Beyond Office 2010 - The Future of Productivity

Office 2010 is here. The most complete but also the most evolved version of the Office productivity suite. For many years the Office suite is no longer just about personal productity; it is about managing information in the broadest context posiible : interaction between individuals, teams and organisations, from an ad-hoc, project or any kind of social context.

Microsoft’s vision goes far beyond Office 2010 and for those who have not seen this vision yet, take a look at this video :

Now there's also a whitepaper available which puts a number of innovations / visions shown in the video into perspective :

… This paper illustrates how productivity software has evolved to make your work life easier and more productive, and explores some areas where Microsoft is using new technologies and approaches to drive even greater improvements in productivity and efficiency throughout your organization. …

Download Whitepaper : Beyond Office 2010 - The Future of Productivity
Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:27:29 GMT

SharePoint Online in the 2010 wave

2010 is an important year for Microsoft Online Services. The “wave 14” platform with all the new Office Servers (Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications) will also be part of the new major release of Microsoft Online Services / BPOS.

Arpan Shah provides a high-level overview of what’s to come with SahrePoint 2010 Online :

… I’m a big fan of SharePoint Online along with over one million other users out there. It’s a reliable, convenient service that allows companies to take advantage of SharePoint without having to host it themselves. It’s software-as-a-service at it’s best. 

SharePoint Online today, based on SharePoint 2007, does a good job providing some of the core SharePoint capabilities. In the second half of this calendar year, SharePoint Online will be updated to SharePoint 2010 at which point it will be even more powerful & provide even greater parity with SharePoint 2010 “On-Premises”. This is largely due to all the investments we’ve made in the 2010 wave around multi-tenancy and extensibility. …

… Fore more information, you can also check out a recent podcast I did on SharePoint Online @ http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/archive/2010/01/13/sharepoint-online-and-sharepoint-2010-ecm-episode-41.aspx

Continue at Source: SharePoint Online in the 2010 wave

Burton Group: Why Is Governance Pain So Common With SharePoint?

Governance is important not only for SharePoint, but for any information management system. All in all the list that Graig summs up is not that negative on SharePoint …

… Governance problems have plagued all sorts of websites, but in my experience they seem to come up disproportionately in SharePoint installations.  In researching and writing my new document "Website Governance: Guidance for Portals, SharePoint, and Intranets" (slated for publication in March) I wanted to figure out why that is.  Here is what I found out about why SharePoint has proven to be particularly vulnerable to chaos when ungoverned: …

Check the full post for the list of items.

… This doesn't mean that SharePoint cannot be governed.  But they do point to the importance of creating a statement of governance early in the planning cycle for SharePoint.  While some large SharePoint deployments rise above all these problems, it is rare and difficult for them to do so without a governance structure in place. …

Note: This is a cross-posting from the KnowledgeForward blog.

Source: Why Is Governance Pain So Common With SharePoint?

Forrester: SharePoint Shoots For The Cloud

Forrester has a good piece on SharePoint Online. A solution that will fuel the growth of SharePoint tremendously in the coming years …

When is SharePoint not like SharePoint? When it's SharePoint Online, part of Microsoft's recently announced Microsoft Online Services offering. Unlike Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 — a full-blown collaboration platform with collaboration, content management, business intelligence, portal, search, and application development facilities — SharePoint Online offers only basic collaboration capabilities.

That said, SharePoint Online could be perfect for your organization. If your organization is looking for commoditized collaboration and business content management services, then take a close look at SharePoint Online.

Alternatively, if you're looking to build differentiated solutions for knowledge workers, then consider taking the full MOSS plunge. To assess which offering best fits you, start by mapping your requirements using Forrester's research on IT archetypes.

Source: SharePoint Shoots For The Cloud

HP Buying Tower Software

Guy Creese (Burton Group) blogged about the Tower Software acquisition by HP. Interesting move by HP. : 

There's a SharePoint in every story ... "The addition of Tower also is expected to enable HP Software to address the growing Microsoft SharePoint compliance and e-discovery opportunities."

Hewlett-Packard announced today that it was buying Tower Software, an Australian document and records management company.

Some interesting quotes in the press release:

1. "The deal will enable HP to expand its offerings in the fast-growing electronic discovery and compliance software market."
2. "The addition of Tower also is expected to enable HP Software to address the growing Microsoft SharePoint compliance and e-discovery opportunities."

Translated, that means that HP is buying it for both tactical and strategic reasons. Tactically, buying Tower Software will increase HP's revenue by allowing it to sell a more complete solution (Tower TRIM Context and the HP Integrated Archive Platform are already integrated). Strategically, buying Tower Software will connect HP to the SharePoint ecosystem, which is growing by leaps and bounds. Startups/small companies are selling solutions that fill gaps within SharePoint, and veteran providers (e.g., EMC/Documentum, Open Text, Tower Software) are integrating with SharePoint as a way to connect to information worker workflows.

This is yet another example of the silos of yesteryear (imaging systems that were separate from document management systems that were separate from records management systems, etc.) all toppling in a movement towards a more lifecycle approach.

Source: HP Buying Tower Software

Office SharePoint Server 2007 DoD 5015.2 Resource Kit

SharePoint Server 2007 is DoD 5015.2 Chapter 2 compliant this resourceguide allows you to fully evaluate the solution :

... The DoD 5015.2 Resource Kit provides tools and guidance for evaluating additional features and functionality which has enabled SharePoint Server 2007 to be DoD 5015.2 Chapter 2 compliant. At the end of the evaluation you should engage a qualified partner to implement your DoD solution. This resource kit is not intended for production usage.
Please note, installing the DoD 5015.2 Resource Kit replaces the out of the box Record Center SharePoint site template. Site administrators will be unable to create a standard record center once the add-on pack is installed. ...

Source: Office SharePoint Server 2007 DoD 5015.2 Resource Kit

CMSWire: SharePoint's No Slouch - Earns Microsoft $1 billion

Microsoft doesn't break down revenue to the product level. Nevertheless the math could be right. SharePoint is a big hit ...

... It's been a record year for Microsoft according to their financials...record revenues of $16.4 billion and earnings of $4.7 billion for their second quarter.

What do they attribute these numbers to? Microsoft indicated that sales of Office and Vista were strong during this period. This must mean that people are ignoring all the bad reviews about Vista and upgrading to it regardless of the problems it has - sales of the operating system are now over 100 million units. Revenue growth for the search division was 38 percent in the quarter and consulting revenues rose by 28%.

But probably the biggest deal is SharePoint. It is a billion dollar baby for Microsoft. They don't go into specifics of the dollar breakdown but we're sure a lot of that money must belong to the support teams and the consulting teams that spend lots time with companies figuring out the best way to implement the CMS.

Who says people don't like SharePoint? Microsoft's revenues say - lots of people do like it! ...

Source: SharePoint's No Slouch - Earns Microsoft $1 billion
Barb Mosher
Date Published: Fri, 01 Feb 2008

One Collaboration Platform to Rule Them All?

Cathing up on some news of earlier this month.

CMSWire published an article quoting some of the findings from a recent report by Osterman Research. Let's go straight to the quotes ...

... SharePoint is a big topic these days. With the release of SharePoint Server 2007, analysts everywhere are trying to get a grasp on its reach into the enterprise and the issues surrounding its implementation.

According to the latest from Osterman Research, SharePoint is becoming the de facto collaboration platform for many organizations today. ...

Strong confirmation on the uptake of SharePoint ...

... The Osterman study sought to determine trends in the use of SharePoint over the next 12 months. Results of the study indicate that in organizations that deployed Microsoft Exchange, more than half are currently using SharePoint and 12 percent plan to deploy it in the next 12 months.

The number of organizations that employ SharePoint for mission-critical applications is less than 20 percent, a figure expected to double over the next year. Meanwhile, the number of SharePoint applications will quadruple. ...

Good detail on the level of application into 'mission-critical' area's and a strong confirmation of the level of trust companies have with regards to SharePoint, as the mission critical application of SharePoint will double over the next year ...

... The study also noted that most deployments are hosted by third-party hosting providers. Organizations for the most part don’t have plans in place for hosting SharePoint applications. ...

