The Maslow's Hierarchy of a Strategic CIO

Not that long ago, IT departments were responsible mainly for making sure that knowledge workers got access to whatever information was available and for keeping the lights on. That latter responsibility was all consuming. PCs and enterprise systems were still going through their growing pains and varieties of system failures were all too common. The job of the chief information officer (CIO) was more about troubleshooting and firefighting than anything else. Information Technology (IT) was simply a cost center - just like travel or communication.

Well, things have changed. The systems we work with are, for the most part, reasonably reliable. We don't have to reboot our PCs twice a day just to flush out the memory leaks. 99.999% uptime is not that big of a differentiator for servers, routers, and switches anymore. Users don't call the help desk daily and access to information is not the challenge at hand. Today, we have information. We have a lot of information. In fact, we have way more information than we could ever consume.

Herein comes the change in the mission of IT departments. As organizations came to realize that information emerged as a key source of competitive advantage, they were increasingly looking at their IT departments as a key stakeholder in corporate strategy. All of the sudden, the CIOs got what they were always dreaming about. No longer the troubleshooter, no more the firefighter - the CIO is now the strategist.

What organizations need is the ability to make better decisions - using the right information. They need insight. They also need to apply information to create an impact on their business - to grow revenue, attract new customers, enter new markets, and generate innovation. And finally, they also need to drive productivity and continuously optimize their business processes.

Not to forget, enterprise information must also be secured. As it represents significant intellectual property, it has to be protected from intentional or unintentional misappropriation by internal or external actors. And let us not forget the need to address compliance and information governance requirements and to protect the company from legal exposure.

All these requirements reminded me of the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and so I have attempted to map the CIO needs into a similar model:

With all of this, the strategic CIOs have their hands full. They still need to keep the lights on but now, they are major stakeholders in defining corporate strategy. Combine that with all the new technology trends such as mobile devices, social software, and cloud computing and you get the picture of the magnitude of their challenge. But I guess that being strategic is way better than fighting fires all day long, right?

ECM - Fish or Fowl?

Enterprise software companies usually fall into one of two main categories: application software and infrastructure software. The common wisdom suggests that enterprise software vendors are either building infrastructure that enables multiple applications to operate or they are delivering applications that solve actual business problems.

ERP is a typical application software. The ERP applications solve specific business problems such as how to optimize the use of enterprise resources, how to accelerate HR processes, or how to reduce the amount of materials in stock without slowing down production.

Platforms such as operating systems, databases, and application servers are infrastructure software. Communication software ranging from EDI to messaging, file transfer, and email is infrastructure software. Virtualization software and administration/management software are infrastructure. Infrastructure does not solve any particular business problem - it can be applied to solve any number of them.

That begs the question, what is enterprise content management (ECM). As it turns out, ECM is rather unusual. Unlike almost any other enterprise software category, ECM can be deployed as infrastructure or as applications. Many customers I have seen, have deployed their ECM as a platform with multiple applications built upon it. They clearly consider ECM part of their infrastructure. Many customers have also deployed their ECM at the heart of their information sharing, archiving, or retention infrastructure. Gartner assigned ECM to what they used to call the Knowledge Worker Infrastructure category. There is no doubt about it - ECM is infrastructure software!

Yet, there are many deployments of ECM software devoted to applications - solutions for very specific business problems. Examples include contracts management, early case assessment, invoice processing, customer onboarding, plant asset management, digital marketing, and technical publishing - to name just one example for each of the seven types of content applications that I have introduced in my recent blog post. These deployments are not infrastructure, they are applications. Clearly, ECM is application software!

That makes enterprise content management quite unique - it can be deployed as an infrastructure and it can be used as an application (or multiple applications). There is hardly any other enterprise software category that comes with this level of complexity. The only other category I could think off is business process management (BPM) - a software category that shares a lot of synergies with ECM.

This uniqueness may explain some of the identity challenges that ECM has been having over the last two decades. Who owns ECM? Who’s in charge of the ECM architecture in the enterprise? The answers have never been very clean cut. Depending on the organization, the ‘owner’ may be in IT or in any number of corporate functions.

