OpenText Acquires Metastorm

OpenText announced today the completion of the Metastorm acquisition. We do many acquisitions at OpenText but this particular acquisition is very interesting for a multitude of reasons. Metastorm is the leader in business process management (BPM) which is a discipline quite related to enterprise content management (ECM). In fact, enterprise content management has long included a process-centric category of solutions called transactional content management (TCM). Kyle McNabb and Connie Moore from Forrester were perhaps first to articulate this category in their groundbreaking 2005 report titled Transactional, Business, And Persuasive Content: A Better Way To Look At Enterprise Content.

Metastorm headquarters in Baltimore

The TCM solutions deal with optimization of business processes that involve content. In fact, at least half of all business processes involve content: a received fax, scanned paper, or submitted form. The Metastorm acquisition will allow OpenText to significantly raise the bar when it comes to managing content-related processes. I am not talking just about the technology but also about market presence, reputation, number of R&D engineers as well as expertise in sales and marketing.

Many business processes that customers optimize using Metastorm software do not involve content. This market is very interesting for OpenText as well. According to Gartner, the BPM market grew by 15% in 2009. Obviously, that represents a great growth opportunity for OpenText, no matter if the solutions are content-centric or process-centric. And Metastorm is a leader in BPM according to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites.

On top of that, Metastorm adds two other product areas to OpenText’s portfolio: business process analysis (BPA) and enterprise architecture (EA). Metastorm is a leader both areas - according to the respective Magic Quadrants. Just the fact that each of the areas has a Magic Quadrant suggests that these are separate, albeit very related, and substantial markets. And given that Metastorm is a leader in three different spaces makes it a very compelling addition to the OpenText portfolio.

A particularly interesting trend emerged in the last year or two - Case Management. Case management is a powerful way of organizing all the case-related documentation and process optimization capabilities involved in managing a case. A case can be anything from lawsuits to government grant proposals to insurance claims. And while OpenText already has had a case management offering for a couple of years, this is an area of focus today and it is likely that some of the BPM, BPA or EA capabilities from Metastorm will find their way into OpenText’s case management offering. Note: this is my take at the acquisition and not an official OpenText roadmap. Read the press release if you want the official information.

The press release discussed how Metastorm adds to OpenText’s portfolio in the Microsoft ecosystem. The ecosystem value proposition is a big part of OpenText’s strategy - the company partners with Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP and offers solutions for customers in all three of these ecosystems. And since Metastorm’s software is very friendly to the Microsoft stack and it does have existing integration with SharePoint, it is a natural fit. SharePoint is not used for process optimization today - Metastorm is a key partner of Microsoft for this purpose. This now becomes a natural addition to the portfolio of solutions we can offer to customers with significant investments in Microsoft technologies.

OpenText builds software and acquires companies to solve customer problems that relate to content. This is what we do and how we stay ahead of the curve. With all the assets and talent that Metastorm brings, this is a particularly exciting acquisition that opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

If I Was The King of Finland

I have been to most countries in Europe but I have never been to Finland. I really don’t know much about the country except for a couple of hockey players and Formula 1 drivers who speak in a flat toned voice with absolutely no emotion whatsoever. But this much I do know about Finland - I know that Nokia is from Finland. In fact, it is one of the national icons of Finland. I suspect that the CEO of Nokia is more influential in Finland than the president Tarja Halonen, even though she been a topic on the Conan O’Brian Show a few years ago.

Stephen Elop and Steve Ballmer

On Feb 11, 2011, Nokia announced the plan to adopt the Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system (MOS) on its smartphones in favor of the Symbian MOS they were using so far. This move is not a major surprise as Nokia, once the dominant leader in mobile phones, has been rapidly losing market share over the years. Also, the new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop came recently from Microsoft and since no story of Steve Ballmer throwing a chair at him appeared this time, he must have left on relatively good terms.