This is one I didn't expect to be the case already. The fact that the majority of the surveyed companies uses a hosted SharePoint environment shows also a high level of confidence in the partner ecosystem around the Microsoft platform and in hosted (SaaS) solutions ...

... To many IT managers, implementing SharePoint is a no-brainer. ..

... At the end of the day, SharePoint is still a lot cheaper than many other enterprise CMS systems. Thus it makes sense that organizations want to take advantage of it for content management and collaboration.

However, with great power comes great responsibility.

Organizations looking to implement SharePoint just need to remember this one word: governance. It’s not a big word, but it carries a big stick. ...

Be sure to read the whole article for the full perspective : CMSWire.com

2007 Analyst Reports on or including Microsoft Products and solutions

The Microsoft Analyst Relations page features lot's of reports for which Microsoft has obtained the reprint or distribution rights. I have made a selection of the 2007 reports on topics that mean something in 'my world' :

Below is a collection of reports published by leading independent analyst firms on, or including, Microsoft. Microsoft has secured all copyright and publishing privileges with the firms to include the reports on this site for all audiences. All reports were researched and funded by the analyst firms themselves.

(some links may expire over time)

Enterprise Search

• Microsoft: The Latest Disruptor in Enterprise Search (Forrester Research, Nov. 6, 2007, .pdf, 104K) This Forrester report examines Microsoft’s expanded enterprise search offerings. Analyst Ken Poore writes “Microsoft Search Server 2008 raises the bar and frees up search. This week, Microsoft made its latest move into the enterprise search platforms market with two strategic products: Microsoft Search Server Express 2008 and Microsoft Search Server 2008. These products deliver a solid set of features that reset the feature/price/ease-of-use equation for entry-level and midtier enterprise search.”
  
• Microsoft Drives a Wedge Between High and Low-End Enterprise Search (Forrester Research, Sept. 28, 2007, .pdf, 121 kb) This Forrester report examines Microsoft’s position into the enterprise search market. Analyst Matthew Brown writes “Microsoft offers significantly improved search capabilities in MOSS 2007 and its standalone search product, MOSS 2007 for Search. And Microsoft isn't just throwing products into the market. Instead, it has mobilized the entire organization behind search, including extensive marketing and events, partner training programs, and specific global sales goals.”
  
• Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology, 2007 (Gartner, September 5, 2007): This Gartner Magic Quadrant by Whit Andrews evaluates leading vendors in the Information Access market which extends beyond enterprise search to encompass a collection of information access technologies. Gartner positions Microsoft in the Challengers quadrant. According to Gartner, “Challengers possess sufficient resources to effectively penetrate the information access technology market.”
  
• How Secure Should Your Search Be? (Forrester Research, Inc., April 12, 2007, .pdf, 128 kb) This Forrester report examines enterprise search security as a complex issue that requires careful weighing of requirements to achieve “winning search strategies that will balance costs with advanced functionality.” For example, organizations should consider whether search will span more than one secure repository and if the answer is ‘yes’, analyst Matt Brown writes companies should evaluate “higher-end products including those from infrastructure providers such as Microsoft.”

Messaging and Workflow

• Messaging, Workflow Roadmap Announced (Directions on Microsoft, Oct. 30, 2007, .pdf, 377 kb) “Oslo supports principles – service-oriented architecture and composite applications – that Microsoft believes will drive future business application development.”

 

SaaS / Enterprise 2.0 / Consumerisation

• Evaluating IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP Web and Consumerization Strategies (Gartner Research, Oct. 3, 2007) This vendor evaluation looks at Consumerization and the Web as two related and highly impactful issues facing users and vendors today. Analysts David Mitchell Smith and Charles Abrams state that “one major force behind the consumerization of IT is the Internet and enterprises' adoption of Internet technologies.”
  
• Rich Internet Apps Move Beyond The Browser (Forrester Research, June 27, 2007) This Forrester report examines the adoption of rich internet applications (RIAs). The independent report finds that while early RIAs were exclusively browser-based, new platforms from Microsoft [and other vendors] broaden developer options for delivering rich media and content to clients. Forrester writes that “Microsoft has a tactical edge because its dominant position at the desktop with the .NET Framework will attract large numbers of developers who already target Microsoft’s desktop and browser platforms.”

Enterprise Content Management

• Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2007 (Gartner, September 21, 2007): This Gartner Magic Quadrant by Karen Shegda evaluates leading vendors in the Enterprise Content Management market which includes web content management, records management, document imaging, document management, workflow and document-centric collaboration. Gartner positions Microsoft in the Visionaries quadrant.

Unified Communications

• Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications, 2007 (Gartner, August 20, 2007): This Gartner Magic Quadrant by Bern Elliot evaluates leading vendors in the unified communications market. Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders quadrant. According to Gartner, “The Leaders quadrant contains vendors selling comprehensive and integrated UC solutions that directly, or with well-defined partnerships, address the full range of market needs.”
• Microsoft Communicator Overhangs the Enterprise Communications Market (Gartner, Inc., May 1, 2007) In this Gartner report, analyst Geoff Johnson discusses Microsoft’s upcoming launch of Office Communications Server 2007. He states that “reliable integration of communications into enterprise platforms is a necessary precursor to the eventual development of communications-enabled business processes.”

Office 2007

• A Look at Improvements and Shortcoming in Microsoft Office 2007 Desktop Applications (Forrester Research, July 17, 2007, .pdf, 464 kb) This report, the second in Forrester’s “Innovation on the Desktop” series, states that “the breadth of Microsoft Office 2007 and its change of focus from desktop apps to a full system targeted at information workers warrants careful consideration by (Information and Knowledge Management Professionals.)” Analyst Kyle McNabb writes that “office productivity will evolve, taking advantage of more thin client and SaaS approaches, but we’ve not seen the end of the thick client.”

Project and Portfolio Management

• Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management, 2007 (Gartner, June 15, 2007, .pdf, 213 kb): This Gartner Magic Quadrant by Matt Light and Daniel Stang evaluates leading technology solution vendors in the IT Project and Portfolio Management space. Gartner positions Microsoft in the Leaders quadrant. According to Gartner, Leaders “distinguish themselves with relatively high ratings in many characteristics, not just a few” and “also tend to have, not just capable system integration partners, but some core, direct PPM service offerings, going beyond implementation and support to include process-change consulting.”

Customer Relationship Management

• Microsoft Leads in Record-Centric Customer Service Management Software: The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q2 2007 (Forrester Research, May 24, 2007, .pdf, 199 kb) “Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which delivers sufficient customer service capabilitie at a low cost, has emerged as a leader among customer record-centric products. Although not as functionally rich in core customer service capabilities, Microsoft compensates through its architecture, integration, usability, and business strategy. The product shines in its ability to support agents through phone agent, blended agent, and agent collaboration tools — all of which sit on top of a solid workflow engine. In the future, look for Microsoft to exploit its Customer Care Framework, a modular XML Web Services architecture for rapid development and deployment of contact center solutions.”
  
• Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers, (Gartner, March 6, 2007): This Gartner Magic Quadrant by Michael Maoz evaluates leading CRM vendors in the customer service contact centers space and positions Microsoft Dynamics CRM in the Visionary quadrant. According to Gartner, Visionaries are ahead of potential competitors in delivery of innovative products and/or delivery models.
  
• The Forrester Wave™: Midmarket CRM Suites, Q1 2007 (Forrester, February 21, 2007, .pdf , 513 kb): “The Microsoft brand gives Dynamics CRM major momentum. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is one of the newer products included in our evaluation, but the vendor has made impressive progress building out its solution, which emerged as a Leader for the first time in a Forrester Wave.”
  
• The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise CRM Suites, Q1 2007 (Forrester Research, Feb. 5, 2007, .pdf, 488 kb) Microsoft Dynamics CRM was rated a Strong Performer in this Forrester Wave. Forrester applied two sets of criteria weightings to this analysis, one appropriate for large enterprise wide deployments and another focused on midmarket priorities - the two sets of criteria were then used to evaluate and position the solutions.