Most enterprise software vendors fall clearly on one side of the dividing line - they are either application vendors or infrastructure vendors. They may attempt to reach across that line, but their DNA is usually pretty hard-wired. SAP is an application vendor. VMware is an infrastructure vendor. IBM doesn’t do applications. Salesforce may claim to be a platform but it is really an application with the ability to be extended by add-ons - nobody would refer to their SFDC deployment as infrastructure. There are hardly any mixed vendors outside of ECM.

OK, people usually mention Oracle as a company that provides both - database software (infrastructure) and application software (ERP, CRM, etc.). That is true. However, Oracle has gotten to this point via a very aggressive acquisition strategy and its database, middleware, and application businesses are operating independently from each other. They are effectively several enterprise software companies under a single brand.

I believe that we have to accept the fact that ECM may mean a completely different thing to different people. It doesn’t make it any easier to describe (or sell) but it also makes it a much more exciting market. The versatility of ECM is something that both the vendors and customers often appreciate.

Because, ECM is unique!

Seven Types of Content Applications

The enterprise content management (ECM) industry has been talking about content applications for many years. A while back, Gartner coined the term “composite content applications” while Forrester talks about “content-centric applications”. What I mean are applications that primarily deal with unstructured data (content) rather than structured data applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), and product lifecycle management (PLM).

We all can usually come up with many examples of such applications but, to my knowledge, they have never been properly classified. What are the types of content applications out there? Sure, Forrester introduced new categories for ECM in their groundbreaking report Transactional, Business, and Persuasive Content: A Better Way to Look at Enterprise Content back in 2005. But that was really dealing with the different technologies rather than the application types. So, I decided to give it a shot myself. I would love to get your help with it, though. Please do comment if you agree or disagree and if you can think of applications that don’t fit into my categories.

Before I start, I should make it clear that while all the application types below use content as the primary data type, they go beyond ECM. They also involve business process management (BPM), customer experience management (CEM), and discovery. At the same time, I am not trying to cover all BPM or CEM applications, but rather only those that use content. For instance, I am not including straight-through processing (STP) applications in BPM such as payment transactions or capital markets transactions because those don’t use content. Basically, I am categorizing applications that span the enterprise information management (EIM) space, as we define it at OpenText. So, here are the seven types of content applications:

1. Productivity Applications
I’ve labeled the first group ‘productivity applications’ because they are all aimed at increasing employee productivity, which is sometimes very difficult to measure. These applications usually involve sharing business documents, sifting through vast volumes of information, collaborative authoring, document libraries, and collaboration/social software as a means of improving employee communication and effectiveness.

Examples of such applications include corporate policy libraries, knowledge management, contracts management, idea management, etc. These applications are often considered part of the knowledge worker infrastructure as they require relatively little customization and they are typically not department specific or industry specific. IT usually selects and owns these applications.

2. Compliance Applications
Compliance applications are the bread and butter of the ECM industry. They are addressing the requirements for regulatory compliance and corporate information governance, and they are reducing the legal risks related to content used as possible evidence in a court of law. These applications focus on access control, auditing, information retention, and mandated tasks, approvals, and sign-offs.

Examples of such applications include records management, legal discovery (eDiscovery) and early case assessment, as well as many regulated document applications used to address specific requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as well as self-imposed requirements such as Six-Sigma or ISO 14001. Such applications are almost always function or industry specific, i.e. applications dealing with the FDA 21 CFR Part 11 regulations in life sciences, the OSHA material safety data sheets in chemical process manufacturing, or the Dodd-Frank Act in financial services. A wide variety of functions can be selecting and owning such applications, although the heavily regulated industries often have a Chief Compliance Officer while companies in highly litigious industries lean strongly on the Chief Legal Counsel here.

3. Process Applications
There is a group of applications that are very process-oriented, and yet they depend heavily on content as the information used for decisions that determine the process routing, tasks, and results. Such applications usually involve electronic forms and the capture of incoming paper documents. They also take advantage of process modeling and analysis, process simulation and optimization, rules engines, and process engines as well as process reporting and analytics. Frequently, the process applications integrate with other applications such as ERP and CRM.

Examples include invoice processing (a.k.a. accounts payable), travel expense management, and many vertical applications such as engineering change orders, dispute resolution, and authorization for expenditure. Usually, the process applications have an easily measurable ROI. These solutions are typically selected and owned by their respective functions and can span both the core and the supporting functions of the organization.