The move towards Windows Phone 7 is significant. It gives Microsoft a strong ally in the mobile wars which have been raging since 2007 when Apple launched the iPhone. It is definitely a great move for Microsoft which has finally started to take mobility seriously with the launch of Windows Phone 7. Microsoft’s previous attempts in mobility were lackluster at best and Microsoft needs to gain market share quickly to come at least in sight of Apple’s and Google’s taillights. Nokia will absolutely help Microsoft. But is this move the best for Nokia?

This is a tough question and if I was Stephen Elop, I would have been looking at the following options:

1. Give Symbian another push
The problem is the lack of apps on Symbian. From the app vendors point of view, Symbian is at best the number 5 mobile platform on the market, trailing behind Apple iOS, Google Android, RIM BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Phone 7. Just getting to position 4 means beating Microsoft which is a big mountain to climb.

2. Sell out
Of course Nokia could have sold out - get acquired by another company that could afford the $35-40 bln market capitalization. Selling out is rarely the intent of a new CEO unless he or she got hired for that specific purpose. I guess we know the answer now. The possible suitors could have been Google and Microsoft as both companies attempted to sell their own devices in the past and failed. I’d argue that the merger with Microsoft is still a possibility down the road.

3. Go with Android
Nokia could have teamed up with Google and embraced the Android operating system. That would have gotten them to position 2 in mobile platform rankings which would give them instantly thousands of apps. The Android MOS is open sourced and so there is no royalty to pay to Google. The disadvantage would have been the difficulty to differentiate with Samsung, HTC and other Asian manufacturers who have already started offering Android-based phones and tablets months ago. I’ve shared my impressions about the Android-based Samsung Galaxy tablet recently.

4. Go with Microsoft Windows Phone 7
Teaming up with Microsoft was a predictable choice given Stephen Elop’s Microsoft background. This move gets Nokia to position 4 in the mobile platform rankings with a fighting chance to eclipse BlackBerry should RIM stumble with PlayBook. But that’s about it. The number 4 mobile platform is not going to get as many apps built as the top 1-2 and what they need are apps, apps, and apps. With Microsoft, Nokia found a powerful marketing ally but Windows Phone 7 isn’t open sourced and Nokia will have to pay royalties to Microsoft. Also, differentiation is not a slam dunk since Samsung, HTC and other manufacturers already ship Microsoft-based phones.

I’ve also considered a scenario of Nokia merging with RIM and embracing the BlackBerry OS but since the companies have virtually equal market capitalization, I have dismissed this scenario as a viable option.

Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO

Obviously, Stephen Elop has opted to go with Microsoft and take advantage of a powerful and motivated ally with the risk that even this combination might not succeed to win over application vendors. And even if that battle succeeds, Nokia will have difficulty to differentiate. Within 12 months, all the devices will have every bell and whistle and with the same OS and the same apps available, the battle will be probably fought on price. And that’s not an enviable position to be in.

The reality is that Nokia had to make a move and the new situation is decisively better than the situation before. Possibly, Nokia might end up licensing Android in addition to Windows Phone 7 just like Samsung and HTC do. Or they might sell out after all - most likely to Microsoft. In either case, both companies have their work cut out. 

Images: Courtesy of Nokia 

Testing Samsung Omnia Running Windows Phone 7

My office is very close to the office of our head of development for OpenText Everywhere. As it turns out, he’s the ultimate gadget man. He gets all kinds of devices to test them. The result will apparently be Everywhere running everywhere - at least that’s his excuse for getting all those gadgets. In any case, I’m keeping him on my good side as I like to play with the gadgets. A few days ago, I got to test the Samsung Omnia 7 for a week. His words were: “I’d like you to test it and blog about it. Just don’t post any pictures of me...”. I'm developing a reputation internally, I guess.

The Omnia 7 is a Windows Phone 7 powered smartphone and since I have never had the opportunity to play with Microsoft’s latest OS, I jumped at it. The Windows Phone 7 OS is Microsoft’s 12th version of their mobile OS - a lineage that started with Pocket PC 2000. It was a road paved with many disappointments and so I was a little skeptical about the Windows Phone 7 operating system.

