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Budget time: How much should I set aside for software licenses?

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Sat, 3 May 2008 17:14:00 -0400

When budget-building time comes up, many technology customers face the interesting question of how much money to put aside for new software licenses. Even without looking at specific vendors, you might have to tell your manager some ballpark figure for expected license costs.

As an analyst I'm frequently asked about license prices. A recent interesting discussion among peers challenged my views and provided helpful feedback that might assist you in arriving at the right numbers in today's marketplace:

List prices aside, buyers can presently obtain significant discounts on enterprise portals and on Web CMS tools. This may be caused by the increased SharePoint infiltration. A commentary in February on big software discounts and recent numbers from Vignette seems to confirm this trend. SharePoint licensing for websites is the exception that proves the rule. In general if the Web CMS comes from an ECM vendor, it will be more expensive -- potentially way more expensive

With enterprise search at the high end, the reverse is true. The marketplace is seeing strong demand at the moment. Many enterprise-tier search offerings come only as a bundled offering, so there is little list pricing to benchmark against. Deals quickly run into the millions of Euros in large, global, and complex enterprises.

Among the huge array of mid-market vendors across different content technologies -- many them local/regional in footprint -- you can typically find solutions that meet the needs of even organization-wide deployments in most enterprises, but at a factor of five (or more) cheaper than the higher-end solutions

If you are willing to serve as a reference client or appear on the customer list -- or better within a press release -- this is very valuable for the vendor and should help you to get significant discounts. (And of course as you look to evaluate vendors and they provide such testimonials, you should also understand how this game is played.)

Remember that enterprise deals entail complex negotiation and pricing models that ultimately boil down to what the salesperson thinks you can afford. Perhaps needless to say, but still: Implementation costs are higher than licensing costs and open source projects are not necessarily cheaper just because you might save licensing costs.

Thanks to Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Apoorv Durga, James Robertson and Martin White.

Content Management - UK vs. US

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 2 May 2008 08:55:00 -0400

On a flight back to Boston from London yesterday I took a little time to digest what I had observed during the past week in the UK. It was an odd week really, and somewhat disconcerting as the contrast between the US and the UK was quite stark.

First, it must be said that there was no sign of a recession or downturn in the content management industry in the UK. The doom and gloom we hear daily from all and sundry in North America is not echoed across the Atlantic. Far from it. People across the board that we met talked of project growth, and vendors boast of business improving quarter on quarter. Of course, part of this could be that I was attending a web-oriented conference, and WCM has remained frothy around the globe, in this recession as in the past. But still, the mood in London was unusually upbeat.

Second, it seems clear that the vendor landscape and the channel landscape is becoming ever more regional. Of the 300 plus vendors at Internetworld, only a small fraction were from North America. In the past North American vendors dominated events, but not any more.

Third, there is a real appetite for governance and strategy consulting in the UK. Buyers appear to be aware that content technologies change business practices, that content needs to be managed...and that software cannot do that for you.

Fourth, the need to create multilingual sites and manage multilingual content is far more acute in the UK and continental Europe than the US. Be that Hindi, Gujarati, or Punjabi in the UK -- or French, German, and Italian in Switzerland -- the skills to do this are honed, the solutions found, and the workflows better understood.

I don't really know why there is such a stark difference between the two markets. It's not new really, it was evident in 2007 and 2006, but it appears to be getting more acute and the divisions widening at a faster pace. One factor is probably an overall more positive and optimistic economy in the UK, but there are other industry-specific things to consider.

Very high-speed internet access in Britain is typically faster and more widespread than in the US. Many homes in the UK have faster connections than typical SMEs in the US (8mbps is common in UK homes). Greater bandwidth has allowed companies to exploit rich media and more complex websites more effectively than their US peers. There is greater advancement of 3G cellular phone technologies, and interactive television services, and these have provided a welcome challenge to content developers and publishers to exploit.

Greater adoption of standards across the EU have by definition fostered greater interconnectivity at the network, device, and delivery levels - and have also provided more suitable benchmarks to purchase against. Take for instance the MOREQ 2 specification for records management, a standard that is both practical and designed for general usage, as opposed to DOD 5015 that is a somewhat over-engineered military specification. Consider also the universal adoption of shared cellular networks, and device portability across providers -- as opposed to the confusion of competing networks and proprietary devices in the US.