4. Case Management Applications
Case management came about as an use case of BPM but it deals with quite different types of applications. Gartner believes that case management is just a use case of BPM while Forrester declared case management a separate market - and a very fast growing one too. The case management applications are different from traditional BPM applications as they don’t just use content as a payload - they are much more about the content. They typically involve a case file which is a smart repository container accommodating many content assets and the logic governing their use. Besides a stronger dependence on a content management repository, case management applications can include many of the process application technologies for all the big and small processes required to manage the case file.  

Examples of case management applications include customer onboarding, employee file management, and fraud investigation. Vertical case management applications include insurance claims processing, loan origination, legal case management, and patient care management. The selection and ownership of case management applications falls - just like the process applications - onto respective corporate functions.

5. Resource Management Applications
Resource management applications are, as my label suggests, managing various resources - from human resources to customers and suppliers, from products to plant assets. These applications are frequently used in tight integration with structured data applications such as ERP, PLM, or CRM. The main purpose of these applications is to systematically organize large volumes of content assets that often need to be retrieved very quickly based on a complex set of metadata - i.e., all material with a warranty expiring in the next 30 days found in a specific geographic location. The resource management applications need to accommodate a rich variety of content formats: from documents and images, to CAD drawings and digital X-rays.

Examples of resource management applications include customer information management, product information management, plant asset management as well as vertical applications such as patient records, and legal matter management. The resource management applications are selected and owned by the responsible function in the organization (line of business).

6. Go-to-Market Applications
As the name suggests, these sales and marketing applications are used to support the organization’s go-to-market efforts. Their main job is to capture attention, persuasively convey a message and solicit a desired call to action. They typically involve rich media assets, multi-channel delivery of content, social engagement and the need to measure and monitor their effectiveness. The sales and marketing applications also need to account for geographic differences - from language, local examples, and local trends, to different customs, ways of conducting business, and customer privacy laws.

Examples include digital marketing, e-commerce, marketing libraries, marketing campaign management, sales collateral libraries, and virtual pitch books. While there are vertical flavors to such applications (i.e., the pharma companies have to add some compliance capabilities to their digital marketing), the go-to-market applications are applicable across industries. They are almost always purchased and owned by the sales and marketing departments.

7. Publishing Applications
I use the label ‘publishing applications’ for all types of applications where content is the actual product or a product component. The published product can come in many formats and increasingly multiple formats are being combined into a single final product. For example, books are now typically published on paper (hard and soft cover), for consumption in different e-readers (at least three formats are necessary: Kindle, iBooks, PDF), and as an audiobook. Increasingly, the content delivery needs to take in account the consumption device with its screen size, resolution, and bandwidth. Although the products are becoming more consistent worldwide, translation, localization and distribution rights are a major factor here.

Examples of such applications include technical publishing, catalog publishing, different types of media publishing (i.e., book publishing, magazine publishing, motion picture and video production), radio and television programming, and learning material publishing. Even non-corporate blogs like the ones published on WordPress, Blogger, or Tumblr fall into this category, although many of them are used in the consumer domain outside the scope of ECM. The buyers of such solutions are almost always the heads of the publishing production who often carry different titles depending on the industry.

So, that’s it. These are the seven types of content applications. Before anyone brings it up, I do realize that many of these applications started reaching across the categories. In regulated industries, pretty much every application has to include compliance. You can make an argument that BPM should be included in everything. Same for collaboration or social software. But what decides the categorization is the original goal for deploying the application. Are we deploying the application to handle more customer requests and compliance just happens to be a required feature? Then it is primarily a process application rather than a compliance application. The primary stakeholder is usually the telltale too. Different owners have a different purpose for their application, which usually determines the type of solution they will select.

While this is my view of the landscape, I would love to hear from you. Do you agree with my categories? Do you see any other categories or a different way of categorization? Have you encountered any applications that don’t fit? Please share your comments and help me make it better. If there are substantial changes as a result of your comments, I will publish an updated version of this post.

Thank you!

Is Dropbox Making us Stupid?

Yes, I’m paraphrasing the famous article by Nicholas Carr with the title of this blog post. But I do have a point to make. For years, the document management and content management solutions suffered a bit from the stigma of being too complex and difficult to use. Then, the nouveau bread of solutions stormed in, by propelled by the power of consumerization: cloud-based file sharing with Dropbox leading the charge. Suddenly, all the problems were solved...