But first I must comment on the Samsung Omnia 7 phone itself. It is very nice. I was pretty impressed by the Samsung Galaxy tablet a couple of months ago and the Omnia is a similarly cool device. It is sleek, made of a great composite material, and I love its 4" screen. The screen is slightly larger than the iPhone and the device is also thinner than the original iPhone. I don't have iPhone 4 yet and so I could only compare it with the 'old iPhone'. The picture gives you an idea of the two devices side by side.

Samsung's Omnia compared with Apple's iPhone

I also liked that the Omnia has a USB interface, replaceable battery, and a built-in radio. The touchscreen is sharp and worked well.  That said, I struggled a bit with the typing although I struggle with the iPhone too since I got used to the iPad. Talking about typing, I liked how the system provides multiple suggestions for possible words as you type. It worked pretty well.

The typing suggestions work pretty well

I also loved the camera button which is a real 'hardware button' that is placed in the right place when you hold the device sideways to take a picture. That said, the camera is lousy - I failed to take an acceptable picture even after several tries.

The screen didn't always switch automatically when I turned the phone from vertical to horizontal. It worked fine in some applications (i.e. Twitter) but it wouldn't switch in others. Notably, it appeared to never switch in the operating system which was rather annoying. Talking about the operating system, it was well organized - I was able to easily find every function. What was weird was the fact that the screen content often wouldn't fit onto the screen itself and the OS ended up cropping it instead of resizing. That was sometimes looking cool and artsy but often annoying and sometimes even unusable.

Not only does the text not fit on the screen, the screen didn't flip to horizontal either

I liked the big tiles that you can pin on the homepage - they made it easy to customize the device and to simplify its use - very handy while driving (which is of course illegal and I would never do). The tiles allowed me to set up the device in a way that resembled more of a mobile phone rather than a smartphone with simple and straight forward functionality. This cellphone level simplicity will surely appeal to some users.

The biggest drawback of the phone was it's Microsoft centricity. Basically, it wants me to live in a Microsoft world that consists of Windows Live, Hotmail, Zune, MSN, Bing, etc. I was able to connect to my Yahoo! Mail easily but I failed to figure out how to connect to my Exchange-based work email. That was surprising since iPhone makes that task really easy. Unfortunately, the operating system treated the Yahoo users as second-class citizens compared to the few users I have in Hotmail. Same thing happened with the Facebok users. The system asked me to connect with Facebook which didn't lead to any obvious benefit. I have downloaded the Facebook app from the Windows Markeplace and it was great but it didn't connect to the rest of the OS capabilities in any way.

The Marketplace was straight forward but the assortment is far, far behind iTunes. I loved the fact that many applications offered a “try before you buy” option which is something iTunes needs to introduce. The music store is as poorly supplied as the app store and movies are not available at all. The Bing search is omnipresent, in fact, it keeps popping up often to my annoyance when not expected - Microsoft is clearly obsessed with search right now. That said, search in the Marketplace lacks the ability to sort results by content type and I was having a hard time finding anything in the long results list consisting of apps, games, and music. Should Microsoft gain support of the developer community and end up with some 100,000 applications, nobody will be able to find anything.

The device provides promising support for Microsoft Office with the key applications available as part of the operating system. Having Word and Excel is great. That said, I couldn't test the synchronization with my desktop since my desktop happens to be a Mac and Windows Phone 7 doesn't  integrate with a Mac. That's pretty much a K.O. criterion for me.

I was somewhat surprised that Flash isn’t supported. We all understand by now that Steve Jobs hates Flash which is why the iPhone does not support it but I didn’t realize that Steve Balmer hated it too. I tried to download the Flash player from the Adobe web site but the operating system is apparently not supported.