IBM Scrambles to Bridge Great SharePoint Divide

IBM seems to put a lot of effort to embrace Microsoft technology. In many parts of their huge portfolio they start providing integration with Office, MOSSS and other products ...

 

... Are the big boys like IBM a little worried about being left behind SharePoint in the enterprise content management (ECM) market? Seems enough so that they are working hard to implement solutions that help integrate with Microsoft’s burgeoning content management offering.

IBM announced a new technology and global reseller agreement with partner Mainsoft that enables enterprise customers to blend Java and .NET technology. Of particular interest are the SharePoint Federator components. ...

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad SharePoint?

Big Blue is clearly worried about the broad proliferation of SharePoint sites. They are cropping up in companies and departments everywhere. With the free Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) so easy to turn on, and departments needing a simple to use, cheap place to store documents and collaborate on work, it’s no wonder they skip WebSphere to get their jobs done. So IBM, not wanting to get kicked completely to the curb needs an integration story for all these SharePoint data stores. ...

Source: IBM Scrambles to Bridge Great SharePoint Divide
Barb Mosher
Date Published: Wed, 21 Nov 2007

Irwin Lazar: Building the SharePoint Ecosystem

Irwin Lazar posted a very positive view on MOSS 2007 on Collaboration Loop. The core attributes Microsoft addresses : platform and ecosystem ... I couldn't agree more:

... Over the past few months I’ve struggled to get my arms around Microsoft Office SharePoint, Microsoft’s “über” platform for asynchronous collaboration.

Is SharePoint a Web 2.0 platform? Is SharePoint a content management system? Is SharePoint a workflow manager? Is SharePoint a social computing platform? Or is SharePoint a portal to other applications?

Well…the answer to all of these questions is a conditional “yes.” SharePoint does have the capabilities to function in all these roles. SharePoint supports Web 2.0 capabilities such as blogs and wikis, as well as user customizable data to enable searches based on meta tags. ...

... As enterprises create their SharePoint strategy it makes sense to look beyond the core capabilities of SharePoint when those capabilities don’t meet your needs. Microsoft’s ecosystem for bringing best-of-breed services into the SharePoint ecosystem continues to grow, meaning that rather than viewing SharePoint as the be-all-end-all of enterprise collaboration, it is instead wiser to view SharePoint as the platform that can support both internal capabilities as well as leverage external best-of-breed products to fully meet enterprise requirements. ...

Source: Building the SharePoint Ecosystem
Date Published: Thu, 15 Nov 2007

Forrester: Microsoft Ranks Among The Strong Performers In ECM Suites

Forrester has ranked the ECM vendors. Research is very favorable for Microsoft:

Microsoft dove into the enterprise content management (ECM) pool headfirst with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. And the product shows promise, thanks to strong Microsoft Office integration, proven Web content management (WCM), and market leading collaboration support. However, SharePoint Server 2007 lacks ECM breadth and depth outside of its good — but not great — document management, records management, and WCM technology. And Microsoft's begun to address its shortcomings by partnering with other ECM vendors such as Hyland for document imaging support and Open Text for content archival help. Focusing its resources on making ECM — such as document management — available to all Office users, and making sure application developers using Visual Studio .NET have easy access to SharePoint help make Microsoft a Strong Performer and a strong choice for Microsoft-centric IT organizations.

Source: Microsoft Ranks Among The Strong Performers In ECM Suites
Author: "Kyle McNabb"
Date Published: Fri, 09 Nov 2007

Forrester: The Content Management Market Goes Mini-Vertical

One one hand the ECM market is rapidly commitising. In the recent years  affordable ECM platforms which can (and will) be deployed organsiation-wide have changed the landscape. Many acquisitions followed. Some of the 'ECM incumbants' (and maybe some new entrants) (re) focus on niches ...

... Fragmentation and blurry boundaries among offerings create big challenges for enterprise content management (ECM) tech marketers to distinguish their products. How are enterprising ECM vendors standing out?

Forrester did some digging and learned that a number of ECM tech marketers are focusing on much smaller pieces of big industries like financial services, big segments like retail banking, and niche industries like real estate and construction that are ignored by the rest of the market. By making ECM easy for small businesses to buy, vendors can capture market share in these overlooked industries. ...

Source: The Content Management Market Goes Mini-Vertical
Author: "Ellen Carney, Barry Murphy"
Date Published: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Open Text Takes Aim At Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Open Text extends its ECM platform to Microsoft Exchange 2007. Good to see that ECM players continue to invest in integration with the Microsoft platform as they do add value, especially in the current LiveLink installed base. 

... The enterprise content management vendors upgrades its Livelink ECM suite with tight integration with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

Open Text, a maker of enterprise content management software, has introduced the latest version of its email management software, which has been upgraded with tight integration with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

In general, Livelink ECM -Email Management enables organizations to apply their centralized records management policies through folders customized for individual departments, users or functions. With the latest product, each message arriving in Microsoft's Outlook email client automatically inherits the centralized record classification assigned to a folder when users drag and drop emails into the folder. Based on the classification, the message is assigned an appropriate retention and disposition lifecycle. ...

Source: IntelligentEnterprise.com

CMS Watch : SaaS vendors not included in Gartner ECM Magic Quadrant

CMS Watch raises the flag on Gartner's latest ECM MQ report: SaaS vendors are not included.

They mean 'pure play' SaaS vendors I assume and we could argue wether or not there are fully SaaS based ECM solutions out there in which enterprises store all their data externally in the cloud ? Nevertheless it would be good if Gartner would make a statement about in/exclusion of these vendors.

... SaaS: New Gartner Report Magic or Illusion?

The folks at Gartner have come up with another iteration of their “Magic” Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) vendors with what appears to be a very short-sighted perspective — an intentional exclusion of Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors as part of the market for content management software.

This naturally begs the question, why not include them? A big part of an analyst firm’s focus should be on what’s coming, as opposed to what has already happened. ...

Forrester: The Top Five Technology Trends That Affect Your Enterprise Content Management Strategy

Interesting points these also articulate platform vs Best of Breed.

The 'persuavieness of the content' and ' design for people' are the core design principles for Microsoft the is the Ínformation Worker paradigm ...

... Defining a strategy for enterprise content management (ECM) challenges most enterprises. Most information and knowledge managers focus their attention on very tangible areas such as IT consolidation, risk mitigation, and using ECM to improve business processes. Yet many point to a lack of future insight into ECM trends as an inhibitor to their strategy development. Numerous trends will affect ECM over the next few years. But information and knowledge managers should pay closest attention to five key trends that will affect their ECM strategies:

1) tech populism;

2) pervasive information management infrastructures;

3) new software models (like open source, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and managed services),

4) the use of persuasive content for enhancing the customer experience; and

5) the new IT imperative — design for people, build for change. ...

Source: The Top Five Technology Trends That Affect Your Enterprise Content Management Strategy
Author: "Kyle McNabb"
Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMT

The top 10 advantages of Lotus Quickr! ? Not !

Over on the Lotus Quickr blog I found an interesting overview of points in which Lotus Quickr is supposed to have an advantage over Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or 2007 Office System in general (or at least I think Stuart is trying to make those comparisons).

The analysis is incomplete in some cases and wrong in others. Let's go through them one by one :

... The top 10 advantages of Lotus Quickr!

Well actually, top 11...

If you are an end-user considering your organisation's options regarding team collaboration software, or else are working to convice your costomers of the merits of Lotus Quickr over other competitive solutions out there, then you may find this list of reasons to use Quickr of assistance.  

After all, it's good to Share Points of interest like this, isn't it ;-)

The Top 10 11 Reasons to Use Lotus Quickr! 

1. Share content and collaborate from anywhere
Lotus Quickr client connectors integrate into multiple desktop applications

Multiple desktop applications. I assume Stuart means other applications besides Microsoft Office ? What other desktop applications would that be ?

Besides that my take on this is that MOSS is a platform to which all of the major ECM vendors integrate through browsers and in some cases also through their native desktop clients.

I look forward to the list of desktop applications ...

