Hi. A quick reminder that my survey is closing soon and this is your last chance to win the 64GB Apple iPad. The response has been fantastic so far – thank you.

Some interesting data has already come though; did you know that 69% of respondents have worked at a company with bad processes? If you haven’t completed the survey as yet, I am still really keen to hear your thoughts about process and safety so please take the time to look at the survey before it closes. Please click here to view.

There will be a new survey soon, so please do check back regularly for another chance to win.

Thanks for your time and reading my blog

Lawrence Maynard

Enterprise Content Management · iPad · Safety · Survey

The Curse of Lorenzo Dow, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Content Management Projects

As some background; I was born in England, carry a Kiwi passport and live in Sydney. This gives me a foot in many camps and I feel justified in gloating a little about the recent Bledisloe Cup win (for the non-antipodeans you may need to Google it) but that’s not to say that I don’t recognise the contributions that Australia has made to the rest of the world; Neighbours, Paul Hogan, Kylie Minogue – the list goes on…

However, there have been many great things coming out of Australia (I’m resisting any temptation to play the New Zealander and say the flight to Wellington    ) but goods things don’t happen without a few glitches and the achievement that springs to mind is..

The Sydney Harbour Bridge

A few facts:

• The total length is 1,149m and the arch spans 503m and is 134m above sea level
• It took 6 years to build and contains approximately 6 million rivets
• The original tender was for approximately 5 million pounds, however it eventually cost 10 million pounds (I’ve seen costs as high as 13 million quoted)
• The project started in 1926, finished in 1932 and was eventually paid off 62 years later in 1988
• 16 lives were lost during the project

Now, of course, without the bridge Sydney would not have been able to become the city that it has – never mind that Sydney simply couldn’t afford to build it today.

It was (and is) a source of great national pride, kept a lot of people employed during the depression and as a result, the benefits to the overall city were (and still are) immense but if we did a post implementation review we would probably sack the sponsor and the Project Manager.

So, what are the parallels with a Content Management project?

If we look at it flippantly it’s simple. I’m sure that anyone who has worked on projects (not just Content Management) for a vendor or a Systems Integrator for any period of time can see the similarities:

• Tender processes run with a large weighting on lowest price
• Overly optimistic view of simplicity (or complexity) and budget blow out
• Incomplete business case (based purely on hard costs) and occasionally a similar number of casualties!!

But joking aside, this is exactly the situation. The usual process can drive us down this route, making it very difficult to compete whilst maintaining a level of integrity – this is often because the project budget is known and fixed and ultimately, when customers are faced with what on the face of it are similar proposals, it comes simply down to price.

To counter this and to make the bid compliant, suppliers need to take measures to meet the budget by:

• Reducing the scope of the project (this is what we can do with the money you want to spend)
• Cut back the completeness of services provided – the usual areas being:
  • Business requirements analysis
  • Project management / project governance
  • Organisational change management
  • Training / end user enablement and post production support

These are, however, necessary components of the project and will come back into scope leading to increased cost through change control.

In the example of the Harbour Bridge, the designer, John Bradfield, who was appointed chief engineer of the project after winning a design competition in 1911, apparently made 101,556 changes throughout the construction!

Now, I’m a big opponent of the ‘low-balling/change control’ approach as ultimately it benefits no-one – yet why is it so widespread?

Well it’s best explained by the quote from the book ‘Warsaw Requiem’ by Bodie Thoene

“What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient”

And that about sums it up – when faced with this sort of dilemma the usual approach is to take the path of least resistance which brings me to…

The Curse of Lorenzo Dow

Now, one man who didn’t take the path of least resistance was Lorenzo Dow.

Lorenzo Dow was an itinerant, evangelist, American preacher who made an overnight stay at Jacksonborough in around 1820 and his visit there is one of Georgia’s most enduring legends.

Dow was an eccentric character who, early in his ministry, walked from town to town passing out leaflets during the day and preaching in the evening. Referring to himself as ‘Crazy Dow’ he was often an object of scorn and abuse in the towns he visited. Later in his ministry he gained a reputation as one of the leading American evangelists, preaching to crowds of many hundreds.