I have tested the actual phone capabilities with a SIM card from my BlackBerry which worked fine. I have liked the three buttons on the phone's face which include the home/menu button (just like the iPhone) and also the 'back' button (awesome) and the 'search' button. The hardware buttons on the side were in the way and I ended up turning the phone off inadvertently several times. That happens to me on a BlackBerry too and I ended up disabling some of the buttons eventually. I did like that camera button, though.

Watching my 7 years old son play a game tells a lot of ease of use and ergonomics

All in all, the Samsung Omnia 7 is an intriguing smartphone. It will not work for anyone who's already hooked into the Apple world through iMac, iTunes, iPod, or AppleTV but I can see how someone who's upgrading from a regular mobile phone could end up with a Windows based phone. If you live in the Microsoft universe, this phone must be great but the only such people I know are Microsoft employees.

I wonder if Samsung provides the Omnia with the Google Android operating system. They probably do. It must be an awesome gadget...

PS: If anyone from RIM is reading this, you should know that I can’t wait to test the PlayBook. I’ll even run across the parking lot to your offices to pick one up ;-)

Closed or Open Source

There are many ways to segment a market. One of them is based on how customers expect to run their enterprise software deployments. The definition of enterprise software implies a degree of customization - no deployment is the same. Even the same process or function in the same industry is done differently. Just think about accounting and how difficult it is to compare financial statements from any two competitors in a particular sector.

And when we say ‘customization’, customers turn out to have different expectations. There is a scale from expecting out-of-the-box functionality to in-house developed solutions. All customers fit somewhere on this scale and it would be foolish to say that one end of this spectrum is right or wrong. As a result, customers tend to flock to two distinct camps:

1. Shrink-Wrappers
Shrink-wrappers is my label for customers who expect as much functionality as possible coming out of the box (which is a figure of speech - enterprise software doesn’t come in boxes much these days). Of course there is rarely such thing as out-of-the-box enterprise software but the customers want more pre-packaged modules, pre-defined object models, and ready-to-use interfaces and templates for everything. The shrink-wrappers are more likely to lean heavily on a professional services organization - from the vendor or from a system integrator (SI) - to do any necessary integration and customization work. They don’t want to employ a team of developers for the on-going production system. These customers buy primarily software from ‘closed-source’ vendors, not least to have a throat to choke if something doesn’t go the expected way.

2. Tinkerers
Tinkerers is my label for customers coming from the opposite side of the spectrum. They know that no out-of-the-box software will ever match their needs and they would prefer to just build it themselves. But past experience with cost of maintenance of a home-grown deployment steers them towards a vendor. They do have a team of developers on staff and they intend to keep it that way. They are likely to do most of the customization and integration work themselves. These are the kinds of customers attracted by open source - software built by developers for developers. The developers on their team like to participate in the open source development community and they can whip out a solution very quickly. And then change it again and again as needed.

Customer expectations on enterprise software deployments

There is nothing wrong with either type of customers. Both, the shrink-wrappers and the tinkerers are right and most customers fall somewhere along this scale. Some are heavy into open source, some use it just a little and some don’t accept open source software at all. The only wrong would be to claim that some of these customers have made a mistake and that they will eventually switch sides. Customers are always right.

12 Months Later, Nobody Is Joking About iPad's Name Anymore

Exactly 12 months ago, Apple’s Steve Jobs launched the iPad in San Francisco. Today, 12 months later, the iPad has apparently shipped some 15 million units, generating Apple the revenue of approximately $10 billion (note: iPad became actually available on March 27th 2010). This success has made it one of the most spectacular product launches of all times. As a result, iPad established a new category of devices and became a household name.

Me with an iPad at the G20 Summit

It wasn’t the case right away. The name I mean. In fact, the name of iPad caused a major uproar as the many people laughed about the name’s similarity with certain feminine products - just see this CNN article. Some people argued back then that Apple made a mistake and that they need to reconsider this clearly insensitive name. Even the iPad itself was predicted to become a flop by many pundits. Well, the history has proven yet again that product naming is much more an art than a science and Apple got the art figured out in a scientific way.