 2. “No” to proprietary tools
Support for multiple HW/SW environments, open standards

Proprietary would be Windows Client and Windows Server I assume. This is true SharePoint only runs on Windows Server and related hardware platforms. Although this maybe an important fact to some organisations, the majority runs Windows Server and Windows Client already. Ofcourse this could change in the future, but up' till now it has not proven to be a major advantage Lotus has over Microsoft. Look for example at the number of organisations running Lotus notes Domino on wintel vs other platforms. Other platform only represent a small percentage. 

3. No rip-and-replace
No need to replace your workstations to upgrade to Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Office 2007

Hang on where did this come from ? "Rip and Replace" ?? Who claims that running Windows Vista and Office 2007 is required when you need 'Quickr-like' functionality ? Do you know that Office 2007 does not really require Vista ?Remember SharePoint 2003 and WSS 2.0, the platform that was available prior to Vista and Office 2007 ? Or better have you ever read the document 'FairGoodBetterBest' which describes the level of integration between MOSS 2007 and the current and previous versions of Office ?

4. Batteries are included
All components (RDB, LDAP, etc.) are in the box – and can scale

I assume this relates to the need of a database (SQL Server in the case of Microsoft) and a directory (AD in the case of Microsoft. Again, in itself its true Microsoft does require these components but the majority of organsiations already run one or more databases, have more than one user directory and often AD. SO the argument is true in splendid isolation but not in the real world ...

5. Real-time integration
Web-based real-time presence and chat, integrate with Web conferences

Quickr is not the RTC platform of Lotus, that's SameTime last time I checked. SameTime is the platform that provides presence, IM and Webconferencing capability.

For Microsoft that's Office Communications Server 2007 and we all know what that does: the same ...

6. Real offline access
Take an entire team space offline to work with presentation, logic, and data

This is something Microsoft can not do, at least not out of the box. For offline capability you either use Outlook (for documents and lists) or Groove (teamsites). Neither retain the look and feel. I could argue whether retaining the look and feel is crucial, but ok ...

7. Real extranet collaboration
You just need email addresses of your partners to collaborate, not a call to IT

Assuming you have done the extranet setup with regards to security, etc than this is also the case for SharePoint. The difference would be anonymous access vs authenticated access. In the latter case you need a way to provision AD, as AD is required.

Microsoft runs multiple extranet setup with SharePoint for example our extranet for partners.

The alternate solution to ad-hoc collaboration information sharing would be Microsoft Office Groove as this also integrates with SharePoint a solution could also be a combination of both. It all depends on the scenario.

8. Bridge your islands of data
Bring structure and organization to your places with nested sites, and replication

Why exactly is this a differentiator ?

9. Interactive dashboards
Display interactive AJAX-based components on one page

Why exactly is this a differentiator ?

10. Extensibility & Flexibility
Easily build custom applications

Have you seen the Applications for SharePoint ? This is functionality 'out-of-the-box', but more than that it shows the capability and easy with which you can enable functionality on this platform.

11. Designed for the future
Manage content, not just Microsoft Office documents
Web 2.0 collaboration, not just an extension of Microsoft Office
Transparently access diverse repositories
End-to-end content management with IBM’s best-of-breed Content Management solutions

Let's assume for a moment that Microsoft also has the future in mind when building and evolving SharePoint. Of you've paid any attention at all looking at the evolution in the last 3 SharePoint versions you understand what I mean.

- Manage content, not just Office Documents also goes for SharePoint : http://blogs.msdn.com/ifilter/default.aspx

- What's Web 2.0 collaboration ? Finding colleagues, their profiles, their contact details ? Their organsiation structure ? It's all in the MySite setup of SharePoint. I would agree that microsoft still has a lot of work to do and not being able to include Knowledge Network is a pity. Nevertheless I am not sure what edge Quickr in this case.

- Transparently assess diverse repositories

?

- The end to end ECM .. with IBM's best of breed CM solutions
Yes, which one do you mean exactly, as IBM has several...

Open Text Extends Alliance With Microsoft, Announces New Comprehensive Solution for Law Firms

Again a strong confirmation of the presence of SharePoint in the market and the fact that there is a very benefitial business model for both the ISV and Microsoft in a given market ...

... Open Text™ (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC), the largest independent provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software and solutions, today announced plans for an integrated solution with Microsoft software for matter lifecycle management and practice support targeted to law firms worldwide. The new solution will combine Open Text’s specialized legal industry expertise in matter lifecycle management and proactive compliance, with the collaboration and document management capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Open Text announced the news today at the International Legal Technology Association's (ILTA) annual conference underway this week in Orlando, FL.
The companies’ plans are aimed at an industry where ECM needs are growing fast. Law firms have unique requirements when it comes to controlling and managing sensitive client information, and addressing firm policies. Attorneys and staff must be able to work with content in matter-centric or practice-centric views using secure “virtual cabinets”, and all information, including email, must be managed through defined lifecycles. Adding to the complexity, law firms have become increasingly global, with geographically dispersed teams that need global views of information and powerful collaboration tools.

Working with Microsoft, Open Text is well suited to address the evolving needs of the legal market. SharePoint Server 2007 is popular in law firms, providing broadly used intranet, extranet and collaboration capabilities, while Open Text offers extensive legal market expertise and ECM solutions tailored to specific law firm processes. With the new solution, law firms gain greater value from their SharePoint Server 2007 investments. SharePoint Server 2007 can become the firm’s central content repository, and attorneys and staff can continue to work in their familiar SharePoint Server 2007 environments while still leveraging Open Text’s matter and practice-centric views of content, virtual file cabinets and seamless integration with firm processes – a “best-of-both-worlds” scenario. ...

Source: Open Text Extends Alliance With Microsoft, Announces New Comprehensive Solution for Law Firms
Author: Open Text Corporation
Date originally published: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:15:00 GMT

CMSWatch: Documentum formally announces D6

EMC has officially announced the Documentum version 6 "D6"; the new version of their ECM platform. Alan Pelz-Sharpe, an analist who closely follows the ECM market has made some interesting comments about the challenges customers face with this new version :

... EMC|Documentum's long awaited "D6" was officially announced last week -- though of course it has actually been announced by the firm many times this year at different conferences. Although this official release fills in some of the blanks, there are few surprises. That's not to say this is not a significant event for the sometime market leader - it's a very big event for them - only in the past what Documentum did was a signal for all to follow. The tide has turned somewhat, and Documentum under the ownership of EMC finds itself as much a follower as a leader these days. ...

... Just like IBM/FileNet's P8 before them, it will take years, not month,s before the impact of this is fully felt. ...

Source: Documentum formally announces D6
aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe)
Sun, 05 Aug 2007 04:40:00 GMT

New Blog Launched on Sharepoint and ECM

John Mancini of the AIIM has launched a new blog focussing in Microsoft SharePoint and ECM, go check it out :

We have launched a new blog focused on the intersection of Sharepoint and "traditional" ECM systems. The blog is intended for attendees and prospective attendees of our fall seminar series on "Sharepoint and ECM." For details, go to www.aiim.typepad.com/sharepointmeetsecm .

source: New Blog Launched on Sharepoint and ECM

Open Text builds new OBA app

Office Business Applications (OBA) is really starting to take off. OBA is yet another example of how Office 2007 and more specifically 2007 Microsoft Office System differs from other solutions, beit Office Suites or Collaboration platforms with editors.

... Open Text has taken the wraps off a new Microsoft Office-based application that helps companies access and manage customer information directly from familiar desktop tools.

Built as one of the first commercially available Office Business Applications, or OBA, the new software effectively blends parts of Open Text's Livelink enterprise content management and collaboration platform with Office to allow users to manage documents stored in ERP systems, Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2007 and other content stores from familiar Office desktop tools like Word. Open Text, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, is branding the integrated software as Customer Information Management (CIM).

One early adopter is stainless steel manufacturer ThyssenKrupp, which is using the software to streamline its email ordering process. Its CIM system works with Office's Outlook to list shipping, contracts and purchase order documents from various sources including SAP, and present them in an Outlook Inbox. ...