In Jacksonborough, however, he was not greeted with open arms…

Dow’s evening sermon was interrupted by a group that had gathered to break up the service by heckling and throwing rotten eggs. Now Dow could have followed the path of least resistance and cleaned himself up and left town but instead he followed the group into a whiskey store. The legend has it that Dow, a man who was not one to be intimidated whilst doing ‘God’s work’, used an iron tool to break open a barrel of whiskey, dumping its contents across the floor. Dow was rescued by a man named Seaborn Goodall, who took Dow home for the night.

The angry mob gathered at the Goodall home the following day with a supply of eggs and tomatoes. Dow walked out of town under a barrage of fruit and eggs, stopping at the Beaver Dam Creek Bridge.

Dow did as Jesus told his disciples in the New Testament,

“If the people in the town will not welcome you, go outside the town and shake their dust off your feet. This will be a warning to them.” (Luke Ch 9),

So, Dow shook the dust of the town from his feet and prayed a curse on the town – that no business would prosper, that no home would stand in that town forever, except the home of Seaborn Goodall. The crowd laughed at him but his curse was fulfilled by a series of mysterious disasters spanning many years, where eventually there was nothing left except the bridge, the road, and the home of Seaborn Goodall. Through it all, the Goodall home stood solid, always unburned by the fires, undamaged by the storms and floods.

Now I’m not for a moment suggesting that we curse the people who write and issue RFTs / RFPs (although after a few long days and nights writing tenders or proposals the occasional ‘curse’ is sometimes uttered) but I am suggesting that a different approach may be better than ‘shaking the dust off our feet’. I realise that many organisations, especially Government are constrained in this regard but the arms length nature of the process makes it very difficult to arrive at the perfect outcome (I’m open to comments here as to where we can make the process work better)

Content Management Projects

So back to Content Management…

At EMC Information Intelligence Group, Australia and New Zealand, we have put in a huge pamount of effort to ensure that our projects exhibit all of the best parts of the Sydney Harbour Bridge such as:

• High user adoption
• Fitness for purpose
• Delivering ongoing benefits to the wider community

Whilst minimising the worst parts:

• Project overrun
• Long payback period
• Casualties!!

Our job as Content Management professionals is to guide our customers – this is why we are called Consultants, they rely on us to lead them to a successful outcome and as such we have made a significant shift away from the typical vendor Professional Services organisation as being purely experts in the technology.

In the Documentum World, our customers have told us that they want us to change – so we have.

Why Content Management Projects Fail

Content Management projects fail for a number of reasons but in my opinion, the first and by far the biggest reason for project failure is a lack of an over-arching Information Strategy and ill-defined business requirements and the second reason that they sometimes fail to realise the full benefits is a lack of ongoing optimisation.

Information Strategy & Business Requirements

In the same way that the Sydney Harbour Bridge requirements were not simply to build a bridge to cross Sydney Harbour (Port Jackson), an organisation’s Information Strategy should not be simply to capture, integrate, process and deliver information in a clean, consistent and timely fashion. Further, a Content Management solution’s requirement is not simply to provide a unified repository to manage an organisation’s content….

In EMC we now focus a lot more effort on business consulting; EMC now has a team of strategic business consultants who work with an organisation to undertake a number of tasks including but of course not limited to;

• Assisting with a detailed, over-arching Information Strategy,
• Defining a the Content Management Roadmap and fully costed business case,
• Gathering and documenting detailed requirements,
• Defining an Organisational Change Management Plan, including end-user enablement

As we move more into Case Management (with xCP) this becomes even more important, no longer can our focus be purely on the technology as it is business process that drives the solution and if we get all of the above right then the chances of success are increased considerably.

Ongoing Optimisation

The Sydney Harbour Bridge would have rusted away by now without ongoing maintenance. It would have been unrealistic to expect that, once Captain Francis De Groot ‘accidentally’ cut the tape (prior to the official opening!!), the bridge would continue to function and adapt to the changing needs of the bridge users without routine maintenance, emergency repairs, design enhancements and upgrades (as new technologies became available).

With regard to Documentum, traditionally EMC’s answer to the proactive support needs of our customers was remote product support supplemented with ad-hoc Consulting. However, in response to feedback from our installed base, EMC has developed a proactive range of services to address:

• Performance, Stability and Availability
• Software currency
• Problem management, configuration management, change management, release management etc.