Today, nobody is laughing about iPad. No one is questioning Apple’s bold move to create a new category of devices that are between smartphones and laptops. Apple has clearly shown that such category is not just viable but,  in fact, ridiculously profitable. Nobody is joking about the name anymore and the competition is nowhere in sight. Actually, I suspect that Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble are might be discussing new names for their female hygiene products today. And even if not, they surely envy the $10 bln in revenue for a single product. 

I got my iPad sometimes back in April and I love it. Chapeau, Apple! 

How I Became a Cord-Cutter

I became a proud cord-cutter last week. That's a term the cable industry uses for people like me - customers who discontinue their TV service in favor of Internet-delivered entertainment. For years, I’ve been unhappy with the TV model: 

1. Double dipping
I am forced to pay for TV programming with my time and attention via advertising but I also am forced to pay to a TV or satellite company for delivering that advertising into my TV set. Radio doesn’t have this model - advertising pays for everything and satellite radio has a subscription cost but is advertising-free . Imagine buying a music CD with a commercial at the beginning of each song - that’s what TV is doing to us today. Is anyone else seeing this as a consumer scam?

2. Programming
500 channels and yet nothing’s on. I keep flipping channels only to end up watching a movie Tivo recorded for me. TV is decisively a one way medium catering to the lowest common denominator, not interested in my personal preferences or interests. Tivo has addressed this problem to some degree and I am happy to pay for the Tivo service but why do I have to keep paying the cable company for providing exactly the wrong kind of service?

3. Cable box
I hate the cable box. Every TV set since the 80s has a built-in cable tuner and yet the cable providers are forcing us to use their boxes. The cable boxes consume energy, make the channel switching painfully slow and require a separate remote that is never compatible with the TV set. The TV manufacturers are designing intelligent sets with sophisticated functionality which gets completely negated by the clunky cable box that makes clicking sounds as it slowly changes channels.

4. Packaging
I am really interested in only about 4-5 channels and yet to watch them, I need to buy a package that includes 300 channels, most of them painfully annoying. My cable provider offers as a big feature “time shifting” which is basically the same channel from different time zones. Are they kidding me? That’s just clogging my channel line up with the same junk over and over. And I am not going to elaborate on its  high cost.

So, what do I like about my TV service? Well, I like to watch movies, a couple of shows and the occasional big sporting event such as the Olympics, soccer World Cup or Wimbledon finals. That’s about it - and I pay all that money for this?

Not anymore. I have cancelled our cable TV service completely. We have been increasingly using Apple TV to watch movies from iTunes. Yes, it costs money but the costs are very reasonable given how many movies and shows we watch.

The new Apple TV 2G has also a built-in Netflix support and the new Netflix plan at $8 per months is absolutely irresistible. Netflix Canada still needs to work on making more of the blocked movies available but I am hopeful that the artificial content borders will eventually disappear (I wrote about that in Content Without Borders). In the meantime, iTunes pretty much offers everything that I can’t find on Netflix, including subscriptions to all the TV shows I can think of. And the money saved on the cable plan pays for a lot of episodes of The Office and Mad Men.

Yet there are some drawbacks. With increased streaming, I need to upgrade our data plan which costs a bit more. The data plans for Internet access are limited in Canada and overages are expensive - just like the mobile plans. Netflix streaming still has an occasional quirk although it has been improving steadily.

The greatest drawback by far is the lack of live sports events on iTunes or Netflix. That will surely change in the future but for now, I am relegated to browser-based TV streaming. Those are often either for a charge (which is OK) or blocked in countries with the richest TV audiences such as the US, UK, Germany and Canada. That will likely change once the TV networks realize that the Internet is for real. In the meantime, I am experimenting with VPN services that allow me to pretend I’m accessing the content from another country.