At the procurement level, one can also see slower buying cycles and greater attention to vendor intangibles the UK paying off in the long run. Historically, (though there are many exceptions) purchasers of technology in Europe have taken longer to come to decisions, but then also stick with their chosen technology supplier for much longer than their US counterparts. It means that there is time to develop, test, and really get to know a product over time - and ultimately to use it to its maximum potential.

Of course all is not rosy in the UK. Big customers still get ripped off by big vendors; projects crash and burn, and all the problems we know about here in the US are encountered regularly there too. But there is certainly something to be learned from the UK's experiences. If you are in the process of buying Content Technology you should of course always ask for and follow through on customer references. It might well be a good idea to ask for specific UK references to be provided. Particularly if you have multi-lingual, governance, or mobile web issues to address. It may well be that they can give you better insights than colleagues in the US.

Recessions come and go, and economics is like political polling; since it is the most inexact of sciences, the experts usually get it wrong. However, we are in the midst of gloomy times here in America, and rather than get envious of our friends across the Atlantic, we can potentially turn the gloomy times to our benefit.

EMC's best-kept secret: Documentum financial performance

kthomas@cmswatch.com(Kas Thomas) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:26:00 -0400

It's hard to know how Documentum is doing these days, now that it's been assimilated into EMC (the $32 billion ILM colossus). EMC, of course, does not break out detailed financials on Documentum, instead rolling the numbers up under "Content Management and Archiving." The latter division includes (among other things) the 15 or so document-capture and ILM products that are sold under the Captiva name. (Recall that EMC acquired Captiva in 2006 for $275 million.)

In the aggregate, the CMA product catalog accounted for $773 million in revenue for EMC in 2007 and $185 million in Q1 of 2008. The latter number is up approximately 8 percent from the same period a year earlier. On the surface, a nice performance.

Under the surface, things are a bit murkier. CMA license revenue slipped in Q1 of 2008, to $58.6 million, from $68.5 million for Q1 of 2007. But compared to the previous quarter's performance, the slip was huge: Q4 of 2007 saw CMA license revenues come in at $115.3 million (after trending upwards all year).

It should be noted that software license revenues were down across the board, for all business units except VMware, in Q1 2008 versus the previous quarter and the previous year. (Software maintenance revenue, on the other hand, is up across the board.) The biggest license-revenue upset by far, however, came in CMA, Documentum's business unit.

In EMC's Q1 2008 earnings call (the transcript of which is available from SeekingAlpha.com), Documentum is never mentioned by name. The sole reference to the "D6 platform" came when company CFO David Goulden said: "During the quarter we saw good demand for our D6 platform, particularly internationally, and the business pipeline is strong. The lumpiness in our Content Management business this quarter was partly due to timing of some deals and partly due to some of our own execution challenges, which impacted the quarter's license growth."

It's hard to know what it all means. But a 50 percent plunge in license revenue, quarter over quarter, is never good, no matter what the reason(s) behind it. It bears watching, which is what we will continue to do.

More on Wikis in the Enterprise

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:05:00 -0400

Our partners in Denmark, J. Boye, have just published a white paper, Wiki in the Enterprise.

There are many useful nuggets in the research (including a handy project check-list), but what I liked best about the paper is that it clearly contrasts the real value of wikis in a workgroup setting with the thorny challenges that wikis present enterprises once they evolve beyond a single departmental implementation. Have a look.

The E in ECM revisited

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:06:00 -0400

I have used a slide called "The E in ECM" in various PowerPoint incarnations for years. Today I read a great blog entry by Philip Howard, who adds another interesting perspective to this. The E in ECM stands of course for Enterprise, but what does the word "Enterprise" actually mean? Well strictly speaking an Enterprise is any firm with more than 10,000 employees (definitions vary of course), and tends to consist of many divisions, departments, and locations.

So an ECM system then is a Content Management System that can be deployed across an Enterprise, or then again, maybe it is not.

Vendors take particular liberty with the term Enterprise. In fact of the 32 vendors we cover in the ECM Suites Report, less than a handful can make a serious claim to be true enterprise-wide options. Most have been built for departmental use, and that is also how they are sold -- albeit that the buying department may comprise a small part of a larger "Enterprise." Most ECM systems have not been architected to scale to 10,000-plus users, they have not been designed to operate in a truly complex and heterogeneous infrastructure, nor have they been priced and licensed to make sense in such wide deployments. In short for most vendors the E simply makes a product sound important, nothing more.

