The entire ECM industry is focused on a number of problems today, ranging from compliance and collaboration to SharePoint integration and process optimization. However, there are many other pressing issues that will need to be solved that do not get the same headlines as yet. Note that this is not a list of trends which would surely include mobility, e-discovery, or social media but rather a list of problems waiting for a solution:
1. Too much information
Until recently, IT departments were focused on getting us access to information. Now we have it and we already drown in it. We have passed the tipping point and our IT departments are no longer about providing information but rather about how to reduce the amount of information that users have to deal with without compromising their capability to get their jobs done.
2. Metadata
The problem with content is that – unlike structured data - it is meant for humans and not for machines. In order to make machine processing at all possible, metadata is necessary. And for decades now, we have been trying to convince users to add metadata to content assets – with no success. Users won’t do it. Period. And so we have to come up with reliable and consistent ways of automatic generation of metadata.
3. Storage
Storage is cheap and so we just buy more of it, right? Yeah, dream on! Storage might be getting cheap as measured by $/MB but the data is growing at a faster pace than the storage capacity. The culprit is the proliferation of recording devices e.g. security cameras, smartphones, etc. and the growth of file format size. Just think about the data explosion caused by the switch to High Definition format for video.
4. Social compliance
At the time when most organizations are just coming to grasps with the compliance challenges represented by e-mail, social media introduced a new security, compliance, and liability nightmare that cannot be avoided. You may disable access to social media sites from within your organization but that will merely frustrate your employees. It will not prevent them from going out there and talking. Today, we simply have no control over possible liabilities on Twitter or Facebook.
5. Desktops
So, you think you have a content management infrastructure? You think you have a handle on compliance and information governance? You have deployed collaboration, social media, and intranets to capture your corporate memory? Well, think again. Most of your information resides on desktops and mobile devices and not on servers and repositories. Not managing the desktop and smartphones represents a major hole in your content management strategy.
6. Security
Content security is another issue that to date has not been taken seriously. Yes sure, we have a secure repository with access control, strong authentication and maybe even encrypted file system; however, as soon as users have the right to read a document, the repository’s security becomes irrelevant and they can do whatever they want with it. For years we have tried to solve this issue with digital rights management but that approach has little traction today. Yes, your repository might be secure but your content is not.
7. User interface
The primary interface with our content today is the QWERTY keyboard – an interface that has been designed more than a century ago to slow down the typist to prevent jamming. Well, it doesn’t seem right that we should continue this folly. The new era of user interfaces is likely going to be rich in experience, contextual, and based on a data entry different from the typing today. Just think Minority Reports and you get the idea.
8. Electronic Trail
Not long from now, everything we ever do will be recorded. Not could, it will be recorded. Every keystroke will be captured, every word in a conversation will be recorded, and every movement we make will be tracked via GPS. We will either end up in an Orwellian society or the legal environment might have to change. But in the mean time, technology will need to deal with the immense volumes of records that need to be stored, secured, retrieved, and correlated.
9. Content types
There is a lot of content in your organization that is still living in content silos. Just think of voice mail, maps, surveillance video, usage patterns, or meeting conversations. There are many more content types that need to be included in our content management strategies and cross-referenced with others to be of any use.
10. Formats
You know the frustration – you try to play a video file and you get an error message. The codec is missing, the language is wrong, or the screen resolution does not fit. If video is expected to become the next big thing in communication, the format Babylonia will have to be united. The current battle between Flash, HTML5, and Silverlight is another example of a format war that users couldn’t care less about.
11. E-Signatures
You mean that a hand-signed document transmitted via fax is legally binding and an electronic signature via strong authentication is not? Are you serious? Forging a hand-signed signature is much easier than breaching an electronic signature security. This will have to change.
12. Privacy
We are just a few years away from a point where everything will be monitored and recorded for posterity. Are you sure that the sensitive e-mail you have just deleted in your gmail account is really gone or has it been merely removed from your account? Pretty soon, all objects – and possibly all people – will be equipped with an RFID chip and everything will be tracked. Just imagine the consequences if somebody were to hack into the information regarding everything you have ever done.
Those are some of the challenges that will keep us busy in the years to come. And this list is likely not exhaustive.
Showing posts with label ECM Technologies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ECM Technologies. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Solution for Too Much Information
Many organizations deploy content management solutions to stop the flood of content in which they are drowning. They deploy content management solutions ranging from document management to social media, to deal with this challenge. And most of these offerings have been designed following the same principles as in the paper world – from user experience, content assets are basically objects that reside in containers – folders, directories, or tables.