Well, not quite. The consumer-grade software seduced users with its simplicity. It usually did just one thing but it did it well and easily. Before the CIO could blink twice, the Dropbox or some similar software was all over the enterprise. Of course, we all have heard the stories about the lack of security, the compliance issues, and the legal exposure this caused. But that’s not my point today.

My point is that users started using this software to do actual work. Work, by definition, is a more serious matter than sharing Christmas pictures with your relatives. When one knowledge worker needs to share a document with another one, Dropbox or a similar file sharing system might be a great way to do it. Probably better than email. But when a team of 10 or more people start using file sharing to jointly work on a set of documents, it may result in chaos.

The workers start mixing up document versions. The wrong people get to see the documents when they shouldn’t. People attempt to make edits at the same time only to overwrite each other’s changes. A manager critiques the document before the subject-matter expert got to review it. And, nobody can find anything... All that because they use file sharing when what they really need is a solution with versioning, access control, library services, workflow, and search. In short, they need a team collaboration or document management solution - not file sharing!

There is nothing wrong with file sharing. It is great. It saves a lot of time, hassle and money. But we need to continue educating ourselves about the right tools for the right job. Some activities can be done easily using file sharing. In the enterprise, it should be an enterprise-class file sharing solution with security, compliance, and under the control of the company. But again, that’s not my point today. My point is that to share documents, file sharing is great. To collaborate on documents, you need team collaboration software.

You may be able to loosen a screw with a pocket knife but, let’s face it, a screw driver is a far better tool for the job.

Sometimes, Common Sense Beats ROI

Return on investment (ROI) is supposed to be the magic that makes any software sell instantly - the ultimate silver bullet for any sales person. You simply offer a logical, monetary justification of the solution’s value and the customer has no alternative but to buy. Right? Yeah, right...

The reality is that ROI can be a very elusive value proposition. For one, it rarely considers any competition. You have a problem and you can solve it by reducing your cost by x% for the price of $y which represents the initial and ongoing fees for the solution. Well, chances are that the competition has a similar solution and - what an audacity - they claim the same cost savings! It will be rare that your solution has a quantifiable capability that results in a unique and competitively differentiated ROI.

More often than not, your competitive advantage lies on a different level - product architecture, user experience, quality of service, or...ehm...price. Sure you can argue that each one of those characteristics too has an ROI but now you start overlaying one ROI calculation of a solution characteristic on top of business value ROI which is probably going to be too complex and less and less credible.

Let me give you an example. Say that the solution in question has to do with accounts payable where we know the cost for processing each invoice and a proposed solution results in a 15% cost reduction per invoice. Every CFO usually knows the number of invoices processed each month and the resulting savings can be compared with the cost of the solution and voila - we have an ROI! Pretty easy, right? But of course, every competitor can claim similar savings, assuming the cost of the solution is comparable.

We could in theory add a set of ROI calculations that estimate the savings of a particular user experience compared to the competition, or the savings resulting from a better product architecture but let’s face it, this will be a tough one to make credible.

That brings me to the main issue with ROI. Some solutions - like my accounts payable example - have a very measurable, credible ROI. Others don’t. Usually, anything to do with knowledge worker productivity or customer experience is difficult to measure. Often, it is impossible - or impossible to make credible.

Just take knowledge worker productivity (or effectiveness) which is a frequently quoted value proposition. What’s the ROI of the telephone on your desk? Or the wi-fi network in your office? How about the ROI of email? It’s hard to argue that these tools don’t contribute to the knowledge worker productivity but the benefit is so obvious that we just don’t bother calculating it. Sure, we can calculate the ROI moving from traditional PBX phone system to Voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones. But we don’t need any formula to justify purchasing phones for every employee.

Any calculation that deals with knowledge worker’s time savings is dubious. Sure, a transactional type of work is really measured in hard numbers but most of the knowledge workers are switching between tasks, going to meetings, spending time brainstorming, thinking, creating, and communicating with others. It is not credible to argue that because a particular solution saved 30 minutes a day, it results is a measurable productivity increase.  

The bottom line is that ROI is not a magic bullet. It may very much help to establish the need or even justify the purchase for certain types of solutions. But there are many solutions purchased not because of an ROI: communication, collaboration and social software, knowledge management, document sharing, office and personal productivity applications - all such offerings are usually purchased because they just make sense rather than as a result of a hard ROI.

Don't sweat the ROI too much. Because sometimes, common sense beats ROI.