Philip makes the interesting point that ECM is also about enterprise-wide strategies and implications, not just technology. That is, the wrong local decision can have negative impacts on the enterprise as a whole, just as the wrong technology selection can (and often is) a failure at the buying point, but with repercussions that can resonate throughout the enterprise.

ECM is expensive both in terms of resources as well as software. Getting it right though can bring huge benefits. The onus then is unfortunately is on you, the buyer, to see through the mislabeling of products, and to "think globally and to act locally" A technology vendor cannot normally help you with that process, but good advice from independent consultants, advisers, user groups, and forums (and of course CMS Watch reports!) can make a difference.

Compliance is a dirty word

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:48:00 -0400

If there is one word I hate to hear used in this industry it's the word compliance.

To me it's like fingernails down a blackboard, and frankly if I never hear it used again then I would be a happy man. Of course I have to endure the word in virtually every article and vendor press release I read. I don't like the word because it is a blanket term that used without context is totally meaningless, yet it's a word (much like governance) that sounds impressive and few people in the room will admit that they don't really understand it. Well let me be among the first to point out the the Compliance Emperor often has no clothes.

The first question we should ask when the C word is used is: with what exactly is do you expect to comply? It could be one of three things:

Policy Compliance - to meet the needs of internal procedures and policies

Regulatory Compliance - to meet the needs of a specific regulation such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

Legal Compliance - readiness to meet any particular legal challenge that may impact your enterprise

These are three increasingly stringent compliance types - all quite different, and all typically requiring different strategies, technologies, and skill sets to support.

When vendors blithely talk about compliance, it's incumbent on you to ask specifically what compliance needs they are referencing. And also for you to consider if you have the patience and resources to manage such potentially granular compliance needs. It all looks so easy on a PPT presentation, but can rapidly become near impossible to manage in reality. Many of the people I have been talking to over the past few months are in the very most regulated industries, and virtually all of them told me that despite investing in very expensive compliance software, they have reverted to the most basic policies possible for retention and disposition. Pretty much what they had and were doing prior to buying yet more fancy technology.

Think about it. If you are trying to justify the purchase of archiving or content management technology using compliance as the driver you are very likely to fail. Sure if you are broker on Wall Street then theoretically at least you have to be compliant with certain regulations (such as SEC 17A) or you cannot trade. But outside of such places, most people wing it - be it in Pharmaceuticals, Energy, Aerospace or any other highly regulated sector you care to think of. In fact, most enterprises have at best a cavalier attitude towards compliance. For they know there are very few inspectors (internal or external) around, they know they basically have to do something spectacularly criminal or stupid to be audited, and they figure that ultimately it's just not that big an issue. Frightening, and maybe hard to swallow, but true.

My point -- if I have one beyond the need to rant -- is that simple retention and disposition makes a whole lot of sense. It may only meet the minimal needs of compliance requirements, but in most cases it's enough. Mix this with the added benefits of promptly destroying content that you have no need to keep, and you can gain quick server and storage optimization advantages, over and above the increased ability to actually find stuff. Getting bedazzled by a technology pitch usually leads to a dead-end. You buy the tool, then you see the enormity of the task ahead, then you walk away. While anathema to many, simply doing something is nearly always better than doing nothing, but doing nothing and wasting a lot of money in the process really stinks.

Oracle enters the E-mail Archiving market

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:49:00 -0400

Oracle announced today that they were entering the archiving market with the release of "Universal Online Archive." UOA is an interesting entry to a market and positions Oracle to compete more directly against EMC and IBM in the e-mail and messaging archive space. It's interesting as only a year ago nobody was much interested in archiving, but in the past twelve months we have seen everyone from Dell to Google try to gain a foothold, and the market shows no signs of slowing down. It remains a chaotic and confusing sector risking a consolidation (which of course might not happen, or at least not soon).

UOA is built on top of Oracle 11g with technology acquired from Stellent, as well as from e-mail capture experts ZL Technologies. Why would Oracle be interested in archiving e-mails you may ask? Well the answer is simple: because there is an awful lot of it. And by archiving it, the messages will move out of Microsoft's servers and into Oracle databases. Remember in most firms e-mail is by far the single largest type of "data."

The Oracle offering is a pretty elegant one - making use of good technology from ZL and leveraging their own in house product stack- but it's too early to tell how well it will run for real, At an architectural level it looks decent, and should provide a competitive offering against EMC (who is releasing an upgrade to the current emailXtender product later in the year) as well as HP and Symantec -- who both also have serious ambitions in this space. It's yet more evidence of the morphing of the ECM sector away from collaboration (left almost solely in the hands of Microsoft SharePoint) and into the broader compliance and archiving worlds.

