Microsoft SharePoint and the Future of ECM Presentation to The First Annual AIIM Western Regional Conference November 2, 2007 Content + Context = Collaboration TM
Click to edit Master title styleMicrosoft SharePoint and the
Future of ECM
Presentation to
The First Annual AIIM Western
Regional ConferenceNovember 2, 2007
Content + Context = CollaborationTM
Agenda
1. Introduction (5 minutes)
2. History of ECM, History of SharePoint and Microsoft‟s
Approach to ECM (15 minutes)
3. The Impact of SharePoint on the ECM Market (15 minutes)
4. Conclusions and Considerations (15 minutes)
5. Questions and Wrap Up (10 minutes)
About C3 Associates
• Calgary-based professional services firm focused
exclusively on ECM
• Vendor independent
• Mission: Help organizations maximize their
investments in ECM
• Focus: Align ECM projects with organizational
objectives
• Means: Connect top-notch ECM professionals with
clients ready to succeed with ECM
The Bottom Line
1. SharePoint is a big deal
2. SharePoint really is an ECM
application
3. There is room for everyone:
Traditional ECM applications will
survive and thrive
The Case for ECM
ECM – The Story So Far
The Business Problem:
• The rise of the knowledge worker shifted the burden
for document creation to the end user
• Enabled by the desktop PC, this led to the explosive
growth of unstructured content
• Most organizations manage this unstructured content
poorly
• Leads to challenges in finding and re-using important
information, creates significant compliance risks
ECM – The Story So Far
The Records Management Problem:
1. Keeping what we need to keep
2. Not keeping what we don‟t need to keep
3. Knowing when we‟ve successfully achieved the first
two steps!
• This is even more challenging in the age of
electronic information and ad hoc collaboration
• “Email is the worst form of collaboration ever
invented except for all the others.”
ECM – The Story So Far
Deployment approaches vary:
• Departmental / point solutions
• Enterprise-wide rollout
• Often multiple tools
But the results are often the same:
• What works for one department doesn‟t work for
another
• Users find it difficult to use, often work around the
system
ECM – The Story So Far
• Strong business case, maturing software tools
should mean the “content chaos” problem is solved
and the paperless office is here, right?
• The problem: Usability
“This is a great tool so long as you don’t want to
put documents in and you don’t need to get
documents out.”
- An unnamed ECM user
A Brief History of
Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft SharePoint
• Collaborative web-based tool for sharing documents
and information across teams
• Microsoft positioning: ad hoc informal collaboration,
project-based and / or with a limited lifetime
• End user focus
“…users in your organization can easily create,
manage, and build their own collaborative Web sites
and make them available throughout the
organization.”
- www.microsoft.com/sharepoint
Microsoft SharePoint
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)
• “Team Sites”
• Document library, contact lists, calendar,
announcements, discussion forums
• Check-in, check-out, simple version control, email
alerts
• Full-text search within a site, sort-based metadata
search
• Free with Windows Server 2003
SharePoint as an ECM Tool
• The good news: There‟s a lot of demand for
SharePoint
• The bad news: There‟s a lot of demand for
SharePoint
• “Grassroots” nature (and the fact that it‟s free) leads
to rogue installs
• Users have a clear need to manage content but
rejected “traditional” ECM tools
• The challenge for information management
professionals: Channel the demand for content
management into a manageable structure
SharePoint as an ECM Tool
The Enterprise Content Management Continuum
Shared Drives &
“Single Source
of the Truth”
WSS 2003 Full-Feature ECM
The Evolution of SharePoint
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007
released in January 2007
• Major functional improvements:
• Scalability: MOSS 2007 behaves more like what we
expect an ECM system to behave like (e.g. Document
Centre model)
• Document level security
• Major & minor versions
• In-line metadata entry integrated with Office 2007
„ribbon‟ interface
• Embedded RM capabilities (DoD compliant)
The Evolution of SharePoint
• Major functional improvements (con‟t):
• Audit trails available in Office 2007
• OOTB workflows (e.g. document approval, records
declaration)
• Integrated web content management
• Extensible enterprise search tools
• „Roll-up‟ multiple document libraries into a single view
• Native blogs and wikis
• RSS feeds for list items and documents
The Evolution of SharePoint
The Enterprise Content Management Continuum
Shared Drives &
Email“Single Source
of the Truth”
WSS 2003
MOSS 2007
Full-Feature ECM
Building SharePoint into ECM
• Microsoft‟s target: mid-market, mass market
• MOSS 2007 forces us to think differently about how
we address user demands for content management
• SharePoint is more “Web 2.0” than centrally-
managed ECM applications; intended for end users
to create, configure and manage all on their own
• This sounds scary…but maybe it‟s an opportunity?