This is less than perfect as I am so far unable to get the browser-streaming on the TV screen the way Apple TV does it. Watching TV on a computer is a bit geeky, although the iPad makes that easier. I am testing jailbreaking the Apple TV and adding software such as aTV Flash by FireCore but that’s still lacking the ease of use of the native Apple TV. But all of these limitations are surely going to be solved in the upcoming months and years.

All in all, my cord-cutting is probably a leading edge move and not everyone will be willing to live without live NFL games on their flat screen (although, you can subscribe to NFL games online today). But the benefit of watching what I want, when I want it, without any commercials is worth the trade-off to me. At least until the next World Cup...

PS: The pile of devices around my TV set is being reduced down to the tiny Apple TV and the Wii. That’s it. All the other devices are gone - DVD player, Tivo and the cable box. It saves energy and looks way better!

Mobile Device as a Primary Interface?

So, you don't believe that mobile devices are becoming e primary user interface? Well, here is an interesting data point:

This is Alain, my co-worker, who's office is next door to mine. And since I got a tiny little Canon for Christmas that I can carry on me at all times, I've snapped this picture of him. It's an increasingly common scene. He's working on his BlackBerry while sitting at his desk. There is a laptop in front of him but he's using it only for specific tasks. Most of his routine work is done on the mobile device. 

Now, add an iPad or a Galaxy into the mix and the number of tasks performed on a mobile device increases significantly. What's amazing is that the picture has not been taken on the road but in the office. On the road, we have often no choice but in the office, we do. Yet Alain works on a BlackBerry and I am typing this blog post on an iPad.

That's a pretty good indication of the things to come, isn't it?

Will Social Media Replace Email?

One of the frequently touted benefits of social media is the avoidance of email. Email is a powerful tool for individual communication but it crumbles quickly when a group of people start communicating in a common thread. The replies from different individuals start coming back at different times, often responding when the issue has already evolved. Email is a great communication tool but a lousy collaboration tool.

Social media (and its predecessor, collaboration software) makes it possible to see all the replies and conversations in a single place, in a logical order and visible to everyone who should see them. Social media is clearly a better choice for team collaboration than email. But the big question is:

Will social media replace email?

I don’t think so. At least not that soon. One of the major achievements of email was the concept of inbox. The inbox became the one, single place to look for what’s going on. This is the one place where you find everything. In a way, the inbox serves as a task list. The things to do are right there.

In fact, workers are automatically drawn to their inbox when they have a free minute - and the inbox tells them what to do next. This type of work habit is probably not the most proactive and productive, but it happens all too often.

Right now, every vendor is adding social capabilities to their system - ERP, CRM, sales force automation, enterprise content management, office infrastructure - everybody has a story. And as organizations run most of these systems, they are ending up with a multitude of social media deployments. Today, there is no such thing as a common social inbox.

The big success of email was the establishment of a single inbox and social media will need to come up with an alternative to seriously challenge email. Facebook understands that - at least it appears that way. Facebook Connect allows users to log into Facebook through other applications and that could be the basis for Facebook becoming the communication center of the social universe.

Facebook, however, is not an enterprise solution and enterprises need a secure alternative. In the mean time, email remains the common denominator and all social media solutions rely on email notifications to get the users’ attention. That makes social media hardly a replacement for email.

Perhaps, email does not need to be replaced.

The Taboo of ECM Pricing

Today, I want to write about a traditional taboo in the enterprise content management (ECM) industry: pricing. For some reason, there has always been an aura of secrecy around ECM pricing which I will examine. By the way, you can find a lot of ECM pricing information on the Web and beside that, some vendors such as Oracle and Microsoft make their prices more or less public.

There is an inherent struggle in ECM pricing. The ECM technology can be used for many different applications and that makes it very difficult to differentiate price levels between high and low end use cases. Yes, the same ECM technology can be often applied for different applications. Take process automation, for example: automating vacation approvals is arguably a lower value use case than automating accounts payable. Yet the technology is basically the same. And while customers have no problem paying several hundred/thousands of dollars for an accounts payable seat license, they would never pay that kind of price for employees requesting vacations.