For buyers it should be noted that the EAM (E-mail Archiving and Management) market is very much in transition at the moment. There are some truly awful products out there, and some new but relatively untested approaches arriving. It's a market characterized by confusion - and an array of very differing and irreconcilable approaches - from Backup/DR through Archiving to compliance and legal discovery. You need to tread with real caution when selecting products and ensure you really do your homework both on the product roadmaps and the vendor itself. Some vendors are in a state of flux, and others on the brink of either acquisition or irrelevance.

Oracle's entry to the market adds to the options out there, but the entrance of major vendors like Oracle, Google, Dell, and HP in the past year is also a sign that sufficient R&D money and subsequent marketing and training will come to a sector that sorely needs it. It's a market that we will be covering in depth soon, so watch this space...

Symantec to OEM Autonomy technology

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:58:00 -0400

Blink and you might have missed it, but Symantec signed an important OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deal with Autonomy the other day that was announced with little fanfare. However, it's an important deal, and here's why...

Symantec has long wanted to play in the content management sector, for just like EMC they see content management as an excellent feeder for and extension of their broader storage and archiving business. Their first steps came with the ingestion of KVS's Enterprise Vault archiving product into their portfolio. Since that time Symantec has seen growth and potential for their archiving (mainly e-mail focused) business. This potential is driven in part by the fashion for e-discovery in the US (due to new federal rules), but more broadly by server and storage optimization demand for Exchange environments.

The deal with Autonomy could allow Symantec to play much more broadly in the content technologies market place. Firstly by boosting their search capabilities (currently supplied via an old relationship with Alta Vista) and potentially bringing them into broader archiving situations (SharePoint) via products such as Meridio. Symantec is a very well known brand, and they currently hold a strong position in the EAM (e-mail archiving and management) sector. With the Autonomy deal, they could begin to make an impact elsewhere -- to their benefit as well as Autonomy's, who remains associated almost exclusively with its search technology.

I suspect that this arrangement is more than a simple OEM deal, that it is strategic in nature to Symantec's broader archiving and ECM ambitions. That over the coming year we will see Symantec start to appear more and more as key player alongside EMC, Oracle and HP (who recently acquired Tower), in an ECM market that is becoming increasingly focused on archiving, imaging, and compliance.

How do you like THOSE assets?

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:33:00 -0400

There's nothing like promising a Playboy centerfold to drive people (well, men mostly) to an upcoming technology conference. In this case, her name is PAM -- the Playboy Asset Management system -- and PAM will will be shown in all her revealing glory at the upcoming Henry Stewart Digital Asset Management Symposium in New York, May 12th & 13th.

And while I'm no Playboy centerfold, I'll be there too (clothed and looking sharp), speaking about my last few months of research into Digital Asset Management. My colleague Kas Thomas and I have spoken to dozens of customers and taken a hard look at 15 leading vendors in the marketplace, and will soon publish a report of our findings. At Henry Stewart, I'll be moderating a panel about DAM Software procurement with DPCI president Joseph Bachana, leading a session about the DAM marketplace, and appearing on the analyst panel to banter about the state of the DAM market.

Finally, I'll be leading a post-conference tutorial on Wednesday, May 14th about the content technology marketplace, talking about the differences between DAM, WCM and ECM, and helping you sort out which ones you need (or don't).

I hope you'll join me for this great event. In addition to everything you could want to know about Digital Asset Management, the Henry Stewart folks always seem to find really good caterers....

Readers' challenge - name our new chart!

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Sun, 6 Apr 2008 17:11:00 -0400

Since moving to the US in 2002 I have become a fan of The Atlantic magazine, and in particular the last page of each edition that contains the "Word Fugitives" column. In this column readers ask for new words to meet commonly demanded needs.

For example, in the most recent issue somebody requested a polite but meaningful phrase for a couple to use when they are trying to conceive a child. My favorite of the suggested responses came from Laura Whitman, of Redwood City, Calif., who wrote, "In our group when a couple is married and everyone is wondering what their plans are in regard to procreation, we always ask if they are in the product research or product development phase...early product development refers to your correspondent's criteria." You see there is always somebody out there with the right answer.