Source: CBROnline.com

OpenText issued a Press Release eralier this week :

... Open Text Announces Office Business Application for Customer Information Management

Lets Users Access and Manage Documents from ERP Systems Using Microsoft Office Solution Leverages Open Text’s Strategic Relationships, Proven Integration Experience with Solutions from Microsoft and SAP

- 2007-07-11 - Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2007, Denver - Open Text™ Corp. (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC), the largest independent provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software and solutions, today announced an Office Business Application (OBA) for accessing and managing customer information. One of the first OBAs built upon the 2007 Microsoft Office system to be commercially available, Open Text’s Livelink ECM -- Customer Information Management (CIM) gives users of Microsoft Office applications a complete view of all the information associated with customers, whether that information lives in SAP® application-based systems, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, or other content repositories.

Open Text’s solution is being used by ThyssenKrupp Nirosta, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of stainless steel, to streamline email-based order processing and handling of general customer inquiries. Livelink ECM – Customer Information Management extends the functionality of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 by listing all documents including shipping details, contracts, or purchase orders for raw materials found after checking keywords in incoming emails. The documents and data may come from several different sources, including SAP applications and production planning systems, and when displayed in Office Outlook, enables users to more promptly and efficiently respond to customers.

“Open Text products and solutions help us manage all business-critical documents in the context of our customer-related processes,” said Klemens Bransmöller, CIO of ThyssenKrupp Nirosta. “Livelink ECM – Customer Information Management extends the integration of SAP solution-managed processes into the Microsoft Office environment by adding document-centric information. The combination of technologies from SAP, Microsoft and Open Text in use at ThyssenKrupp provides our employees with simplified, automated, event-driven (internal and external) access to all process-centric (structured) and document-centric (unstructured) customer information through the standardized and familiar Microsoft Office interface. We expect that this optimized interaction between solutions from SAP, Microsoft and Open Text will further reduce our customer-centric transaction and process costs.”. ...

Source : OpenText.com

2007 Microsoft Office System and Compliancy

I am in a meeting today in which Compliancy and Risk Management are important topics. How can Microsoft help organisations address these challenges ? Well ... there's lots of information in Microsoft's solutions to address compliancy related aspects in Enterprises :

• Meeting the E-Mail Compliance Challenge With Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 
  Part of what hinders compliance is the increasing complexity and cost to add compliance capabilities to existing e-mail and messaging systems. That’s changing with the availability of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Designed to enable organizations to quickly implement and enforce comprehensive e-mail compliance measures, Exchange Server 2007 includes new and expanded messaging management features built into the software. With the option of Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services for outsourced messaging security and management, even companies with limited IT capabilities can bring their e-mail into compliance. Read more about meeting the e-mail compliance challenge with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 in this white paper.
  

• 2007 Office System Document: Compliance Features in the 2007 Microsoft Office System
  This white paper showcases compliance-related features and extensibility opportunities with the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, and demonstrates how the Office system can help you meet the demands of regulatory compliance. By focusing on a few core products, including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server, Office client-side applications, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, this paper introduces built-in features of the Office system that address compliance requirements. The paper also focuses on the opportunities for developers to use expanded tools support to build customized solutions that facilitate regulatory compliance without bogging down business processes.

• Enterprise risk management and compliance solution in Finance

  Today financial institutions are challenged to meet new levels of risk management and greater demands for compliance. To assist your firm in delivering necessary results in these areas, including fulfilling your Sarbanes-Oxley disclosure obligations, Microsoft provides a holistic approach that uses strong architecture and infrastructure. We work with leading partners who deliver solutions to address risk management and compliance needs. These solutions take advantage of our focus on strong infrastructure and reusable business components. They also use Microsoft's enterprise-ready products and technologies, and take advantage of the tight connection of the back-end to Microsoft's leadership in client devices.

  Leveraging the Microsoft .NET Framework, this approach is designed specifically to enable financial firms to take full advantage of existing technology investments and infrastructure, including aligning their information technology (IT) with their business processes. This coordination not only provides a range of support for meeting your risk management and compliance obligations—it also aids your people in achieving critical business objectives such as improved customer satisfaction, greater operational efficiency, and enhanced competitiveness.

  • Financial analysis and reporting using XBRL

  • Financial dashboards

  • Sarbanes-Oxley

  • Sarbanes-Oxley Solutions Using Microsoft Office System

  • White paper: Creating a systemized approach to regulatory compliance

  • White paper: Regulatory compliance demystified

  • Regulatory Compliance Planning Guide

Exchange Server 2007 Compliance Resources

Gary Sweeting listed a whole bunch of information resources on Microsoft Exchange 2007 and Compliance check his blog for the details:

... The compliance features that we provide in Exchange Server 2007 is something that many of our customers are excited to see – the transport rules wizard make it so easy to create organisation wide rules that there’s no excuse for every company not to implement policies to safeguard their information, employees and ultimately their company. I’ve been meaning to create a listing of all the compliance resources, seeing that Paul Robichaux had some difficulty finding some resources, I decided to get this out the door in case others are in the same situation. ...

Link to Exchange Server 2007 Compliance Resources

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Receives U.S. Department of Defense 5015.2 Certification

This is a major step and recognition for MOSS 2007. Records Management capability is now certified ...

... Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft^® Office SharePoint^® Server 2007 has received U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2 certification. Endorsed by the National Archives and Records Administration, the 5015.2 standard on which the DoD certification is based serves as the benchmark for government and corporate organizations that manage records and documents.

“As government regulations around information management and preservation have increased, many organizations have taken a hard look at their records management practices,” said Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of the Office SharePoint Server Group at Microsoft. “We made enterprise content management a major focus during the development of Office SharePoint Server 2007, and we’re pleased that our customers can now have the confidence of knowing it has been approved through the DoD’s rigorous 5015.2 certification process.”

Microsoft utilized the SharePoint platform in meeting the DoD 5015.2 criteria, integrating Exchange Server 2007 and extending SharePoint Server 2007’s records management capabilities with an add-on pack that will be available free to customers later this year.

“While highly regulated industries such as financial services, utilities and pharmaceuticals have always had records retention requirements, changes in government regulations, such as the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, will have an impact on companies across the board as they realize the need to implement records management to address new electronic discovery requirements,” said Kenneth Chin, research vice president at Gartner Inc. “Gartner recommends that enterprises use the DOD 5015.2 standard as a key requirement when acquiring any records management product, along with consideration of local standards.” ...

Source: Microsoft.com

Track Regulatory Compliance From Within Microsoft Office 2007

Microsoft Office 2007 users have a new way to track regulatory compliance -- from directly within the comfortable confines of Office.

Approva announced that its BizRights application now has Office Business Application (OBA) capabilities, meaning that users can perform compliance activities such as monitoring, analysis and auditing from within familiar applications like SharePoint Server, Outlook, Excel and InfoPath.

Source: adtmag.com

SharePoint Fuels Chevron Efficiency Project

Very good customer example of how SharePoint and Microsoft's ECM capability in general ...

... Two years ago, oil company Chevron Corp. noticed an alarming trend: Employees were creating digital files such as emails so quickly that the amount of such data was growing at 60% a year.

The explosion of these office documents -- not including the technical data that Chevron gets from its refineries -- produced several ill effects. Besides the cost of buying new storage systems, Chevron's employees were spending between 1½ to three days a month just searching for the correct information they needed to do their jobs, taking a toll on productivity, the company found.

"We haven't adequately managed all our information," says Lynn Chou, Chevron's general manager of global technology and strategy, adding that the 59,000-person company processes one million emails a day. "There's been a digital tidal wave."

To date, the San Ramon, Calif., company estimates it has amassed 1,250 terabytes of corporate office data such as emails, word-processing documents, spreadsheets, photos and video files. (Each terabyte is equivalent to the data of one million books). So it has launched a massive effort to reduce the flood, using a combination of technology tools and changes in employee work habits. ...

... Chevron's system will require new office documents to be tagged according to their type and importance, such as noting whether the document is confidential, classified or just informational. As a result, the company expects to delete some documents of lesser importance as soon as 90 days after creation. Employees will also be encouraged to work using SharePoint, rather than simply the Microsoft Office applications that they're used to. ...

source : Wallstreet Journal

The Final Candidate : SharePoint Review and evaluation articles

Very thorough approach to the evaluation of SharePoint in relation to Content Management. Almost on a weekly basis they publish an article on a specific topic of SharePoint.