I Want You To Get Self-Driving Cars!

I want you to get self-driving cars! All of you! Because, let’s face it, driving is no fun. Daily, most metropolitan areas are choked by terrible traffic jams. Today, as the traffic patterns force people either to buy houses or to find jobs in specific areas, traffic jams interfere with the health of our economy. I live in Waterloo which is just about an hour away from Toronto with its wealth of overpriced cultural and culinary experiences, but we rarely go because it can often take well over two hours of stop-and-go traffic to get there.

The root cause of the problem is you. OK, us. Cars are reasonably small and fast and the roads are big, at least in America. In theory, they should be sufficient. In reality, though, it is the drivers causing trouble. There are countless reasons for traffic jams: accidents, rubbernecking from the opposite lane, unreasonable speeds (too low or too high), tailgating, haphazard lane changes, poor understanding of traffic laws (don’t get me started on roundabouts in Waterloo...sigh), and, yes, poor driving skills. All those issues have one thing in common - they are all caused by human errors.

The solution is rather simple - eliminate the source of the human error - the humans. Of course such a proposition appeared like science fiction for years. The only self-driving vehicles were usually confined to highly controlled environments like airport terminal shuttles. Such vehicles use rails for steering, they don’t have to negotiate other vehicles, and they operate at a constant speed - hardly a technology that could replace cars.

But then, Google came out with one of their pet projects - the self-driving car. At first, we didn’t believe it would even be possible. Sure, Google has some smart engineers and a pile of money to use for just about anything, but - self-driving cars on real roads? Give me a break! Yet Google didn’t relent and continued applying its magical algorithms to solve the problem of driving autonomous vehicles. Today, self-driving cars are already licensed to drive on the roads of several states, including California which has perhaps one of the worst traffic problems in the nation.

The Google top executives in a self-driving car.

I have to admit, I am still not entirely clear what self-driving cars have in common with what I consider Google’s core competence: search. Perhaps, it’s those smart algorithms that can negotiate traffic safely. And driving safely they apparently do - the self-driving cars have supposedly driven thousands and thousands of miles without any accidents. That’s amazing! A true testimony to the state of technology which is today capable of replacing humans at some of the most challenging, intellectual tasks.

The beauty about the self-driving cars is that they don’t cause accidents, they don’t speed, tailgate, or rubberneck, and they know the rules of the road. That’s why they can drive without those humans causing errors that result in traffic jams. But a single self-driving car will not solve the issue. It might free me to do whatever I want while dealing with the traffic on its own but the frustrating traffic jams will only go away if all of the cars are self-driving. We won’t eliminate human errors by replacing one human driver, we have to replace them all  (or at least most of them).

That’s where I need you to get a self-driving car. All of you. Please get one as soon as possible. I don’t know where to buy one today but we all need them. Preferably, get one running on alternate fuel too to solve the pollution issue at the same time. Or just take the train. But until we replace the human drivers, we will have to deal with traffic jams and driving will remain a misery.

RIM: One Year Later

Thorsten Heins, RIM CEO

What's up with RIM lately? A year ago, the company was pronounced dead. The revenue was collapsing, the company was losing market share, and the press was having a field day with delivering disaster stories about the BlackBerry maker. When Thorsten Heins was named the new CEO in January 2012, I was cynically thinking that here was another of those German technology company CEOs who will show us how to run a business the "proper way". Just remember Michael Spindler at Apple, Eckhart Pfeiffer at Compaq, and Leo Apotheker at HP!

However, Mr. Heins has so far proven me wrong. While it is way too soon to speak about a turnaround, he has clearly managed to calm the company down. The revenue has stabilized, the string of bad news about various mishaps and calamities has seized and the press is yet again buzzing with excitement about the next model of BlackBerry. As a result, the stock has bounced back from the summer lows.

Living in Waterloo, Ontario, where RIM is the largest employer in the region, I can also see that the doomsday scenarios haven't come true. There has been no massive exodus. The housing market is relatively strong and houses are selling fast. No thousands of “For Sale” or “Going Out of Business” signs. When recruiting, I see more resumes with RIM experience than a year or two ago but there are no RIM bread lines at the local Starbucks. After the layoffs last year, most of the workforce has been quickly absorbed by the more than 850 high technology companies in Waterloo; my employer OpenText among them.