So to our current challenge, we have designed a wonderful (in our own opinion) chart that provides buyers of technology with an at-a-glance risk/opportunity review of the products we cover in a particular segment. We refer to this currently as the Vendor Risk Report -- and internally as the "VORP" (Vendor Opportunity and Risk Profile). Not exactly terms that roll off the tongue. Now some of you may be aware of similar chart like products from other firms, charts that have catchy names like "Magic Quadrant" or "Wave." Well we want a catchy name too but haven't thought of a satisfactory one.

So in the spirit of Word Fugitives, we are throwing the door open to you. Please send me your thoughts and ideas and we promise to publish and credit the best of them here on the site. And for the very best one we will send a box of gourmet chocolates or bottle of good champagne (your choice). The gauntlet has been thrown down, can you rise to the challenge?

Uncle Sam pushes Records Management and Archiving...and Meridio too

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 4 Apr 2008 16:15:00 -0400

The Gimmal Group's Dan Elam recently pointed me to an important and seemingly under-reported guidance memo (pdf) to U.S. federal government CIOs from Karen Evans. Evans serves as a kind of über-CIO for e-government at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The biggest news comes in the third paragraph:

When planning for and acquiring information systems and services, agencies must incorporate records management and archival functions, including the cost of implementing and maintaining those functions, into the design, development, and implementation of information systems.

The memo continues that OMB will monitor adherence as part of its overall evaluation of how different agencies make IT investments, presumably through its oversight of the so-called "Exhibit 300" process, where agencies must prepare business cases for large IT projects. Many federal employees look at preparing 300Bs as a hassle, a bureaucratic check-the-box exercise to justify a technology acquisition they already believe they need, and they don't always follow OMB guidance (and occasionally that makes sense, as OMB's guidance is sometimes incomplete or unrealistic). But on the whole the system works, and resembles successful approaches to technology investment review that you see in the private sector.

The shocker comes in an ensuing paragraph, where Evans recommends:

A recently finalized SmartBUY agreement for records management software provides a secure, scalable, and high-performance solution for the management and control of documents, records, and other enterprise content.

SmartBUY refers to a newish government-wide acquisition mechanism, where federal and state agencies can very easily purchase commercial software (typically from resellers) at cut-rate prices. There is actually only a single RM vendor (and in fact, the sole ECM vendor) in SmartBUY: Meridio.

Meridio is an Ulster-based software company that built a name for itself providing RM services for (the old) Microsoft SharePoint. Now, as ECM Suites Report readers know, Meridio's solution can be called many things, including "inexpensive" and "developer-friendly" (both fine attributes!), but is less well known for "scalability" and "high-performance." You probably also know that Microsoft, being Microsoft, spurned its once-favored partner by building its own RM services into MOSS 2007. And what did the jilted Meridio do? Turned the other way and quickly sold itself to UK-based search vendor Autonomy, who seems to have ambitions in the e-discovery solutions space. Perhaps most importantly, there is a big difference between RM and Archiving. Even if Meridio works well as an RM product for you, an Archiving solution it is not.

You don't need to be a genius to figure out what's going to happen next. Harried federal managers trying to complete their IT business cases are going to budget for a slew of Meridio licenses -- "that's what Karen Evans told us to do" -- licenses that in turn will almost surely sit unused. Meridio/Autonomy will not see all the funds -- the Service Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business reseller gets a piece -- but as a U.S. taxpayer I would look to OMB to point out a more competitive set of choices. Well, let's just assume the Meridio mention in the memo was a hasty mistake. A quick search shows 269 "Records Management Software" products available to federal buyers from two-dozen different suppliers. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the problem is that Meridio is a non-US-based vendor, but rather, that no single vendor should be promoted in guidance like this.

Indeed, the bigger problem is the latent message in the memo: Government agencies have an RM and Archival problem, and here's some RM software you can quickly procure to fix it. Remember that records management is only secondarily a technology problem.

Nevertheless, simply raising awareness is a very good thing. Most U.S. federal managers, like managers everywhere, often simply don't consider the long-term archival, retention, and disposition implications of the information systems they develop. And with government trying to move more at "Internet-speed" I don't really blame them. The Meridio meander notwithstanding, I think the bigger impact of this message may fall on the Archiving side, rather than the RM side, though the implications for both should not be underestimated.

More generally, I think this dovetails with broader trends in cost accounting that ensure that the expenses of storing and ultimately getting rid of stuff should fall under total cost of ownership. Consider the "recycling and disposal" fee you may pay when having your car's motor oil changed. Economists are increasingly looking at things like solid waste and carbon footprints when evaluating the real costs of various initiatives.