Initially, the containers appear to work great as they are intuitive to navigate. But as soon as any folder contains more than a couple dozen objects, it becomes difficult for humans to browse through. Finding a document or microblog post in a container with over 100 other objects can become a very tedious task requiring time and concentration.
But wait, you might say, isn’t search supposed to solve this problem? Yes, it does, but only when it returns a single and accurate result. That happens in some applications when searching for an unambiguous piece of data such as customer account number but that assumes we know what we are searching for. As soon as a search query results in more than a dozens of hits, the result set becomes just as difficult to review as is browsing through a container. Search does not solve the container problem.
I’d argue that this problem hasn’t been solved today but we can see some approaches today. One is the best practices approach mimicking the paper world by separating important objects from the noise. This is mostly manual and its aim is to keep the ‘important stuff’ container down to a small number of objects. Another approach is emerging now – the use of content analytics and visualization technologies that can automatically classify important content and expose it to the user in relevant context, i.e. via faceted navigation or tag cloud based on dynamically generated content clusters.
Needless to say, I am a big fan of the automated approach. While still in its infancy, content analytics might be finally a way we could deal with the greatest challenge of our time – too much information.
Initially, the containers appear to work great as they are intuitive to navigate. But as soon as any folder contains more than a couple dozen objects, it becomes difficult for humans to browse through. Finding a document or microblog post in a container with over 100 other objects can become a very tedious task requiring time and concentration.
But wait, you might say, isn’t search supposed to solve this problem? Yes, it does, but only when it returns a single and accurate result. That happens in some applications when searching for an unambiguous piece of data such as customer account number but that assumes we know what we are searching for. As soon as a search query results in more than a dozens of hits, the result set becomes just as difficult to review as is browsing through a container. Search does not solve the container problem.
I’d argue that this problem hasn’t been solved today but we can see some approaches today. One is the best practices approach mimicking the paper world by separating important objects from the noise. This is mostly manual and its aim is to keep the ‘important stuff’ container down to a small number of objects. Another approach is emerging now – the use of content analytics and visualization technologies that can automatically classify important content and expose it to the user in relevant context, i.e. via faceted navigation or tag cloud based on dynamically generated content clusters.
Needless to say, I am a big fan of the automated approach. While still in its infancy, content analytics might be finally a way we could deal with the greatest challenge of our time – too much information.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Is Blackberry Really in Trouble?
The Blackberry maker RIM, the largest tech company in Waterloo - my present port of call, has been growing fast, particularly since the smartphones took off. Apple and now even Google jumped in with smartphones of their own and already, we hear voices claiming that the era of Blackberry’s dominance is over and that RIM is in trouble.
Well, I have no doubt that the popular iPhone will dominate the market in terms of units shipped. But Apple (and Google too) is targeting the consumer market – a market that RIM never owned. So far, RIM has been selling in the enterprise space, allowing busy professionals to remain productive while on the go with the killer enterprise application – e-mail. Today, we have more mobile enterprise applications than just e-mail and the Blackberry is a really useful device.
Apple and Google don’t pay particular attention to the enterprise. Sure, they have been trying to establish an enterprise line of products for years but those represent a tiny fraction of their overall revenue which offers little motivation for investment compared to the billions made in the consumer space. RIM on the other hand has been selling almost exclusively to enterprise, establishing a stronghold in the corporate IT department with their Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES), which provides a secure communication channel from the mobile devices to corporate data.
The BES represents the greatest competitive asset for RIM. It has been deployed by every organization using Blackberry which represents a huge percentage of the enterprise market. BES can be used not only for e-mail but for any application. For example the recently announced Open Text Everywhere, the enterprise application for content-based tasks, is simply piggybacking on the secure tunnel already established by BES. It means that the IT department does not have to install anything else to run other secure applications, and that’s what iPhone and Google Android don’t have to target the enterprise. Not only do they face an uphill battle convincing the IT departments to punch another hole in their secure firewalls, but they both miss the enterprise DNA and a credible security reputation. And that’s a major concern for any IT department.
Don’t take me wrong, there are solutions today that allow companies to connect either iPhone or Android to the corporate environment including e-mail. However, RIM has a tremendous head-start in the enterprise while Apple and Google don’t put enough emphasis on it. Sure, RIM wants a piece of the consumer market and Apple and Google want to get into the enterprise and so they will be fighting it out for years to come. But when it gets down to enterprise mobility, the battle is RIM’s to lose.