Business critical projects like this need to be maintained and optimised and without this, the solution (be it a bridge or Documentum) will fall into a state of disrepair…

By concentrating on these two areas, while continuing to do what vendors do best (understand the technology) then we are ensuring that our projects are successful in the eyes of both our customers and EMC, but it requires a considerable change in our approach to communicating this extra value.

Continuing along the path of least resistance and competing on price to the detriment of value, whilst looking for opportunities to change or manage the budget upwards is destined to lead to poor customer satisfaction.

On the other hand, ‘shaking the dust off our feet’ by not attempting to meet the budget and qualifying out of opportunities will not allow us to survive.

Lorenzo Dow is also famous for the saying “We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t” and without finding a ‘third way’ that’s exactly the position we’ll find ourselves in.

Lawrence

Case Management · Documentum · ECM · Enterprise Content Management

Now the blog is up and running I’m getting sent a lot of interesting links to other postings concerning Documentum and xCP – it seems as though the Documentum World is really starting to get excited about Case Management and it’s applications.

Here’s one by Robin East that was recently sent to me suggesting that Documentum xCP would be ideal in applying case management to British Freedom of Information requests currently managed by MySociety.org in the UK. The site received over 15,000 requests which were handled manually! Click here to read a detailed breakdown of the responses which, not surprisingly, included double ups, errors and delays…

Case Management · Documentum

When it comes to helping our partners get a handle on how to position the EMC offering in relation to SharePoint, I’m not sure anyone has done it better than Jon Ludwig of Capgemini. His presentation at EMC World was well received and would be a useful resource for anyone (including me). The essence of Jon’s presentation is captured here by Andrew Chapman (@chapmaa) and it poses a very interesting point regarding hybrid models emerging from both Documentum and Sharepoint. Genius or unholy alliance? Please read and share your thoughts with me…

Read the full article here: http://nevertalkwhenyoucannod.typepad.com/nevertalk/2010/05/sharepoint-documentum-or-a-hybrid-approach-capgeminis-answer.html

Documentum · share point

Ask Johnny and he’ll tell you that more and more EMC Documentum partners are jumping on board with the xCP platform and wonders whether it will evolve sufficiently to facilitate rapid development of content centric applications in the future?.. You can read his thoughts here about whether xCP is the integration platform of the future. What do you think?

Check out the full post here

Documentum · ECM · Enterprise Content Management · xCP

The topic of who invented the term ‘ECM’ is a question bound to stir deep feelings (and many burst blood vessels) among Enterprise Content Management vendors. I was told by EMC that Documentum coined the phrase but frankly I don’t know.

Case Management on the other hand is a different story. I think EMC is legitimately able to stand up and claim, with a high degree of certainty, that they are creating and driving a market destined to form the next wave of innovation around Enterprise Content Management – and that is the Case Management market.

I predict that the term will soon start popping up everywhere, including no doubt, in my future posts.

And just to prove the point, the bandwagon is rolling, gathering pace and everyone wants a seat…. Ron Miller wrote recently on why he believes Case Management is perhaps the first real trend in ECM.

Click here to read the whole story.

Case Management · Documentum · ECM · Enterprise Content Management

Case Management, Star Trek and the Times Square Bomber
Here we go again…. In my first post I tried to link together a project of global significance (Digital Genome), a religious feast (Pentecost) and Content Management. So my challenge I’ve given myself this time is to try again to link three seemingly unrelated topics whilst giving you a glimpse into my world – I’m told that I’m very strange, although I like to think complex.

I think I have watched every Star Trek episode up to ‘Enterprise’ – I can almost hear the groans now but hear me out on this one…

The Star Trek computers are a superb piece of technology, they take unstructured content, from disparate data sources, in numerous formats (most of them from alien technologies), link it with data from internal and external sensors, reference it with data from either their own databanks or third party databanks and then collate all this data creating an intelligent decision or route it to decision makers and present the content to the user via the first ever iPad (the Star Trek Padd), all of this within a few hours or even minutes.