So why not the same for information? Surely the cost of an information management system should entail more than just the expense of getting data into a repository and playing with it. At some point your investment calculations need to account for the cost of either storing it long-term or getting rid of it, properly. It's good to see OMB catching up with its European counterparts and providing some leadership in this area.

Oooh...an XML fight!

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:16:00 -0400

The world does seem to love an XML fight.

Yesterday Microsoft scored a goal by getting their OOXML standard ratified as an international standard through ISO (International Organization for Standards) -- a definite point score, since there were many other parties fighting tooth and nail to prevent this happening. OOXML is an important standard, with critical implications for the industry as a whole, and therefore represents a standard that we need to look at dispassionately to assess its true value and potential impact.

Passion is not lacking in this fight. I really don't think there is any company that can rally the opposing troops like Microsoft, a company that lurks across the IT industry and business world, seemingly playing the part of the arch evil robber baron in a 1920's silent thriller. Always ready to stab the hero in the back, always read to smile and make up -- then trip up their opponents. It's a reputation that has been well earned on occasion -- but this sort of good vs. evil drama really brings no value to any of us -- particularly when it comes to ratifying or rejecting standards. That said, this particular spat has been entertaining to say the least, if not comical at times.

To summarize the current situation, Microsoft proposed an open standard format for office documents (word processing, spreadsheets, et. al.) that would allow for interoperability between office application systems, a standard called OOXML (Office Open XML). Problem is there already is an open standard format for office documents called ODF (Open Document Format) that has long been around, and had already achieved ISO recognition.

The argument goes that ODF came out of the open source community and as such is backed by millions of regular folk (though it was in fact developed by fellow giant Sun Microsystems), and OOXML comes from the evil Redmond Giant. The long and short of it is that the Microsoft version got itself fast-tracked through the ISO process and trumped ODF. The battle between perceived good and perceived evil is now so acrimonious that lawsuits are being threatened and investigations and appeals loom on the near horizon.

But what of the actual merits of each format? Well again it's hard to avoid taking sides and finding yourself in the middle of a fight, but the reality from where I sit is that both formats have their merits and demerits. But regardless of the technical nitpicking we have to face the fact that Microsoft totally dominates the contemporary office environment (I say this as a long time Mac user), and as such an open standard coming from Redmond makes a lot of sense. Like it or not, most office documents will need to interface with and be accessible by, Microsoft desktop applications at some point.

On the other hand, for those who really want to avoid any involvement with Microsoft tools, there exists an alternative: Open Office. And by exchanging ODF files you can live totally outside of Microsoft's walls. Nevertheless, you will also almost surely need to convert to MS formats regularly, so life in the ODF world is immeasurably easier if all your colleagues also exist in a Microsoft-free world.

Today neither format works half as well as their relative supporters claim -- with conversions often missing crucial data such as formatting and decimal points -- but they are both getting close, and our friends over at Burton who know these things have long said that OOXML (the Microsoft version) is not only better but will win out in the long run (though they also shot themselves in the foot by first claiming that their analysis was not funded by Microsoft -- and it almost certainly wasn't, but then appearing side-by-side at a Microsoft press conference to discuss their findings- doh!).

But we are not taking sides, or rather we will take the side of common sense, for what is ultimately needed is some common sense. And it seems that despite leading the fight against OOXML, IBM is prepared to now step back a little and broker some kind of interoperability between the two interoperable standards (such sweet irony). Meanwhile, for you the buyer and end user of systems that create, process, or manage office document files, the status quo remains, despite the ratification of OOXML. If the two opposing sides never embrace the alternate format, we will all lose as a result.

ECM Technologies and Recession

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Thu, 3 Apr 2008 10:51:00 -0400

One topic that keeps coming up in conversations with buyers of content technologies -- and of course those that sell content technologies -- is the topic of a looming recession. It's something that casts a shadow over everything, and impacts almost every major decision-making process. Let's all hope a recession is not with us, but assuming one may arrive imminently (U.S. Fed Chairman Bernanke hinted as much yesterday), how can you best prepare and potentially thrive in such circumstances?

Those contemplating big-ticket implementation projects will likely endure a longer time-lag to get approval and budget, and more scrutiny of the business case. You'll also see pressure to reduce project costs, leading to tougher negotiations with suppliers. On the one hand such circumstances are a bit depressing and certainly frustrating, but looked at another way, they can push you to achieve more with less, and ultimately deliver better value.

