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