Interestingly, this is what the Documentum xCP Case Management Suite is designed to do, especially when combined with capture products (Captiva), customer communications products (Document Sciences) or other data capture technologies such as biometric scanners, digital video cameras or other data collection devices. These are complex projects with huge benefits to the organisation and although xCP is aimed at rapid deployment it will take longer than a few hours to implement – Scotty (and successors Geordi La Forge, Miles O’Brien and B’lana Torres) may not have been able to change the laws of physics but certainly have had a huge impact in setting unrealistic expectations as to the likely time frames for implementing Content or Case Management solutions…..

But what’s this got to do with the Times Square bomber?
The Times Square bomber arrest is touted as an example of US counter-terrorism measures working at full efficiency and completely justified the enhanced security measures that any of us who travel regularly are subjected to. The bomb didn’t explode, no-one was hurt and the perpetrator was apprehended.

But it could easily have been a different story.

Law enforcement did its job, the NYPD identified the threat and defused the bomb, the FBI tracked down the suspect within 53 hours and he was apprehended before he left the US – but the security measures should have stopped him BEFORE he got on the flight.

The White House counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan defended the intelligence agencies track record saying “We’re not lucky. We’re good” but it seems as though luck played a part, especially when you consider the ‘underwear bomber’ and a few other cases, and the process leading to his arrest was down to good old-fashioned policing which, although effective, does not scale well in the face of increased threats.

So what could have been done differently?

Well in the Star Trek World it would have been easy to avoid. The Enterprise would have swung into orbit and interfaced with all of the relevant (and easily accessible) data sources, electronic transaction records, voice communicator logs, transporter logs. They would have then cross referenced against all known suspects or anyone who had been in communication with a hostile planet, homing in on the short list of suspects using the wonderful Star Trek sensors and projecting their image on the view screen on the bridge. Once located and tracked, the suspect’s co-ordinates would be locked before being ‘beamed’ directly to the brig, manned by two red-shirted security officers, one of which was bound to be vapourised in the ensuing struggle…

This would have been the 24th Century equivalent of the good old fashioned policing.

But in the DocumentumWorld it could be even better than that….

There is currently a lot of data held on people and their interactions and transactions. Many of these interactions generate content that is captured and stored but not managed – not managed in the sense that it is captured, classified, stored, updated, retained / disposed but managed in the sense of used to make decisions or create scenarios.

Take the case of a terrorist intending to detonate a bomb on a plane, he needs to get on the plane to detonate the bomb but first he needs a ticket…

People need to buy a ticket in advance of their intended journey, usually a return ticket purchased using a credit card. This gives the basis of a case, being an individual’s journey from point A to B.

So he purchases a ticket, it can be one-way, return, booked anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of years in advance of the journey. Data is captured at this point including, but not limited to;
• Starting location
• Destination
• Booking date
• Flight date
• Return date
• Passport number
• Nationality

This case data could then be linked to other information on this passenger’s relevant history, including whether they are on a no-fly list (as was the Times Square Bomber) or a security watch list, whether they have spent an extended time in a country known to support terrorists etc. So already we have the ability to mark the case as a security risk and workflow it to the security services.

He then travels to the airport and checks in.

He provides his booking number, passport and his luggage is weighed, again we have captured more data for inclusion in the case. He is assigned a seat and given a boarding pass…

He then proceeds to passport control where he could be subjected to further questioning based on a script that is ‘pushed’ to the passport control officer based on business rules. The answers are recorded against the case.

Passing through security he has his hand-luggage x-rayed. Based on the business rules or categorisation and the data captured to date, he could be intercepted and selected for a full search or body x-ray, including biometric scanning. This could then be referenced against national and international security databases and all of this data would be entered against the case.

There are more places where data can potentially be captured, video footage at security, allocated to the case based on the check-in time or the duty free shop based on the time that the boarding pass was scanned but you get the picture….

Suppose he then makes a run for it – his image could be instantly ‘pushed’ to handheld devices of airport security officers.

Also, baggage scanned and weighed at departure could be re-scanned and weighed at the destination airport allowing a comparison and more certainty in cases such as the Schappelle Corby case.

Now before anyone warns me of the danger of relying completely on computer data, I’m not suggesting that, all I’m suggesting is that random checks and hunches could be supplemented by alerts based on real intelligence.

So why is this not currently in place?

I suspect some of it already is but there would be huge legal hurdles to be jumped over to make his kind of solution fly (no pun intended) but the point is that the technology is there and this theoretical example was meant to demonstrate how case management solutions can really change the game when it comes to intelligent decision support within an organisation.