Recall that the roots of ECM are document management and workflow: two functions that were originally designed to automate manual processes. They played a key role in the downsizing/rightsizing change-management area of the late 80's and 90's. In other words they were originally designed to reduce costs and increase efficiencies -- strong factors in a recession.

The other side of ECM is long-term content management and archiving, something that can also offer major cost-savings. Reducing the volume of content to be managed, freeing up precious server and network resources, and facilitating more cost-effective storage are all winning strategies. And remember that during a recession, lawsuits fly fast and loose (particularly in the U.S.), as grudges are settled, arguments flare, and perceived injustices challenged. Here again ECM and Archiving technologies prepare companies to fight such attacks, and deliver evidence when required, cost effectively. So, legal preparedness is something all firms need to consider as times get tough.

Hence, your business case and general justification for your ECM project needs to focus more on hard cost savings -- and making more of your existing resources -- rather than providing wish-lists and nice-to-have scenarios. Note that ECM systems -- in contrast to many other IT investments - typically offer a solid return on the investment when executed well. In fact, ECM is one of the few areas of IT where ROI calculations can have a modicum of reality about them. (Note: We provide some detailed advice on how to build an ECM business case in the ECM Suites Report)

In discussing ROI, though, I'm referring to that part of ECM that emphasizes structured processes and management, rather than a general collaboration service (the SharePoint phenomenon perhaps excepted). And this is why I think good old-fashioned ECM will remain center stage, with a push to automate existing manual processes growing stronger.

Some ECM vendors will suffer for sure, but the smart ones will turn the current economic climate to their advantage. They will focus far less on new fads and trends, and get back to basics: reducing paper mountains, automating processes, mitigating against risk, and playing a key role in archiving and storage optimization. Expect to see their focus shift increasingly to e-mail. The volumes, cost, and risks here have become so acute that any firm looking to tighten their belts and prepare for tough times may well need to prioritize e-mail archiving and management.

I am no economist and I have no special insight on whether we are heading to a recession or not. But it's surely preying on peoples' minds. From my point of view, many of the things we may focus on in a recession are things that we should focus on at any time -- it's just that the downsides are more severe. Hence we take more time to build solid business cases, justify our investments carefully, and use ECM tools to bring about real business change -- good things to do in any economy. At CMS Watch our goal is to help you through the difficult projects and decision-making that lie ahead.

More Reasons to Love London

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Tue, 1 Apr 2008 16:51:00 -0400

Great theater. Awesome Indian food. Hyde Park in springtime. As if that and hub-hub over Heathrow's new Terminal 5 (let's hope it turns out better than Terminal 4, once it's out of beta) weren't reason enough for us to book a flight to London, my London-bred colleague Alan Pelz-Sharpe and I will try to take the town by storm later this month at UK Internet World.

Attendance is free and the event offers a huge show floor as well as many educational sessions. I'll be the one with lots of hair and the uncool accent, talking about the current and future state of enterprise search, based on the research conducted for our Enterprise Search Report 2008. I'm planning to highlight what Microsoft's acquisition of FAST means to buyers and existing customers, Google's recent moves, and focus on a few players that are gaining traction in the UK market. Alan, meanwhile, will wittily deconstruct Enterprise Content Management technologies, based on over a year of research he conducted for the ECM Suites Report 2008. But given our time at the podium is short, please send me an email if you'd like to meet up with us while we're there. We both love samosas....

What you can learn from IBM and SAP's legal imbroglios

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 1 Apr 2008 16:27:00 -0400

A couple recent news items find SAP and IBM both in a bit of legal hot water.

U.S.-based über-trash-collector Waste Management Inc. is suing SAP for a whopping $100 million, alleging that the ERP vendor demo'ed some very convincing vaporware, covering up a fundamental inability to meet stated requirements.

Meanwhile, IBM has been suspended from any new federal contracts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) -- an extraordinary, if likely temporary, measure -- after some alleged hanky-panky involving a failed contract bid and aggressive appeal. There's talk of potential criminal investigations of both EPA and IBM employees.

I don't know how either of these disputes will turn out, but from the news reports alone they raise several important issues for technology customers working with large (I mean really large) vendors.

In Waste Management's case, they might have saved themselves a world of trouble by performing their pilot before they signed on with SAP (something we always recommend), but at least they caught the problem early on, when measured in ERP-years.