The RIM stock has bounced back from its low levels 

Sure, RIM is far from being out of the wood works. The company continues losing market share and several of the big RIM customers have publicly jumped the ship. The BlackBerry PlayBooks has been officially declared a flop and working on a BlackBerry phone comes today with the same image as driving a Ford Crown Victoria. The pressure is on. All eyes are now on the soon to be released BlackBerry 10 which will be the most significant innovation since RIM switched from a 2-way pager to the BlackBerry smartphone. All the chips are on one number: the BlackBerry 10. It has to be a success - RIM won't get a third chance.

So far, the BlackBerry 10 looks solid. There is plenty of buzz about it and the "leaked BlackBerry 10 picture" campaign is working like a charm. The technology blogs are loving it and reporting about it daily. Most of those reports are very positive. While I am not much into following celebrities on social media, I noticed that RIM has engaged them as well - just the other day, the marathon champion Paula Radcliffe tweeted about her BlackBerry 10 crush. If the BlackBerry 10 fails, it won't be RIM Marketing's fault.

BlackBerry 10 (Photo: closari on Flickr)

RIM is now finally doing the right thing to address their key weakness - the shortage of applications. Last weekend, RIM was running another “portathon” and actually offering cash to developers for porting their apps to the BlackBerry OS. While $100 per application might not be much, I suspect it is more than what some of those apps earn in their lifetime. This is something that even Microsoft has yet to learn. In fact, the battle for the 3rd place mobile OS - after Google Android and Apple iOS - will be fought between RIM and Microsoft and the outcome is wide open today.

The bottom line is that RIM managed to get itself a little bit of a reprieve. This is no time to declare victory, but if the new product hits the mark, there is a sufficiently large and loyal customer base that will embrace it. Let’s hope the BlackBerry 10 delivers!

Big Data Solution for the Big Security Problem

Recently, I wrote about the content security dilemma. As much as we are trying to secure our information without completely giving up on convenience, we can barely stay one step ahead of the bad guys. The hackers, equipped with easily available immense computing power are using brute-force attacks to overcome even the most sophisticated authentication and encryption technologies.

The inconvenient truth remains, that we don’t really have any practical security today outside the perimeter security measures offered by encryption. As soon as the information leaves the secure repository, it is basically no longer secure. If I share a report with you via email, social software, or shared folder, I can only hope that my trust in you will be rewarded by your discretion. If not, you can easily share the document with anyone and I can’t do anything about it.

So what do we do? How do we secure our data in transit? After all, we have to make it travel to put it to work. Data locked up in a vault is of limited value. The answer isn’t easy and it will likely consist of multiple measures.

First, we will adopt advanced means of authentication to ensure that it really is the right person accessing the data. I have described some of such advanced authentication in the above mentioned article - ranging from multi-factor authentication to, yes, chip implants.

Next, we will employ our social media networks as a mean of collective endorsement of authenticity. Authenticity is an issue for both, the people and the information assets. Is the message from Barack Obama really from the President or from an imposter? Is the report I’ve received the right report or has it been substituted by malicious disinformation? Endorsement by a group of people doesn’t completely solve the problem, of course, but it adds another hurdle for the bad guys. Just think of the product reviews on Amazon. Sure, they can be fake but it is a lot of work to fake them and so most of them can be trusted and so can be the products they endorse.

Finally, we will see a greater use of analytics to identify any suspicious behavior - just like the credit card companies do today. The idea is that they trust every transaction as long as the transaction remains within the expected pattern of behavior. When the behavior deviates from the expected pattern, you get one of those calls. Most of us have received a call alerting us to a fraudulent transaction at some point. The system works. It may not prevent the initial fraudulent transaction but with a sufficient audit trail, that transaction can be investigated. What’s important, though, is that the timely detection prevents any subsequent transactions.

This is a big data problem in need of a big data solution.  Analytics software will be reviewing the behavior patterns of people accessing data and detecting any behavior that is out of the norm. Such behaviors will be flagged for investigation while the system shuts down any additional data exposure.

Yet again, there is no perfect solution in sight. But we may have a few options to stay ahead of the bad guys. Because for the foreseeable future, information security remains an arms race. The only way to defend ourselves from the ever smarter hackers will be our ever stronger defenses.

Social Media is Evolving. Are You?