EMC’s xCP product suite is at the forefront of this exciting move away from disparate content, as merely something to be captured, classified, stored, updated, retained & disposed of, towards making proactive, efficient high-value business decisions.

To be honest, Case Management will never be as exciting as swinging into orbit in NCC-1701, beaming to the surface with phasers at the ready and rounding up the Klingons but it’s a lot more interesting than charting gaseous anomalies…

The IIG Business Consultants do not have the intellect of Mr Spock (damn close though) and our Architects also cannot change the laws of physics but it has been commented that I have the charisma and leadership skills of James T Kirk (then I woke up!).

But getting back to the point of this post, xCP will change the way organisations use content and EMC is ready to ‘Boldly go where no Content Management vendor has gone before’

I look forward to your comments and remember…

Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam

Case Management · Documentum

Earlier this year Lee Dallas from Big Men On Content posted a great article entitled “2010 Content Management Predictions from Lee Dallas” and now that we are half way through the year I was discussing with my colleagues over a cup of tea (yes there are some tea drinkers still around) and we thought this was a good opportunity to take a closer look at how many nails got hit on the head vs. Fat Thumb predictions (you know, the kind that were just a big miss…) So here’s my review of the crystal ball gazing from Lee:

Prediction #1: Open Text Will Acquire Another ECM Vendor.

He was half right. Certainly it’s no secret that Open Text remained on the acquisition trail, just a different kind of business. The $11m snap buy of BurntSand (announced April and confirmed in May) had a few industry punters scratching their heads. I haven’t noticed a lot of activity or communication coming from those quarters and for many, it seems a strange alliance. A few comments have been noted regarding the way in which BurntSand appeared to be rallying its project troops along the Canadian borders before the sale but no obvious link to that activity and the acquisition seem to have emerged.

Lee made one specific observation regarding the potential pitfalls of acquiring a business that has more service expertise than it does product depth that caught my eye. Anyone else think he was channeling SAS’s Jim Goodnight when he noted ‘every night a consulting company’s assets go home, every morning you hope they come back.’ If Open Text take a tip from Dr. Jim’s playbook and manage their people right, they too could have a 2.31 BILLION dollar business…

Prediction #2: SharePoint Will Force Specialization in the ECM Market

I disagreed with this when it was mooted and stand fast on the view that SharePoint is a basic content services tool. It delivers and will continue to deliver generalised content management, which many organisations still do not have. My personal gaze into the crystal ball on this front tells me that specialisation will come in the next 1-2 years when SharePoint users realise that SharePoint is not delivering the value or competitive edge they need but as yet, there is no evidence to support the call Lee’s making. That said, I do wonder about the level of SharePoint expertise that Open Text roped in with the BurntSand acquisition.

Prediction #3: Major ECM Vendors Will Stop Positioning Themselves as ECM Vendors.

Well from my personal experience this rings true. At the time when Documentum was leading the market with ECM it was new and shiny, now it is starting to move down the commodity path. EMC is pioneering the move toward case management and others are jumping on the bandwagon already – this is exactly what happened with ECM – in the words of Yogi Berra “it’s déjà vu all over again”.

Consider what Andy Wang, Director of ECM Strategy for Laserfiche said last month in an interview with IDM when asked if demand for ECM is down. “I sure would have loved to say that the SharePoint hype and confusion slowed down ECM purchasing habits because then Laserfiche’s 10% 2009 revenue growth would seem that much more powerful, but the reality is informed customers know that solving actual business problems such as case management and customer on-boarding is a more definable success measure and the return on investment is equal or more important to exploring SharePoint…”

Prediction #4: SharePoint Archiving Will Be THE BIG Topic in Q4 ‘10

This I doubt. The real issue is about control of the SharePoint environment, not archiving. Put simply, if you have no idea what is going on in your SharePoint environment, you are exposed to risk and compliance issues and this is exactly what’s happening for many organisations. No doubt the drive to MS2010 will drive a need to archive data but first you need to know what’s in there before you can migrate. Control and visibility will continue to be the defining issues.