Technologies & Products

This section will detail the "ingredients" that are required and available to compose modern content solutions. The concept behind the approach we have taken at The Final Candidate is simple: a platform that centrally provides access to assets and all kinds of content reduces the administrative workload significantly. And a mainstream workflow technology, also anchored in this platform, allows to replace simple automation and scripts in order to gain significant efficiency improvements. But another major benefit of utilizing such a platform is that the vendors that provide the product components to extend the platform can now focus on their core strength and the value they can add with their offerings, instead of reinventing common wheels.

We at The Final Candidate have been testing the new SharePoint release intensely since its release in November 2006 and have good reasons to believe that it will achieve significant adoption within the year.

We will start this section with an overview of the SharePoint platform. On a weekly basis we'll publish articles on the following areas, which we consider most important as a platform:

1. Architecture & Scalability
2. Workflow
3. Metadata and Version Control of Assets
4. Administration & Maintenance new!
5. Security Concepts
6. User Experience

After covering SharePoint we will start to publish evaluations of product components that add core functionality and value to the platform.

Source: The Final Candidate

The consolidation in the ECM market continues : Tridion to be acquired by SDL

Tridion is (still) a strong player in the Dutch Web Content Management market. I say (still) because history has tought us that in software land acquisitions and the related merger/consolidation of technologies, strategies and roadmaps is often not doing an individual product any good ...

Tridion to be acquired by SDL International

Combination creates Global Web Content Management solution

Tridion, a leading global provider of Web Content Management (WCM) software solutions, announced today it has signed an agreement to be acquired by SDL International, the leading provider of Global Information Management (GIM) solutions for €69 million. The acquisition is expected to close within the second quarter and remains subject to conditions, including SDL shareholder approval and a successful share issue by SDL to fund the acquisition.

The combination of Tridion and SDL will deliver the industry’s most comprehensive Global Web Content Management solution for communicating with multiple target audiences on a global basis. Tridion’s market leading Web Content Management system, combined with SDL’s Global Information Management technology delivers a seamless solution that enables organizations to create and translate content once, and re-use it across all web requirements in corporate communication, marketing, sales and customer service or support in any language. By providing both award-winning technology and services, the combination of Tridion and SDL will offer multinational organizations a total solution to compete in today’s global economy. ...

Source: Tridion.com

EMC Announces Availability of Integrated Enterprise Content Management Support for Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007

EMC published a press release yesterday on the immediate availability of 2 solutions integrating EMC Document with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007:

... EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced the immediate availability of two key enterprise content management (ECM) solutions aimed at providing seamless integration between EMC Documentum software and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. With these new products, EMC Documentum augments and extends Office SharePoint Server 2007 by providing a single source for integrated ECM capabilities that enable archiving, records management, business process management, imaging and classification.

With EMC Documentum Archive Services for SharePoint software, customers gain access to an enterprise infrastructure for centralized control of content that has been created and managed in SharePoint Server 2007. EMC Documentum Content Services for SharePoint is a set of ASP.Net Web Parts allowing access to the Documentum Content Server through the SharePoint Server 2007 interface. By integrating SharePoint Server 2007 knowledge worker applications with Documentum's enterprise-class ECM infrastructure, customers can better satisfy their requirements for information compliance, security and business process support – while leveraging the ease of use of the SharePoint Server 2007 environment. ...

... Content Services for SharePoint software exposes key Documentum functionality in the SharePoint Server 2007 interface, including the ability to:

• Search for content across the Documentum repository, and monitor and subscribe to critical documents·
• Direct access to the Documentum Inbox, QuickFlows and the Business Process Management System·
• Manage document lifecycles, and support virtual documents

With Archive Services for SharePoint, customers are now able to:

• Archive based on metadata or events·
• Leverage shortcuts, which archive content to Documentum while leaving a link behind in SharePoint Server 2007·
• Utilize mass transfer capabilities to move documents from SharePoint Server 2007 to Documentum·
• Transfer content from SharePoint Server 2007 to Documentum while retaining all rich document properties and metadata ...

More at source : EMC.com

Kudos: Bart Wessels

ECM Industry Watch: ECM Innovation

Interesting and very valid view on the ECM market and what moves it. I do not fully agree that Open Source is the only innovator in this space. I would say that Microsoft's push to commoditise ECM can certainly be seen as part of that; it requires creativity to say the least of all players in this field ...

There are interesting challenges ahead for all of us. As Gartner has pointed out, the penetration of content management in enterprises today is only a fraction of the potential in organizations today. Whether it is Forrester’s ECM for the masses or Gartner’s basic content services, ECM will need to get simpler and more integrated with a new generation of software services. Web 2.0 has had massive impact on content and all its innovation has been driven by open source. All the ECM vendors should rise to the change of creating a viable standard to do for ECM what SQL has done for databases.

Link to ECM Innovation

2007 Office System Document: Compliance Features in the 2007 Microsoft Office System

This white paper describes compliance-related features and extensibility opportunities within the 2007 Microsoft Office system that can assist you to meet the demands of regulatory compliance.

Link to 2007 Office System Document: Compliance Features in the 2007 Microsoft Office System

Status update re: DoD 5015.2 certification for MOSS 2007

Lawrence Liu of the Microsoft SharePoint team gives an overbiew of the status of the DoD 5015.2 certification for SharePoint. This is an important step for the Microsoft platform to provide full swing Records Management ...

Based on the growing number of questions about DoD 5015.2 certification that I've seen in the SharePoint community and heard from customers over the past few weeks, it's obvious that many people missed the announcement that had been posted on the Records Management Team Blog back in November. In summary:

Microsoft is working on a Records Center Add-on Pack for Office SharePoint Server which will provide the additional functionality to meet the DoD 5015.2 criteria.  The add-on pack will be freely available to all customers with Office SharePoint Server 2007, so anyone can take advantage of the new features. 

Microsoft is slotted to take the DoD 5015.2 certification test on May 14, 2007 and we plan to release the add-on pack shortly after the certification process is complete. 

I'm very pleased to confirm that we are on track with our preparations to meet the May 14 testing date. While we are confident about achieving this important certification, we cannot commit to a final release date for the "Add-on Pack" until after the testing date. Rest assured that we will make an announcement and provide more details as soon as we can. We appreciate your support and thank you for your patience.

 

<Lawrence />

Link to Status update re: DoD 5015.2 certification for MOSS 2007

Impact of Sharepoint on ECM

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 continues to be an important element in today's Enterprise Content Management Discussions. The weblog of the AIIM refered to a meeting in which Industry Analyst Dan Elam gave his take on the impact of SharePoint. It's a ... pretty big actually:

At Friday's meeting of the North American Advisory Trade Group, industry analyst Dan Elam shared his perspectives (and those of AIIM's Emerging Technology Advisory Group) relative to the impact of MOSS on the ECM industry.

Among his conclusions:

• Will educated users more quickly
• Significantly change VAR landscape(especially for vertical)
• Bring ECM to the SMB market
• Confuse the customer base
• 2Q07 and 3Q07 will be exceptionally hard on traditional vendors as customers delay decisions
• FileNet/IBM and Hummingbird/OpenText mergers are also causing customers to wait and see what happens
• Simultaneous Vista, Sharepoint, Exchange, Office upgrades putting pressure on IT and stretching resources
• A key opportunity: Federal rules of evidence changes have Legal pushing for ECM

Link to Impact of Sharepoint on ECM

SharePoint Server 2007 Presentations: Enterprise Search Deep Dives

Enterprise Search is a very important and complex topic in and part of the whole Information Lifecycle in an organisation. From a Microsoft perspective Microsoft Office SharePoint Server plays a crucial role in this process. The presentation in this link give you more insight ...

