The Convergence of Content Management, Search and Collaboration

The Convergence of Content Management, Search and Collaboration

Last week, I attended the Forrester IT Forum, which focused on a variety of IT trends, from knowledge management to security to IT infrastructure needs. Forrester was able to bring in some great speakers from very large organizations such as BP, Levi Straus, the National Football League and more. I attended most of the breakout sessions on knowledge management, discovery and collaboration.

One of the most interesting talks for me was given by Matt Brown of Forrester, who spoke of the recent convergence of buying habits for content management, search and collaboration. His recent study showed that organizations are no longer buying and implementing these three technologies as separate projects but combining them into a larger whole. Almost 18 percent of organizations are buying all three at the same time. He said it doesn’t mean they are buying one solution, just that the software is being strategically outlined, purchased and implemented as a combined solution.

At the end of the day it seems like common sense, yet so many organizations don’t follow this. If you purchase an ECM system, don’t you want to be able to search the data? If you are implementing a new social network technology, you probably want it to connect into your security groups that may be stored in the ECM system. I have to agree with Brown that organizations with an overarching strategy for creating, managing and finding content are the most successful.

I also found it interesting in that only a few years ago, search was the new player. As Brown positioned it, in 2000 organizations were implementing knowledge management capabilities through portals, ECM, office productivity and collaboration tools. Then around 2005 search entered the mix as being a must for any organization pushing knowledge management and information sharing capabilities in new directions. Now about four years later, the latest disruption has come from social software – wikis, blogs, social networks, etc.

As Brown pointed out, the need for collaboration and knowledge sharing is increasing and it is the supporting tools and infrastructure that are evolving. The question that remains then is what will the technology infrastructure to support these trends look like? Will email remain the significant form of communication or will wikis take its place? Will portals become dinosaur technology, replaced with more dynamic and search-based applications? Only time will tell. One thing is certain though – as long as information creation is on the rise, the need for finding and accessing will continue to grow.

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Discussion

May 28th, 2009, at 2:16 am # Jon Marks wrote:
Yes, it does seem like common sense. Nothing worse than buying 3 separate products that don’t play nicely with one another and require an enormous amount of integration.

But, on the other hand, how does one go about procuring all 3 together? Do you only approach vendors that provide everything? Or should the RFP require a consortium of vendors/systems integrators teaming up to provide the solution. Both of these feel like a risky big bang strategy that could present a whole new class of risk. I’ve always been a fan of taking little steps as opposed to building and lauching a monolith. This strategy sounds a bit like the latter.

Thoughts?
Jon
May 29th, 2009, at 8:11 am # Stacy Monarko wrote:
There is always a tradeoff when purchasing large enterprise applications. You can start off small and work in pieces but the risk is that none of the systems integrated get fully exploited nor do separate systems place nice together. I agree that purchasing all three for an enterprise wide solution may be too daunting. However, if one is building a competitor intelligence portal, a partner extranet site or even eDiscovery application it is very doable and desirable to consider all three when purchasing and deploying.

Another thing I keep in mind is in terms of ECM and search, many organizations are moving to their 2nd or 3rd generation solution. This means the requirements are more strict and the business owners know what they want and what they don’t want. Often organizations have gone through the RFP before making the next one a little less daunting.

I never said buying or integrating all three would be easy; however, I do believe that if an organization wants to position themselves for the most success they need to at least consider their requirements for all three.

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