Prediction #5 Cloud ECM Business Models Will Dampen The Hype

The cloud is certainly the next wave in IT. Organisations will are being driven to adopt cloud models in order to service customers with more flexibility and at a lower cost. Within Australia and New Zealand it is especially relevant to mid-sized organisations that have neither resource, nor budgets nor a desire to bring IT in house and manage infrastructure and/or information. I completely agree that security is going to be a particular concern – it’s challenging enough for many businesses to keep their own perimeters under control, let alone needing to ratify the security provisions of a new ‘cloud service provider’.

Given that fact that ECM is all about managing the content…. Issues around security and privacy will most certainly slow down the adoption of EMC cloud offerings. It will be interesting to see if RSA’s new Archer acquisition has applications in this space. It is a very recent addition to the RSA fold and much is yet to be learned about it.

#6 WCM Will Remain A Boring Topic

Hard not to agree! It’s more about personalised and relevant communications through multi channels to the end user/customer including social media. WCM is almost old school and everyone does it (like a tick in the box)

ECM · Enterprise Content Management

The idea of this survey actually started around the water cooler believe it or not – ok, it was actually the kettle but you get the idea. A group of us were talking about the Beaconsfield disaster and someone commented that mining was one of the most critical industries that needed up-to-date process documentation. I started wondering if we could actually gauge the attitude of senior mangers around process and safety.

So I happened on the idea of doing a survey and approached the marketing team at work proposing that they sponsor the prize for me. A deal was struck – EMC marketing get to use the data (anonymously) if it’s of sufficient size and quality, and I get to ask the hard questions for my blog.

Click HERE to take the survey

iPad · Safety · Survey · Win

My name is Lawrence Maynard; I’m married with two boys and work for the Information Intelligence Group (IIG) of EMC as the Regional Services Director for Australia and New Zealand.
Regarding my professional background, it’s probably easier to link to my Linkedin profile rather than doing a detailed intro.

Anyway, I decided to start writing this blog because many of the Content Management blogs are very feature / function centric. Whilst I’m not a Documentum expert (I work for EMC and manage the Services practice for Australia and New Zealand), I know enough to be dangerous…so I’m told.

I’m hoping that by being inside EMC I can give you some inside insight into the more business related aspects of the Documentum World and also learn something from the very talented people that are out there (you) and hopefully feed this back into the wider EMC organisation.

As this is my first blog entry I thought I’d start with a subject that is a little bit different, although I do intend to get back to the IIG Strategy in future posts.

The Digital Genome Project, Pentecost and Enterprise Content Management

A couple of things happened towards the end of May 2010, both seemingly unrelated to each other and one of them only partially related to Documentum.

The first was the feast of Pentecost – this is one of the most important days in the Christian calendar and the events are best summed up as:-

“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance”
The Apostles began ‘speaking in tongues’ and were understood, by everyone present, in their own language.

The second was the ‘Digital Genome’ that was secured in a bunker deep under the Swiss Alps:-
This project is the culmination of four years of work by European researchers who deposited a ‘Digital Genome’ that will provide the blueprint for future generations to read data stored using defunct technology.

The sealed box contains the key to unpicking defunct digital formats. This box will be locked away for the next quarter of a century behind a 3 ½ tonne door strong enough to resist nuclear attack at the data storage facility, known as the Swiss Fort Knox.

So what have these two events in common?
Simply that both events are a response to a problem – the problem being how to best ensure that data reaches the intended recipients in the correct format (information).
In the case of the Apostles, their message, delivered in an unrecognisable format, was meaningless. However, with ‘divine intervention’ their data was transformed into information.

The divine intervention enjoyed by the Apostles is probably not coming our way with regards to saving our archaic data formats so the response of the Digital Genome project is a sensible one ensuring that with the ever decreasing lifespan of our data formats (both hardware and software) information is not lost forever.

Why do we care?

Written information has traditionally been created in an encrypted manner – a language. This language can be analysed by future generations and de-coded. In this way all of the accumulated and stored wisdom of a civilisation can be unlocked with the correct key, such as the Rosetta Stone.
The Digital Genome project is an attempt to proactively produce a Rosetta Stone for future generations and as such should be viewed as a noble project but what is the impact of doing nothing?

We capture much more information than ever before. The Digital Genome project researchers estimate that there is 100 GB of data for every person on the planet – this is equivalent to 24 tonnes of books per person.