This download provides six detailed presentations on enterprise search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Link to SharePoint Server 2007 Presentations: Enterprise Search Deep Dives

Forrester: Microsoft's 2007 Enterprise Content Management Platform

Microsoft's enterprise content management (ECM) support in Office SharePoint Server 2007 represents the vendor's formal entry as an ECM platform provider. No longer focused solely on document collaboration, SharePoint Server 2007 provides a single environment for collaborative document management, Web content management, records management, workflow, and eForms support. But Microsoft is not a single source provider for all ECM needs. Information and knowledge management professionals should look at Microsoft Office as a platform for their business content initiatives and be patient while Microsoft matures its ECM capabilities to meet enterprise needs.

Link to Microsoft's 2007 Enterprise Content Management Platform

Open Text to Deliver Regulated Documents Solution on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Platform

Second pressrelease on the Microsoft partnership by Open Text this month. Good stuff ...

... Open Text(tm) Corporation (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC), the world's largest independent provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software and solutions, said today it will introduce a new solution for life sciences companies that manages regulated documents on proposed new drugs or medical devices in a controlled environment built on the 2007 Microsoft Office system. ...

Link to Open Text to Deliver Regulated Documents Solution on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Platform

Open Text Introduces First U.S. Department of Defense-Certified Records Management Solution For Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Very good to see partnerships with other large ISV's come to life. Microsoft is also in the process of certifying MOSS 2007 for DOD 5015.2 by the way ...

... Open Text(tm) Corporation (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC), the largest independent provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software and solutions, today announced another "first" in its continued leadership in delivering solutions with Microsoft: The company is the first to receive records management certification with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 under the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2 certification program. With Open Text's introduction of the new offering in early March, the (...more) ...

Link to Open Text Introduces First U.S. Department of Defense-Certified Records Management Solution For Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

eWeek gives Microsoft SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 an Analyst Choice Award

After Michael Sampson, now also eWeek brings it's review of MOSS 2007. Article gives you a good overview of MOSS 2007 ...

SharePoint Server 2007 Is an (Able) Jack of All Trades

... When a product attempts to combine the functionality of many applications into one overarching platform, it's inevitable that clichés about kitchen sinks and Swiss Army knives will pop up. And you'll usually hear that these products can do many things but no one thing well.

With Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server 2007, many of the Swiss Army knife clichés do apply. Microsoft has combined a wide variety of enterprise Web application functionality into this single platform. Whether your business needs a portal, Web content management, document management, team collaboration, forms-based BPM (business process management), or records and rights management application, SharePoint Server 2007 is Microsoft's offered solution.

But while Microsoft may be putting all of its eggs in one basket (there go those clichés again), it's not the case that SharePoint Server doesn't do any one thing particularly well.

Yes, when it comes to high-level enterprise functionality, some areas of SharePoint Server 2007 come up short when compared to dedicated enterprise products. This is especially true when it comes to functions like document management, Web content management and BPM.

But SharePoint Server 2007 does many things very well, particularly where usability, manageability and interactive collaboration are concerned.

Most importantly—and the reason for which eWEEK Labs has given the platform an Analyst's Choice award—SharePoint Server 2007 is the best product we've seen for getting a capable and feature-rich enterprise Web platform up and running quickly. ...

Read on : eWeek.com

Guy Greece on the Open Text IT Analyst day and the role of SharePoint : Adjusting to the New Order

Guy Greece, analyst at Burton group, has visited the IT Analyst day of Open Text. Apparently there was a lot of talk about .... SharePoint ....

Based on my personal experience, which is limited to the Dutch marketplace, I can tell you that MOSS 2007 has huge momentum. We have dozens of PoC's and implementation going on at the moment and more to come as Guy confirms in his take on SharePoint's role today and in the near future ...

... SharePoint has changed the ECM market....

... Open Text is absolutely right: SharePoint has changed the ECM market. It won't happen overnight -- this year will be a year of mental adjustment, as enterprises start to realize just what SharePoint 2007 offers. Many MOSS/WSS 2007 implementations won't take place in 2007, but rather next year and beyond ...

Link to Open Text: Adjusting to the New Order

Butler predicts price war ECM market

Michiel Hazen works for TamTam, a Microsoft partner in The Netherlands. Over on his blog I came across a nice perspective by Butler Group on ECM and especially the role that Microsoft SharePoint will play in this field : "deployments of SharePoint will exceed all expectations". I challenge their view on the uptake of Windows Vista and Office 2007, but do agree that it will take some time before this becomes mainstream.

According to Butler Group 2007 could well be the year a price war amongst Enterprise Content Management vendors is started by Microsoft:

While Microsoft will be disappointed with the number of enterprise deployments of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 during the coming year, deployments of SharePoint-based solutions will exceed all expectations. Microsoft's apparent commoditisation of the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market could well start a price war amongst established vendors as they try to up-sell and compete with Microsoft. Those vendors with large ECM product portfolios will consider discounting their Document and Records Management modules in the hope of securing more business down-the-line. Consumer-oriented Internet- and Web-based technologies will continue to infiltrate the workplace, and these will cause many CIOs to re-think their information worker strategies.

Michiel Hazen's blog

Records Managers — Save Your Jobs

Interesting point of view ...

As records management and autoclassification technologies automate and evolve, records managers question if they have a future. Will such a position be necessary in an automated world? Can a records manager continue to add value to an organization? Despite the notion that records managers are a dying breed, those who hold this position currently can prove their value by showcasing their knowledge of compliance regulations, a businessperson's utilization of information, the technologies that enforce information retention, and their ability to bring those three things together in execution.

Link to Records Managers — Save Your Jobs

Merido Integrates Office 2007, Delivers Records Management

Meridio is yet another strong an loyal Microsoft partner in the ECM field ...

Meridio’s version 5 of their enterprise document and records management solution, leverages the Microsoft Office 2007 components including SharePoint, integrates with Exchange Server 2007, and runs on Windows Vista.Their aim is to deliver comprehensive electronic governance solutions on Microsoft’s’ .NET foundation products, and this is just so on time with Redmond’s recent mega product release announcements.

Link to Merido Integrates Office 2007, Delivers Records Management

This is Rich, Vignette Loves SharePoint Too

This was the first post I read this morning, starting up my RSS reader ... This is how a good day starts :-)

Vignette, another yet un-acquired provider of Enterprise CMS solutions, has announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft to deliver media solutions on the Microsoft platform. They’re delivering rich media — video, audio, flash, VOIP, and more — to any Internet-enabled device including Windows-based PCs, Windows Mobile, set-top boxes and the XBox 360 console. Right to your home, here comes Microsoft rich media via Vignette.

Link to This is Rich, Vignette Loves SharePoint Too

Records Management for MOSS, DoD 5015.2 Certification

... Microsoft have decided to pursue Department of Defense 5015 Chapter 2 (5015.2) certification for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. The move rings logical-like. MOSS needs this key records management cert to stand competitive in the GOV arena, where other Enterprise CMS competitors such as Xythos and Stellent are making headway. ...

Source: CMSWire

The article also includes some good references to Microsoft ECM information ...

Iron Mountain and Microsoft Collaborate to Solve Companies' E-Records Management Challenges

Iron Mountain and Microsoft announced a partnership on ECM this week. SharePoint, SharePoint, SharePoint ;-)

Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE:IRM) today announced plans to collaborate with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and capitalize on Microsoft's forthcoming 2007 Microsoft® Office system platform to help organizations address the e-records management challenges they face in connection with compliance and litigation.

In marrying Iron Mountain's expertise in records management policy, process, and archiving with Microsoft's commonly-used office and collaboration platform technologies, the two companies intend to build a policy-based, lifecycle e-records management solution that will be practical and cost effective. The Microsoft-Iron Mountain collaboration is expected to benefit customers in three key ways:

• Native records classification and retention capabilities. Drawing on enhancements in Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007, customers would be able to easily apply records classification and retention policies to documents, as users go about their normal computing activities.
• Cost-effective, long-term e-records archiving capabilities. As information grows in volume or becomes less frequently accessed, businesses would be able to automatically archive these records from SharePoint Server 2007 and Exchange Server to Iron Mountain's hosted digital archive, where the retention policies will be consistently administered.
• Compliant eRecords management policies and process. Iron Mountain Consulting services would help each customer create its own policy, process and compliant records management program that can be specifically implemented through Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007.