I have quite a few friends and acquaintances who are steadfastly resisting any temptation to join Facebook or Twitter. When I ask them why, I usually get some version of “I don’t care about what people are having for dinner”. That’s actually interesting because I do vividly remember the times some 2-3 years ago when both Twitter and Facebook were flooded by such mundane updates. But that has changed.

In fact, I rarely see any message about what people have for dinner anymore. Sure, there is the occasional picture of a spectacularly prepared dish or a cool looking drink but those are usually somewhat interesting. Thanksgivings, of course, comes with dozens of pictures of dead birds on Facebook but that’s part of the spirit - kind of like Christmas decorations. For the most part, the “what’s for dinner” updates have disappeared today.

One or two years ago, most of my running friends including myself were diligently sharing daily updates about our training runs. As a runner, nothing motivates me more than knowing that my friend Joe in Boston is ahead of me in weekly mileage or that my friend Andreas in Germany will compare my pace to his. But I got the message from my non-running Twitter followers and Facebook friends - sometimes rather explicitly - that they don’t care about that level of detail of marathon training. Once, I was even asked how I lost all that weight while getting the unsolicited advice to reduce those running updates in the same conversation... I reduced my training log updates and I noticed that all my running friends did so as well.

What happened is that we have evolved in the way we use social media. What appeared like a great idea and initially received positive responses from our followers, became less interesting and eventually perhaps even annoying. Ultimately, that made us figure out that this is not the right use of social media...for the moment. You can rest assured that the way social media is used today will likely be different a year from now.     

I wonder about those “denialists” who decided to ignore social media altogether. One day, they may join after all - likely when looking for a job - and they will go through the same learning curve - but years behind. I also worry about all of the marketing departments who are fine tuning their marketing campaigns assuming that the way we use social media will remain the same. Well, it won’t. Because social media is evolving. Are you?

PS: When you don't have something interesting to say on social media, it’s OK not to say anything...

Content Management Predictions for 2013

It’s January 1st and as in previous years, I am writing my predictions for the year ahead. Since I have the habit of reviewing my previous predictions in December, I end up waiting with the new ones until January. That has the advantage that I can read everybody else’s predictions first. But there is also pressure to be at least little different. With that, here we go, here are my Technology Predictions for 2013:

1. Facebook hits rocky grounds
I predict, that Facebook will actually lose active users in 2013 or that the volume of interactions will slow down. Obviously, the adoption of any free social service is based on the fine line between the value received vs. the price we pay. That price is measured in exposure to advertising (annoyance) and privacy loss. Under pressure to generate profits, the social vendors will cross the line. The ads are becoming too annoying, particularly on mobile devices, the privacy concerns and endless terms of use changes are becoming too sneaky, and the marketers are increasingly seeing social media as another channel for spam. That will backfire and the usage will go down in 2013.

2. Everything will be digital
The Razorfish founder Jeff Dachis once famously proclaimed that “everything that can be digital, will be digital”. Well, he was wrong because with the advent of 3D printing, everything will be digital. The blueprints and CAD drawings for any object will become a mainstream content type and allow us to load them into the printer and create (almost) any object. For 2013, I predict a major resurgence of engineering drawings management which has been a niche of enterprise content management for years. In 2013, it will gain importance beyond the traditional sectors like oil & gas and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC). OK, I might be pushing my luck on the timeline here but hey, no point predicting what already happened. Right?

3. The rise of intellectual property management
When CAD drawings enter the mainstream and become valued intellectual property (IP), there will be a new wave of piracy. Because the day will come when instead of buying the latest Rolex, it will be much cheaper to get the blueprints from PirateBay and make it yourself. This will generate a new wave of demand for security and IP management. The need for security is obvious - companies will guard their blueprints from thefts and industrial espionage, The new demand for IP management will enable legitimate licensing and sub-contracting work using CAD drawings and any other types of content assets. By the way, I’m predicting a rise in demand. I’m not so sure we will find a practical solution in 2013.

4. Internet of iPhone things
Mobility has been on my list in some form in previous years and it won’t be missing in 2013 either. There has been a lot of talk about Kevin Ashton’s Internet of things already but in 2013, the main focus of innovation will be on devices and systems that use smartphones as a point of control. In the consumer space, we will see more and more new devices such as the Nest thermostat, the Belkin WeMo switch, or the Lockitron door lock. In the enterprise, we will start using smartphones for similar purposes - to control office and lab equipment, to replace authentication tokens, or to open secure doors.