At the same time, any vendor with a multitude of products - no matter if as a result of an organically grown portfolio or acquisitions – has the need to simplify. Early on, the richness of capabilities leads to a proliferation of modules and with several product lines, the customers and the sales force demand simplification. No more nickeling and diming – what’s called for is a smaller number of products with higher values. And a higher value means a higher price. If you fold two products together, the resulting price will be probably higher than either one of the two. If you add another product... you get the idea.

That higher price works well for the high-end use cases that take full advantage of the functionality but what to do about the simpler applications? Yes, you guessed it – the price can be discounted. Discounting is of course limited by the GSA agreement (the government demands a 'favorite nations treatment') but that only applies to deals up to a certain level. Above that, discounting is fair game and quite common - for a very good and logical reason. And the ability to discount gives sales people a powerful negotiation tool, particularly if they keep the prices close to their chest. The sales people love it but customers hate it and so they negotiate hard. And that’s the conundrum of ECM pricing.

The problem is that the new software delivery models such as SaaS or open source don’t change a thing about that. From a pricing point of view, they represent just a different financing model - just like buying a car on credit vs leasing. These new software models bring in an innovative mode of delivery but they still provide functionality that can be used for many use cases – from low-end to high value applications. And the pricing needs to fit them all.

So, how do we solve this dilemma? Solutions are the way to go and pricing needs to closer align with value. In the next few years, we will see not just the emergence of solutions but also solution pricing which will accommodate the specific use cases and roles involved. The solutions will provide functionality for a specific use case (business problem) at a price and licensing model tailored to that particular application. In a way, this trend is being paved by mobile applications today. What we are buying are very specific applications at relatively low prices - not a universal platform that can do everything and costs a lot. And this is likely to be the future of ECM pricing.

Content Management Predictions for 2011

It's the beginning of a year and it seems that everybody is making predictions. Since I didn't want to be left behind, I had to join in. And so here are my predictions for the Enterprise Content Management industry for the year 2011:

1. Mobile devices as a primary interface
I am typing this article on my iPad. iPad took the world by storm in 2010 and having tested the Galaxy and having seen a preview of the PlayBook, I predict that more and more professional content will be consumed and also authored on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. In fact, I expect that in 2011, we will start seeing the first ECM application deployments that will cater either solely or primarily to mobile device users. In addition, the smartphone prices are likely to drop significantly in the next 12 months. People will use a multitude of devices using different form factors and operating systems. All of that will bring a new dynamic into IT planning which was until now focused on homogeneous environments.

2. End of MS Office monopoly
Most companies are shelling out thousands and even millions of dollars each year to keep their Office applications up to date while there are perfectly free and fully functional alternatives such as OpenOffice by Oracle, Lotus Symphony by IBM and Google Docs. The features are on parity with MS Office for at least most users and the file formats are compatible. While Oracle, IBM and Google do have their ulterior motives, the price difference is hard to argue against. How does that relate to ECM? Well, if there is a proliferation of non-Microsoft applications (and devices), companies will start reconsidering the blank ELAs they pay to Microsoft and they will need to consider the non-MS clients in their selection of ECM solutions.

3. eDiscovery has gone SOX

eDiscovery has enjoyed a lot of buzz in the last couple of years – pretty much since the impact of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures from 2006 on information technology became apparent. For some time, eDiscovery became the new SOX (Sarbannes-Oxley Act of 2002) – fueling a wave of hype and rushed purchases that were often addressing the symptoms (discovery) instead of the root cause (lack of proper information governance). For 2011, I am predicting the eDiscovery buzz cools off as organizations realize that search will not replace sound content management practices. Most companies have by now been faced with some degree of FRCP impact and - just like with SOX a few years ago – they have figured out how to deal with it. It might not be pretty, but it takes the pressure off.

