditional software vendor hosts your application

CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne argues that, as a buyer, you should understand that contracting with a supplier simply to host and customize traditional software is not the same thing as working with a well thought-through, "native" Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that was built from the ground up by a company dedicated to providing such a service...
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Twelve Predictions for 2008

It's that time of year again. The CMS Watch analyst team ponders what to expect next year, and offers 12 predictions that we think will shape content technologies in 2008 -- from Google to Microsoft, Web/Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Search, Archiving, and more...
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Is Facebook in the Enterprise an Oxymoron?

Facebook is all the rage -- and consequently bringing Enterprise 2.0 to the fore. Is it time to revisit your Intranet platform? CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne looks at Facebook's benefits and demerits and concludes that your IT department could learn some important lessons about balancing employee enablement and control over information...
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Do you need an ECMS, WCMS, or a Portal?

In a world where content technology categories overlap, how do you figure out which type of solution do you really need? CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne argues that the best approach to distinguishing among Web CMS, Enterprise Content Management, and Portal solutions is identifying the specific business scenario you're trying to address.
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A Lexicon for Document Analysis

Content analysis is a key pillar of successful content technology implementations. But a challenge comes, says CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne, in figuring out what to call content types and elements, when analysts, consultants, and vendors use different terms to mean the same thing...
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Ten steps to a successful vendor demo

CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne breaks with tradition to offer some advice to vendors pitching their software to prospective customers: You made it past the proposal round -- now here's how to deliver a better customer demo. Better demos, Tony argues, can help vendor and customer alike.
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Enterprise Content Management Marketplace: Opportunities and Risks

Buyers looking at strategic ECM investments can find product research from CMS Watch and other analyst firms, but, Alan Pelz-Sharpe argues, you need to look beyond the tools to the vendors themselves. And here, Alan finds that some of the biggest and well-known vendors are undergoing substantial change right now, at some near-term risk for their customers...
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Predictions for 2007: The elusive quest for simple

The team at CMS Watch returns from the winter holidays to offer our predictions for 2007. The upshot? Things in the world of content technologies aren't as simple as they seem...
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ECM is dead - long live ECM!

Alan Pelz-Sharpe returns to CMS Watch to argue that ECM as you know it is dead, but that more pragmatic approaches to managing content across the enterprise are emerging, with new -- and probably simpler -- types of tools...
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ECM in an Offshoring Context

Many companies outsource content management implementations to systems integrators, but what if the implementers are based half-way around the world? Wipro's Apoorv Durga offers some good advice for enterprises considering taking their next ECM project offshore. As this map suggests, the view is quite different from India...
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What makes an enterprise wiki?

If you look at wikis in an enterprise context, you may confront some important questions. What's the difference between a wiki and a CMS? Are wiki tools enterprise-ready? Can they pass muster before your CIO? Consultant Mark Choate takes a stab at some answers...
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When you need to localize and categorize

Targeting content to different geographic regions seems easy enough: just set up a locales attribute in your CMS and you're done, right? Not so fast, argues Molecular's Christian Donner. You need an information architecture that will make localized content accessible for the right audience in the right region, but enterprises frequently underestimate the complexity here...
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Making sense of the ECM market

CMS Watch guest analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe takes a look at the ECM marketplace and argues that most conventional wisdom fails to take into account the breadth of the market, especially for small and mid-sized customers...
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Databases Are So 20th Century

Dave Kellogg, CEO of MarkLogic, takes a look at the historic divide between data and content technologies and rejects the notion that content is a special case of data. The design of truly content-centric applications, Dave argues, will require new kinds "contentbases"...
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Specifications, Certifications, and Compliance: There is a Difference

If records management software is "certified," does that mean it will work well for you? CMS Watch contributing analyst Priscilla Emery offers a tour of various certifications efforts around the world and concludes firmly: specifications, certifications, and compliance are different things...
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Getting to the right shortlist with an RFI

Analyst and consultant Alan Pelz-Sharpe argues that a Request for Information (RFI), if done right, can get you to an effective vendor shortlist.
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A short tour of ECM case studies

Tony Byrne reports on case studies from Vignette, Hummingbird, EMC, Stellent, and Percussion at the AIIM Solutions Seminars, and finds that much can be learned from what was said -- and not said -- at the show.
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Why Records Management?

The term "records management" is on many lips these days, but just what is it? CMS Watch Records Management channel analyst Priscilla Emery offers a handy primer, excerpted from our newly-published Records Management Report...
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Suites vs. Best-of-Breed

Which is better, content management suites or best-of-breed solutions? See ECM suite vendor FileNet and Web content management vendor Tridion duke it out...
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Intro to Digital Asset Management: Just what is a DAM?

Why not just use your document management system to manage your rich media? Well, as asset management consultant Magan Arthur explains, rich media comes with its own tools, file types, and business uses...
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JSR-170: What's in it for me?

The thought of reading a Java specification makes normal people sleepy. But if you follow content management at all, you'll want to take a closer look at an emerging Java specification for content repositories, "JSR-170." From the CIO to the web editor, there's something in JSR-170 for nearly everyone, argues CMS consultant Janus Boye and spec lead David Nuescheler...
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Paving the Way for Simpler Document Management

Enterprise Content Management sounds nice, but organizations that need only simple document management, the WebDAV protocol can come in very handy, writes James Till of Xythos. Read Till's primer on the WebDAV standard...
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