5. Mobile market predictions
As for the mobile device manufacturers, I predict that Apple will continue to dominate by all metrics except for market share which is perhaps a less important metric anyway. It’s like comparing Porsche with Kia - who cares about their market share? What matters more is revenue, earnings, reliability, and customer satisfaction. Google Android will be the most common mobile OS, to a large extent due to feature phones being replaced with Android based phones even by people who don’t use their capabilities much. There will erupt a brutal price war among the Android device vendors in 2013. RIM will continue facing challenges but it will hang on to their niche - there are enough highly loyal users in love with the keyboard and its business usability of email and calendar. Microsoft will continue struggling as their new devices are too expensive and lag behind in application support. I also predict that Microsoft will be forced to go multi-platform with their software strategy in 2013.

6. Censorship will succeed
Governments around the world, including many US agencies, believe that this “free for all, anything goes Internet” is evil. They have been repeatedly launching attempts to control, regulate or censor the Internet by law. So far, they have only succeeded in places like China while most other attempts have failed so far - just remember the SOPA and PIPA proposals that both failed in 2012 and so did the recent UN Internet conference in Dubai. With so many government initiatives to control at least some aspect of the Internet, however, it is inevitable that some of them will succeed. In 2013, we will see the first laws passed in the US or in the EU that will have a practical impact on how we use the Internet for business by introducing new demands for compliance, legal risk mitigation and data sovereignty. BTW, I am really hoping that I get this one wrong as I am a strong proponent of a free, uncensored, and unregulated Internet.

7. New wave of computers
Forget the smartphones and tablets-  they are so 2012! In 2013, we will see the emergence of a new wave of computers that will look very different. They will have the shapes of watches, glasses, helmets, goggles, jewelry, and various pieces of clothes. Typing will be replaced by dictation and gestures - Apple’s Siri may be going through some growing pains but it shows the way. Similarly, Microsoft Kinect and the Leap Motion Controller show how useful can gestures become. The display will move from a screen to head up display (HUD) which will evolve from fighter jet pilot helmets to glasses (like in the Google Glass project) and eventually to contact lenses. The Kickstarter is full of amazingly creative ideas today - just check out the Pebble watch!

8. Responsive web design will be the buzz
With the proliferation of mobile computers and with the new wave of devices coming, there will be an even greater demand for an optimal viewing experience on every type of device, no matter what the screen size, form factor, display resolution, or its technical capabilities. Unfortunately, it is becoming exceedingly expensive for companies to support multiple versions of their mobile websites and mobile apps to deliver the optimal experience to each device. Responsive web design (RWD) promises a solution for this problem by taking advantage of new concepts such as fluid grid design and flexible images. I predict, that RWD will be quite the buzz in 2013.

9. Security finally becomes a market
Information security is an interesting issue. Every customer I speak to emphasizes how critical security is for their organization. Yet, when I probe deeper, the only security measures I usually find are firewalls, HTTPS and strong passwords - perimeter security measures designed to keep the bad actors out rather than to protect the information. The elephant in the room is the fact that information security is still very much an unsolved problem in most organizations. Particularly when we consider the balance of security and convenience, security is a tough nut to crack. For 2013, I predict that customers will finally start to take security seriously. Security will move from words to actions and customers will begin implementing real security measures to protect their information. That leads to my final prediction for 2013:

10. IT strikes back
Consumerization, mobile devices, and social media have conquered the enterprise IT fortress in the last few years. IT departments have been declared obsolete and users have taken over. Well, that will change in 2013. Enterprises come to realize the security, compliance, legal exposure, and intellectual property risks that the new technologies introduced. The CIOs will be asked to address this issue. The solution will likely manifest itself in more stringent corporate policies, greater control of the devices, and more forceful ways to extend the company’s control over its information. No, I am not predicting the end of any of the new technology trends - they are here to stay. But I am predicting that enterprises will find ways to exert more control over their information. The information belongs to the company and not to the users... and certainly not to the consumer services. The IT departments will be responsible for that.

Well, that’s it. These are my predictions for 2013. I hope that you disagree with some of them - otherwise, I would think I wasn’t trying hard enough ;-) In any case, I plan to review the success of my predictions in December. Until then, I hope you will check out my blog from time to time.

Happy new year!