The Microsoft Approach
Goal #1 – Maximize Employee Productivity
• Trying to leverage „ownership‟ of the desktop by
enabling collaboration
• Feel that this is best done by allowing users to
collaborate on their own terms: decentralized and
unstructured
• “Most of the content created in a collaborative space
are NOT records” (Microsoft RM Team Blog, April 27, 2006)
• However, they do recognize the need to manage the
portion of collaborative content that are records
The Microsoft Approach
Goal #2 – Manage Records
• “Records Spaces” – for final, official copies of
information; managed by records managers
• Records are immutable, spaces designed for long
term storage and read-only access
• Basic Functionality:
• Create, apply and maintain a file plan, metadata
scheme and retention schedules
• Deal with hold orders
• Generate audit trails and reports
• A way to accept records declared in collaborative
spaces
The ECM Market
The ECM Market
• SharePoint accounted for $800 million in revenue for
Microsoft in FY2007
• Coexistence strategy: Most other ECM vendors
providing SharePoint integrations
• Microsoft dominates the desktop and collaboration
• Traditional ECM vendors focused on vertical
markets, compliance, records management
• Large SharePoint deployments starting (Miami Dade
County School District – 400,000 users)
The ECM Market
• The BIG QUESTION: Can SharePoint provide the
same functionality as existing ECM systems?
• Over time, yes, it probably can (but in some areas is
not ready for „prime time‟)
• Critical to understand business drivers for ECM
before making technology decisions
• Important to recognize that best practice in
SharePoint implementation is still developing
Conclusions and Considerations
Conclusions
1. SharePoint is not a silver bullet
• It will not solve all problems with regard to
collaboration, enterprise content management,
search, business intelligence, etc.
• Enables information workers, but business
processes and change management strategies
must be established before a deployment
• This is true of any ECM application, not just
SharePoint
Conclusions
2. SharePoint is a development platform
• Incredible flexibility
• Simple out of the box functionality not likely to meet
more than the most straightforward use cases
• Enterprise deployment requires developer expertise
to deploy, configure and support
• This is also true of other ECM systems (although
probably less so)
Conclusions
3. SharePoint deployments can be deceptively easy
• Basic collaboration requirements are well met by
SharePoint
• Relatively easy to get up and running
• Temptation to deploy without planning – This will
doom your deployment to failure
• SharePoint is constantly maturing: Microsoft
development, blogs and third-party development
Conclusions
4. There‟s room in the ECM market for everyone
• SharePoint is several years away from meeting
robust records management requirements
• Vertical applications in SharePoint still very
immature (e.g. drawing management, SOX
compliance)
• There‟s a reason analysts are raising forecasts for
traditional ECM vendors like Open Text
Implications for…
Existing ECM Customers
• Important to determine business case for MOSS:
What problem are you trying to solve?
If focus is compliance, RM, vertical application
integration (especially drawing management), most
likely to have success with traditional ECM
If focus is collaboration and shared drive
replacement, more likely to have success with
MOSS
• Most common scenario will be a hybrid approach
• Think about existing integrations (both home-
grown and vendor-supplied)
Implications for…
New ECM Customers
• Think about your existing infrastructure (Wintel /
SQL or not?)
• Think about your Office 2007 upgrade timeline
• Think about your organizational readiness for
ECM: Do you have a clear business case?
• Be flexible with any major SharePoint
implementation
• Be prepared to substantially revise your approach
if you stumble on your first try
Implications for…
ECM Practitioners
• Microsoft thinks differently about ECM than
traditional ECM vendors
• This approach creates unique challenges and
opportunities
• Recognize the need for SharePoint experts
(developers) to configure and customize the tool
to meet your unique needs
• Records managers, IT team, legal / compliance
team and business stakeholders must come
together to make the most of SharePoint
Implications for…
ECM Practitioners (con‟t)
• SharePoint is a collaboration tool that also has
records management capabilities
• User focus creates opportunities to identify and
manage records, but also leaves gaps
• Although SharePoint is end user focused,
planning, change management and training are
still critical
• MOSS is having a significant impact in the ECM
market and cannot be ignored
Resources
Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/default.aspx
Military Grade Compliance for SharePoint (DoD Compliance White Paper)
http://www.appliedis.com/Library/Military%20Grade%20Compliance%20for%20SharePoint%20vfwe
b.pdf
Online Guide – Planning Records Management in MOSS 2007
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/271017e8-7f23-4166-9501-
140ad2fc555d1033.mspx?mfr=true
Help and How-To For SharePoint
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/FX101211721033.aspx
Click to edit Master title styleThank You!
Greg Clark
403.863.5998
Blog: http://www.c3associates.com/blog
Content + Context = CollaborationTM