IDC estimate that the amount of electronically stored data will exceed 1.2 ZB in 2010, this is actually almost 200 GB per person, much of which is unstructured (95%) unmanaged (85%) and becoming more regulated. In addition 85% of this data is ‘managed’ by organisations.

Some may argue that we have already lost an unmeasurable amount of content such as conversations and physical documentation that will never be recovered. Much of the digital content we capture these days, it could be argued, is unnecessary, with obsolete data formats being just a logical progression of the information loss that has been happening for millennia

Others argue that we are in danger of a ‘Digital Dark Age’ where this loss of valuable information to future generations could be likened to the low volume of written records from the middle ages and this is certainly the motivation being the Digital Genome.

There is a third school of thought; that is that the ‘Digital Dark Age’ is being overstated and that most examples of lost information are really examples of where information has been recovered, albeit at great expense and that for Digital Archiving to be taken seriously we need real evidence of the costs of ‘do nothing’. http://www.digitalpreservationeurope.eu/publications/position/Ross_Harvey_black_hole_PPP.pdf

All of the above may be valid view points but one fact is undeniable;
Information has traditionally been available to users even after a generation or more (when arguably much of its relevance is lost) because it was stored in a universally readable, low-tech format (assuming we have the ability to translate).

Digital information, however, is stored in a proprietary, high-tech format that, due to the rate of technological change, may be disappearing at an ever-increasing rate, well within its useful life.

This problem is highlighted by the Digital Genome project which estimated that the European Union loses data valued at three billion Euros every year. This is likely to increase as the lifespan of digital formats reduce. Current estimated lifespan is less than 20 years for hardware technology such as optical drives and 5-7 years for data formats – well within the retention policy timeframes of many organisations.

So evidently we have to care but the question I am asking myself is, what should be the response of the Content Management industry to this problem?

By way of one example, here is a link to an EMC press release regarding the Kennedy Presidential Library http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/us/2006/20060609-4439.htm

This project was to build a digital library consisting of the entire collection of papers, documents, photographs and audio recordings of President John F. Kennedy, with the aim of eventually making them accessible to citizens throughout the world via the Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum’s website — www.jfklibrary.org.

This solution addresses the problem of storing and retaining a specific set of historical records using EMC hardware and software and as such the content becomes managed and structured content. To a certain extent this safeguards this content for future generations as long as the solution is maintained (the hardware and software is managed, maintained and current)
Of course this won’t protect against a complete breakdown in civilisation but I suspect if that happened we may not care too much about lost content!

A potentially bigger issue is to ensure that data formats continue to be supported, many content management platforms integrate with universal viewers such as Brava that allows organisations to view multiple document formats without the need to have the native software on every client.

So, as long as content is managed, structured and the format is recognised and continues to be supported by the viewer then there’s no problem, right?
A very simplistic view but given that 85% of all content is unmanaged (over 1 ZB) then we really are in danger of losing a lot of data….

So why are we in this position?
A very good question, you would think that an organisation would value its information as this represents its accumulated intellectual property. Unfortunately the industry has done a poor job, in my opinion, of selling the value of traditional content management and implementations are viewed as being complicated and potentially prone to failure.

This is not necessarily due to the products themselves but content management does require a considerable amount of planning and change management – I worked with ERP for many years and content management is much more of a change for organisations.

These projects are not a technology drop and if treated as such they are likely to fail but if they are approached correctly then the results can be superb.
The benefits are not only that valuable IP will be available ‘in perpetuity’ but once that information is captured it can be used for business decision making purposes – content is no longer just created, distributed, maintained and disposed of – now information is increasingly being interacted with.

The logical progression of traditional content management is what is called Composite Content Applications – EMC have taken a step towards this evolution with the xCP Case Management suite (I’m sure someone will jump on this and tell me that CCA and Case Management aren’t the same but it’s easier to articulate Case Management than CCA) and many other players are jumping on the case management bandwagon so expect to see the major ECM developments being in this area (a lot more on this in future blogs I’m sure).

Anyway, I digress, information preservation is a serious problem for us all and if the content management industry has many of the answers, why is there still so much unmanaged data?

Maybe we’re all praying for divine intervention?

Documentum · ECM · Enterprise Content Management