Well, I have no doubt that the popular iPhone will dominate the market in terms of units shipped. But Apple (and Google too) is targeting the consumer market – a market that RIM never owned. So far, RIM has been selling in the enterprise space, allowing busy professionals to remain productive while on the go with the killer enterprise application – e-mail. Today, we have more mobile enterprise applications than just e-mail and the Blackberry is a really useful device.
Apple and Google don’t pay particular attention to the enterprise. Sure, they have been trying to establish an enterprise line of products for years but those represent a tiny fraction of their overall revenue which offers little motivation for investment compared to the billions made in the consumer space. RIM on the other hand has been selling almost exclusively to enterprise, establishing a stronghold in the corporate IT department with their Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES), which provides a secure communication channel from the mobile devices to corporate data.
The BES represents the greatest competitive asset for RIM. It has been deployed by every organization using Blackberry which represents a huge percentage of the enterprise market. BES can be used not only for e-mail but for any application. For example the recently announced Open Text Everywhere, the enterprise application for content-based tasks, is simply piggybacking on the secure tunnel already established by BES. It means that the IT department does not have to install anything else to run other secure applications, and that’s what iPhone and Google Android don’t have to target the enterprise. Not only do they face an uphill battle convincing the IT departments to punch another hole in their secure firewalls, but they both miss the enterprise DNA and a credible security reputation. And that’s a major concern for any IT department.
Don’t take me wrong, there are solutions today that allow companies to connect either iPhone or Android to the corporate environment including e-mail. However, RIM has a tremendous head-start in the enterprise while Apple and Google don’t put enough emphasis on it. Sure, RIM wants a piece of the consumer market and Apple and Google want to get into the enterprise and so they will be fighting it out for years to come. But when it gets down to enterprise mobility, the battle is RIM’s to lose.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Will Desktops Become Obsolete?
I have recently seen an article claiming that desktops will become obsolete in a few years. Obviously, the mobile screen is the latest battleground in high tech, seen by many as a chance to finally dethrone Microsoft from its stronghold on the desktop market after almost 30 years of dominance.
I don’t quite agree with this assertion. I believe that computer tasks fall into three main categories:
1.Authoring – this is the original creation of information by a human, typically done by a desktop application such as Office, Photoshop, AutoCAD, Eclipse, etc. These tasks usually involve expertise and creativity and the trend so far has been towards emerging experience leveraging the largest possible screen – just think of the laptops with a 17” screen.
2.Participating – this is any task that involves any step in a business process, structured or unstructured. Users here are approving, submitting, initiating, or reviewing information previously created or they create small amounts of original information - e.g. comments, markups, social media interactions or microblog entries fall into this category. Submitting a video on YouTube falls into this category of tasks as the initial authoring requiring creativity and expertise occurred when you operated the camera.
3.Consuming – these are the tasks related to receiving and using the information in its final form. The information can be received via a variety of channels ranging from print, online experience, streaming media, to mobile devices, etc.
Mobile devices have been successfully replacing desktops for a while for the consuming tasks and the new breed of smart devices and applications have now successfully shifted the participating tasks onto a mobile device too. That said I remain skeptical about our ability or willingness to move many of the authoring tasks to a mobile screen and keyboard. Sure we can author e-mails, although most users write only short ones on their BlackBerry, while the longer ones usually have to wait until you get to your laptop.
But wait, you might say. How about a plug-in keyboard and a monitor/projector screen for a mobile device? Well, we will see. First, if you have to plug in a mouse, keyboard and a monitor/projector into a docking station you lose mobility. And yes, maybe we really move away from keyboard entry towards speech recognition and mouse and keyboard become obsolete. But for now, I don’t see any Photoshop artists or AutoCAD designers abandoning their Macs and workstations.
I don’t quite agree with this assertion. I believe that computer tasks fall into three main categories:
1.Authoring – this is the original creation of information by a human, typically done by a desktop application such as Office, Photoshop, AutoCAD, Eclipse, etc. These tasks usually involve expertise and creativity and the trend so far has been towards emerging experience leveraging the largest possible screen – just think of the laptops with a 17” screen.
2.Participating – this is any task that involves any step in a business process, structured or unstructured. Users here are approving, submitting, initiating, or reviewing information previously created or they create small amounts of original information - e.g. comments, markups, social media interactions or microblog entries fall into this category. Submitting a video on YouTube falls into this category of tasks as the initial authoring requiring creativity and expertise occurred when you operated the camera.