Source : IronMountain.com

David Ferris : ECM in MS Office 2007

Very short take on Microsoft's ECM Solution in Microsoft Office System 2007 :

Microsoft is emphasizing the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) features in Office 2007.

Highlights:

• Goal is to reduce the TCO and complexity of ECM.
• Document-wide search.
• Integrated rights management (especially Excel, to deal with multiple versions of the truth).
• Works across all Office applications.
• Integrated business intelligence tools, to help one make sense of data.
• Custom and out-of-the-box workflows.
• Extensible infrastructure.
• Allow users to easily collaborate, while applying top-down ECM rules.
• InfoPath 2007 is used for forms design and support. It will generate Web-based forms automatically.

Hitherto, third parties have focused on this area. With Office 2007, Microsoft is clearly validating ECM technology and saying it needs to be everywhere. Overall, this will stimulate the ECM market. It's not yet clear whether this will be good, or bad, for established ECM vendors.

Source:  blog.ferris.com

I would say this is good for established ECM vendors. Microsoft addresses a different market or at least a much broader audience (potentially all end-users). Microsoft does not intend to go into the "depth and breadth" of pureplay ECM solutions.

Update :
The list that David produced contains some inacuracies :
Integrated Rights Manangement for Excel ? Rights Management is to protect information and not to do stuff like versioning. Both functions are ofcourse also standard in Office System.

Reportage: Microsoft Portal Event van 12 oktober j.l.

Op Frankwatching een uitgebriedverslag van het Microsoft Portal event o.a. collega's Jurrien de Haan en Ernst-Jan Stigter gaven acte de presence :

Gistermiddag vond in Amstelveen het Microsoft Portal Event plaats. Microsoft Nederland, Macaw en e-office gaven een update over de mogelijkheden van het nieuwe SharePoint 2007. Onder leiding van de altijd weer verrassende dagvoorzitter George Parker kregen we updates van Microsoft zelf en een tweetal interessante praktijkcases: het nieuwe intranet van Intervet International (een veterinair-farmaceutisch bedrijf) en het Kantoor van de toekomst, een geïntegreerd digitaal dossier via internet, extranet en intranet, van BDO CampsObers (Accountants & Adviseurs).Microsoft: Introductie SharePoint 2007  Zoals gewoonlijk wordt het Microsoft Portal Event voorafgegaan door een speciale presessie voor iedereen die nog geen ervaring heeft met Sharepoint 2007. 

Lees meer op www.frankwatching.com

Guy Creese : EMC's Getting Out of the Way of the SharePoint Train

Guy Creese is an analyst at Burton Group who focusses on Enterprise Content Management. I came across his blog through a post by Peter O"Kelly, one of his colleagues. I was immediately triggered by the title of the post. "The SharePoint Train" surely says it all. SharePoint has great momentum and huge adoption in the enterprise. Addressing solution area's such as Enterprise Content Management with such an impressive partner eco system makes Microsoft simply an awesome company to work for :-).

Guy gives some good insights as to why the "SharePoint Train"is not a negative phenomanen, but the forces of EMC Documentum and Microsoft SharePoint combined bring in fact a unique and very powerful solution :

• ...Users will be able to use the Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007 user interfaces as ways to put content into the Documentum repository. All of a sudden, users -- especially casual users -- won't have to go to Documentum training to use the Documentum system.
• EMC Documentum will be creating a set of Web Parts to integrate search, workflow, and content between Documentum and SharePoint.
• There are two deployment options. Companies can use the Office/SharePoint UI to put documents into Documentum only, or can put documents into both SharePoint and Documentum. ...

Guy's post also has a nice closing paragraph promise for the near future. Temptive to do some highlighting. I look forward to your report Guy ...

I'm currently writing a Burton Group report on the impact of Office/SharePoint 2007 within the ECM space. Since it's a work in progress I haven't yet figured out everything I'm going to say. But certainly one finding will be that it's clear that the Microsoft Office/SharePoint 2007 train is roaring down the tracks, and ECM vendors will be trying to figure out how they can jump on the train -- or at least leap out of the way.

Read more : Guy Creese : Pattern_finder

EMC and Microsoft Form New Enterprise Content Management Alliance, Extend Microsoft Office SharePoint Server With Content, Compliance and Archive Solutions

Very good announcement today. EMC and Microsoft form a new alliance in the ECM field. This and the other partners in ECM(Interworven,Filenet/IBM, Hummingbird, Open Text) combined are a powerful major statement about Microsoft's intentions and position in Enterprise Content Management. If someone is still questioning Microsoft's platform, the role of SharePoint Server and the partner eco system, think again ...

HOPKINTON, Mass., and REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 3, 2006 — EMC Corporation and Microsoft Corp. today announced a new enterprise content management (ECM) alliance aimed at helping to enable organizations to become People-Ready with their compliance, regulatory and other critical business data. This alliance enables information workers to take advantage of the Microsoft^® tools and applications they use every day to access and contribute to the critical business processes available in their ECM infrastructure. As part of this strategic alliance, EMC will introduce a set of new content and archiving products that enable tighter integration between the industry-leading EMC Documentum ECM platform and Microsoft solutions and platform technologies. This announcement builds on the existing EMC and Microsoft alliance. (The previous announcement about their relationship is available at http://www.emc.com/news/emc_releases/showRelease.jsp?id=4095).

EMC will bring to market new solutions that seamlessly integrate the EMC Documentum platform with multiple Microsoft solutions and platform technologies including Microsoft Office SharePoint^® Server 2007, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, SQL Server™ 2005 and enterprise search solutions. Microsoft provides content management capabilities in SharePoint Server 2007 today. With this new alliance SharePoint users can take advantage of the advanced ECM capabilities of the Documentum platform. Information workers will be able to access the Documentum platform natively from within Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the Microsoft Office system, enabling users to leverage the power of the Documentum platform in areas such as advanced records management, business process management, imaging and rich media from their preferred Microsoft applications.

“In response to demand from our mutual customers, Microsoft and EMC are working together to help enable customers to take advantage of the ECM capabilities across Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the EMC Documentum technologies,” said Kurt DelBene, vice president of the Office Business Platform Group at Microsoft. “By expanding on the rich integration between Documentum and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, we are offering customers more choice and control over the management of their business information.”

“For years, customers have been demanding seamless integration of their working environments with enterprise-level content management capabilities such as content classification, retention, workflow and security,” said Balaji Yelamanchili, senior vice president and general manager of Content Management & Archiving at EMC Corporation. “Today’s announcement makes this integration possible and is yet another milestone in EMC and Microsoft’s collaborative efforts to deliver enterprise-class solutions that address customers’ most critical business information requirements.”

“At Dow Corning, we’re a large EMC Documentum customer with approximately 150 content management applications across our organization and a premier Microsoft customer,” said Ann-Marie Horcher, senior specialist at Dow Corning Corp. “We’re pleased to see EMC working closely with Microsoft to integrate its content management capabilities directly into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. We believe this is the right strategic direction, as the success of content management is ultimately determined by our end users’ ability to access the content and capabilities necessary to meet their business needs using familiar applications.” ...

Read more : Microsoft PressPass

Nieuwe Whitepapers op Microsoft.nl

2 Nieuwe whitepapers op de Microsoft nl site over belangrijke onderwerpen war veel Nederlandse (en ook buitenlandse) bedrijven mee worstelen : wet- en regelgeving en Enterprise Content Management :

• Download de white paper 'Naleving van wet- en regelgeving met spreadsheets in Microsoft Office System 2007' 
  Vanwege het gebruiksgemak, flexibiliteit en functionaliteit ondersteunen spreadsheets veel essentiële bedrijfsfuncties. In dit document leest u alles over de mogelijkheden van spreadsheets en spreadsheet-frameworks.
  
• Download de white paper 'Enterprise Content Management, de route naar brede acceptatie' 
  Enterprise Content Management (ECM) zorgt ervoor dat uw bedrijf zich onderscheidt door het creëren en beschermen van intellectueel kapitaal. In dit document kunt u lezen over de mogelijkheden van ECM.