I don't know what IBM did, but it seems like EPA thought Big Blue really crossed a line in their appeal of a failed contract bid. Federal contracting -- like so many things in Washington -- is a bare-knuckles sport. Threats of appeals and possible litigation by losing bidders can keep federal contracts officers awake at night. In this case, it appears EPA struck back.

Sure, small vendors can get difficult too. Customers frequently tell us that -- whatever the benefits of working with a smaller, more agile supplier -- their smaller vendors also tend to be more erratic and less predictable.

But big vendors can present some tough challenges. They frequently seek to make themselves a permanent part of your infrastructure, and then throw their weight around. Recently I've been accumulating anecdotes of Stellent customers unexpectedly encountering a much tougher crop of account reps at Oracle, after Oracle's acquisition of that Minnesota-based ECM vendor known for its friendly employees. I also find big vendors more likely to threaten "up the chain" -- all the way to C levels if necessary -- to appeal a lost bid or to suggest that a particular problem wasn't theirs, but rather stemmed from the customer's low-level employees failing to follow the vendor's prescribed best practices. Sometimes they're right, but often not.

Again, I have no reason to know whether IBM and SAP actually did anything wrong in these two cases, but you should remember that the larger the project and the bigger the supplier, if things go bad, the greater your likelihood of having to resolve problems using extra-normal means. Larger projects tend to beget longer vendor selection cycles and a tendency for customers to rush unduly through the final and sometimes grueling test and contracts phases in an understandable desire to "just get it over with," so they can start the real project in earnest. In actuality, this is where you need to take your time to make sure you've tied up as many loose ends as possible.

At the end of the day, you need to make sure you have the same kind of strong project leadership and accountability on your side that you expect your vendors to bring. That keeps you in control, keeps your suppliers' respect, and could well keep both of you out of court...

HP expands archiving, e-discovery, and compliance portfolio with acquisition of Tower Software

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:17:00 -0400

So HP finally made a move into the world of ECM by acquiring Tower Software of Australia. On the surface it's an unusual match for HP, as many had expected them to buy one of the top tier players such as Interwoven, Vignette or even Open Text, but on closer consideration it's a move that makes sense. Revealingly, HP does not call this an "ECM" deal and focuses on the e-discovery and compliance benefits from Tower's addition, so it's possible HP has further moves to make if it wants to get serious about offering broader ECM services à la IBM.

Tower does have a long tradition in ECM (and has carved out a niche for themselves particularly in the Government sector globally), but primarily in Records Management-centric ECM. That's a focus that ties in nicely with HP's emphasis on archiving and storage-centric information management. Plus, Tower costs only a fraction of what other leading ECM firms would have set HP back. And of course HP has the footprint to manage an Australian-based division well. So those are the positives for HP. But what about Tower's existing customer base? Well in all likelihood there should be no major disruption, since HP does not have the ECM skills or competing technology in-house to disrupt this base, rather simply to continue to support it and help it to grow over time.

What is likely to change in the Tower offering is deeper integration with HP's Information Management archiving and storage offerings - and consolidation of the sales efforts in joint accounts. Tower will be absorbed into the Information Management division and the transaction should close in Q2. One slight change will be HP's focus on the Records Management (read Legal and Compliance) elements of Tower (where they are strongest) rather than the broader Tower ECM portfolio. Tower's deep integration with and architecture based upon Microsoft technologies -- and in particular their Gold Partner level status for SharePoint -- makes Tower a particularly appealing acquisition. But it does mean that areas Tower was hoping to grow may well get neglected in the short term, areas such as imaging, collaboration and traditional document management services.

HP has made it clear that they want to build a full Compliance and E-discovery solution, and that Tower will be integrated in with the HP Integrated Archive Platform along side e-mail archiving, ultimately as a single offering. But HP is still missing some elements, most notably a top notch search/discovery offering -- something that Tower cannot bring to the table -- so it's reasonable to expect more acquisitions in this area to come.

We cover Tower technology in-depth in our ECM Suites Report. We'll expand our coverage further as the the deal closes and HP begins the work of integrating both Tower's technology and their remaining staff into the HP machine. As acquisitions go this one is not particularly brutal or surprising; Tower was likely to get acquired by somebody, and HP was likely to acquire somebody.

But acquisitions of small firms by behemoths like HP cannot occur without some upheaval. Most likely for Tower's existing customers that upheaval will come in the form of dealing with HP sales and support staff who will in time want to be involved in the deals, whether they know anything about ECM or not. Things will settle but it will take time, and for now new buyers are urged to tread with caution.