3.Consuming – these are the tasks related to receiving and using the information in its final form. The information can be received via a variety of channels ranging from print, online experience, streaming media, to mobile devices, etc.
Mobile devices have been successfully replacing desktops for a while for the consuming tasks and the new breed of smart devices and applications have now successfully shifted the participating tasks onto a mobile device too. That said I remain skeptical about our ability or willingness to move many of the authoring tasks to a mobile screen and keyboard. Sure we can author e-mails, although most users write only short ones on their BlackBerry, while the longer ones usually have to wait until you get to your laptop.
But wait, you might say. How about a plug-in keyboard and a monitor/projector screen for a mobile device? Well, we will see. First, if you have to plug in a mouse, keyboard and a monitor/projector into a docking station you lose mobility. And yes, maybe we really move away from keyboard entry towards speech recognition and mouse and keyboard become obsolete. But for now, I don’t see any Photoshop artists or AutoCAD designers abandoning their Macs and workstations.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
New Era of Mobile Applications
The idea of mobile applications is not new. Back in 2000, when paging and AvantGo were the rage, I was in charge of an enterprise mobile solution based on standards such as WAP, C-HTML and XHTML. It was a flop. The problem back then was that the PDAs were not connected, while the mobile phones had too small of a screen to be of any use. That has since changed and the current smartphones are perfect candidates for mobile business applications.
The applications themselves are changing too. For many years, the killer app for enterprise mobility was e-mail. This is what propelled RIM to their present stronghold on the enterprise smartphone market. And so many mobile applications were based on using e-mail messages for workflow approvals. But these were not really mobile applications but rather mobile extensions of enterprise applications.
The other group of apps was used to provide mobile access to content, usually content originally created for the non-mobile experience. This approach was and still is painfully slow, it consumed a ton of bandwidth which causes outrageous charges for data roaming and it faced challenges related to format incompatibilities such as the current raging battle over Flash support between Apple and Adobe. Again, these were not mobile applications but rather remote access to enterprise applications.
The new era of mobile apps is different. Cryptic e-mail messages with no context and browser based access to enterprise applications does not cut it. Never did. The new mobile applications are focused on productivity which means that they are bandwidth optimized, they are purpose-designed for the mobile OS rather than browser based, and they leverage the ample on-board memory to add the context required to be productive. Finally, they are not just a microscopic version of an application designed for the desktop but rather provide a compelling and practical user experience by redefining the task at hand into discrete steps that can be easily completed on a mobile screen.
Take a mobile invoice processing application as an example. The old way to do this was to receive an email request for approval with some basic information formatted for the big screen and thus unusable. It was easier and faster to wait and complete this action back at the office from your desktop. The new kind of application resides on the mobile device; it can download all relevant documents to the device’s memory to provide the full context to ensure that due diligence is possible when processing a required action; and it has a user interface that has been designed for this particular business process. Now that’s what I call mobile productivity!
The applications themselves are changing too. For many years, the killer app for enterprise mobility was e-mail. This is what propelled RIM to their present stronghold on the enterprise smartphone market. And so many mobile applications were based on using e-mail messages for workflow approvals. But these were not really mobile applications but rather mobile extensions of enterprise applications.
The other group of apps was used to provide mobile access to content, usually content originally created for the non-mobile experience. This approach was and still is painfully slow, it consumed a ton of bandwidth which causes outrageous charges for data roaming and it faced challenges related to format incompatibilities such as the current raging battle over Flash support between Apple and Adobe. Again, these were not mobile applications but rather remote access to enterprise applications.
The new era of mobile apps is different. Cryptic e-mail messages with no context and browser based access to enterprise applications does not cut it. Never did. The new mobile applications are focused on productivity which means that they are bandwidth optimized, they are purpose-designed for the mobile OS rather than browser based, and they leverage the ample on-board memory to add the context required to be productive. Finally, they are not just a microscopic version of an application designed for the desktop but rather provide a compelling and practical user experience by redefining the task at hand into discrete steps that can be easily completed on a mobile screen.
Take a mobile invoice processing application as an example. The old way to do this was to receive an email request for approval with some basic information formatted for the big screen and thus unusable. It was easier and faster to wait and complete this action back at the office from your desktop. The new kind of application resides on the mobile device; it can download all relevant documents to the device’s memory to provide the full context to ensure that due diligence is possible when processing a required action; and it has a user interface that has been designed for this particular business process. Now that’s what I call mobile productivity!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)