4. Wikileaks will be the next SOX

Wikileaks have set a powerful example in 2010, making many organizations rethink the security of their own data. At the same time, the proposed Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, calls for whistleblower incentive programs that will likely encourage such leaks. This might impose a double-whammy on organizations that don't want their data to appear on Wikileaks and yet have to protect their own employees if they blow the whistle by leaking the data out to authorities. As a result, a lot more thought (and investment) shall be given to information governance and security.

5. Experience will go from browser to apps
The dominant user interface over the last decade was the browser and most ECM systems have a browser-based UI as their primary experience. This approach is loved by IT as it allows for easy control of the client environment, however, it enjoys lukewarm user adoption which has been plaguing the ECM industry for years. Users prefer client-side applications as we have witnessed by the rapid adoption of mobile apps or even software well integrated with desktop apps such as SharePoint. I expect that in 2011, we will start seeing more mini-applications built for specific tasks (and on mobile platforms, although not exclusively...).

Gartner's hype cycle model

6. Social media will pass the peak [of inflated expectations]
Social media were all the buzz in 2010. True to the Gartner hype cycle model, social media reached the 'Peak of Inflated Expectations' and many organizations felt the pressure to simply do something in order not to be left behind. And just like the hype cycle predicts, there will be some sobering out from the buzz. No, I am not predicting the demise of social media but I do believe that starting with 2011, it will be deployed more often to achieve specific business objectives: “Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters” - that's how Gartner defines the 'Trough of Disillusionment'. And as a result, there might be organizations, functions, or use cases where social media simply won't be the right approach.

7. Case Management will catch on
The emergence of case management in 2010 was a significant development. It helped to finally differentiate between the content-based process automation and the traditional BPM which is focused on heavy automation and complex processing around structured data. Case management as the combination of content which is made for human processing and automation which improves efficiency appears to be just the right mix which will continue to gain acceptance in 2011. This trend will de-prioritize the technologies such as BPA (business process automation) or process simulation that make for nice demos but add little value in the context of case management.

8. Web sites and portals need refurbishing
Web content management has been an area plagued by ups and downs over the last decade which is surprising since most organizations spend millions on their web presence every year. Someone has been making money here but it wasn't the leaders of the WCM magic quadrant. For 2011, I'm predicting growth in the WCM sector although it will be hard to measure since most vendors are now subsumed by larger organizations. There are multiple factors that will contribute to that growth: many web sites have been budget-starved for years and an update is overdue; marketing is finally seen as a strategic contributor to growth by many organizations and they have increased their marketing investments; the new demands for online customer engagement via rich content and social media require new technology investments; etc. All those factors will trigger significant spending by marketing and customer service functions.

9. Enterprises won't rush to public cloud
There were plenty of stories in 2010 that made sure that enterprises won't rush to any public cloud anytime soon. Among such stories, Google demonstrated that a public cloud can just seize its service by killing Wave and Amazon showed that a cloud service can unilaterally terminate your contract just because they don't like what your business does as they did to Wikileaks (even though no law has been broken and no formal investigation requested such action). Mix that with the Patriot Act and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures and you have a legislative environment that makes every company absolutely paranoid about their data being stored off their premises (at least in the USA). Thus, I predict that public clouds shall not be attracting many of the traditional ECM buyers in 2011. No, there will not be any mass migration from ECM to the cloud in 2011.  Instead, cloud deployments will be focused on specific applications of which some are better suited for SaaS model than others. Some vendors will talk about private clouds but I am still missing the point of that concept. Private clouds existed for years and we referred to them as IT. Maybe 2011 will teach me that there is a difference after all...

10. There will be more consolidation in ECM

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that more companies will be acquired and merged in this space in 2011...

I must admit that making predictions is fun. Obviously, I will be wrong with some and I am sure that some of my readers might disagree with some of my predictions. The hardest part is the timing - not everything will happen in 2011. Well, we'll see how I did a year from now.