Technology Watch

Usually I talk about WCM on its own, but I wanted to further explore the topic of digital asset management (DAM) projects. And here is why: DAM remains one of the technologies that is most frequently integrated with WCM. Where there's text/data/info on the web, there are most likely images and videos associated with that information. DAM is prone to common implementation mistakes that can make your project seem like a complete and utter waste of money. But knowledge is power. Therefore, I'll outline some of the most common DAM project mistakes that that you can avoid them or, at least, expect them and be able to handle them gracefully.

There are many different kinds of analytics in today's world of technology and information management: web analytics, predictive analytics, social analytics, etc. If you work closely with a web CMS or an ECM system, you have probably run into the notion of content analytics. But chances are good that no one ever bothered to explain what it is exactly and how one uses it.

The world of enterprise content technologies has always been difficult to decipher on its own, let alone with all the acronyms flying around. Let's talk about two of them today: CXM (or CEM) and WCM (or WCXM, or WEM for some).Many organizations nowadays are paying heightened attention to the matters of CXM (Customer Experience Management), and not only because it is one of the buzziest acronyms in the industry. It is also because the crucial importance of retaining and acquiring customers in the impatient and fast-moving internet age is being realized more fully.

In Part 1, I started discussing some of the most common reasons why content management system (CMS) projects fail. We covered change management, buying the wrong CMS, and lack of implementation resources. Onward!

CMS projects fail. The majority don't go according to the plan. Very few are representative of a truly successful web content and experience management system implementation. Others just never take off.The software has been purchased, training conducted, iterations started, but there's still nothing to show to the executive sponsors. A year goes by, and frustrations build up. Integrators come and go, and consultants are parachuted in to put out fires. Internally, the organization loses hope of ever seeing any useful output from the CMS and declares it dead. Champagne, anyone?

Digital asset management (DAM) and web content management (WCM) have a long history together: the partners, the rivals, surviving the big divide between the two, and crashing in unison like two waves in the era of converging enterprise technologies.

Investment in any enterprise technology is a big financial undertaking for most organizations, and web content management is no exception. Very often web CMS selection and implementation projects start when a lot of money has already been spent on a content management system that is no longer working (or has never worked) for the organization and its business goals. It's not an easy stroll down memory lane when you have to convince the executive echelon you need more money, yet again, for a different CMS.

When I think of digital publishing over the next year and beyond, I see three trends dominating the landscape: mobility, ubiquity, and touchability. User-generated content (UGC), social sharing, and social advertising are replacing the old-world concepts of traditional advertising. Your technology (today or tomorrow) should be able to support this paradigm shift.

You may have heard about WEM. W and M stand for "web" and "management," respectively, while E refers to "engagement" or "experience," depending on who's talking. Many WCM (web content management) folks love the new acronym and declare WEM to be the next WCM.Vendors are especially excited that Product X is no longer a WCM offering but a WEM suite now. But you should be forewarned that in the quest for improving presentation management, vendors are soft-pedaling many core CMS concepts that haven't really seen a lot of innovation in recent times. This, too, could impact your website visitor experience.

The term "cloud computing" has become ubiquitous in the IT world. It has stretched out into the rest of the business world too, becoming one of the hottest buzzwords in recent memory. Some believe with a passion that all IT and data will ultimately reside in "the cloud." Others take a more nuanced view.

No discussion on content management product selection is complete before the topic of "suites" versus "best of breed" comes up. Almost everyone wants to know which route they should take. Unfortunately, it is seldom as simple as choosing one route over the other. It's one of those questions that unfortunately requires the far less satisfying response: "It depends ..."

In many end-user organizations, software maintenance fees make up the bulk of the yearly IT budget. This is hardly surprising when vendors typically like to calculate maintenance contracts on the basis of 20% of list pricing per annum, in perpetuity. So for example, on a $1 million software deal (list price), you will pay $200,000 per year in ongoing fees. Even if you negotiate the initial licensing costs down to $500,000, you will still pay $200,000 per year in maintenance fees. This adds up to a lot of money. And just as these fees often make up the bulk of most firms' yearly IT expenditure, so too do they make up the bulk of many software vendors revenues.

I once watched a television documentary about a terrible affliction called narcolepsy. In the program, people kept falling asleep, literally midsentence. During a support group meeting for sufferers, it was deemed necessary to have more than one person keep the meeting minutes ... just in case. And though my heart really did go out to those poor souls, I could not help but wonder what would happen if someone raised the topic of Records Management (RM).

A few months ago, Autonomy announced its plans to acquire CA's (formerly Computer Associates) Information Governance assets. This was a surprising acquisition from two angles: first that CA saw so little value in this division that the company decided to dump it, and secondly that Autonomy, which has overlapping technologies, felt the need to buy still more overlapping technologies.

Managing a large amount of content can be difficult to do effectively; however, the only way it can be done is by zoning in on a particular goal or task. Measuring success in such projects is as much a matter of guesswork and perspective than of anything terribly scientific or rigorous.

By most people's measures and expectations, SharePoint in its 2010 guise will exceed all previous milestones and targets. As for me, I have my doubts.

In September, Adobe Systems, Inc. shook up more than one marketplace when it announced its acquisition of web analytics vendor Omniture, Inc.

I don't know of a single major enterprise that isn't experimenting with social computing behind the firewall. Every one of those organizations is also surely trying to figure out the best way to obtain business value at a time when "Enterprise 2.0 best practices" seem very circumstantial. I'll propose a simple way to look at the challenge: The things you need to do for successful social computing within the enterprise are the exact same things you need to do to build an effective intranet (and vice versa).

Can social software consistently bring real ROI?

In a January memorandum titled "Transparency and Open Government" (http://tinyurl.com/openg), President Barack Obama called for greater transparency in making information available online as well as more citizen participation in federal websites. Experience from the private sector suggests that executing on a strategy of greater transparency combined with public participation will be difficult. Technology vendors talk a good game about offering a unified solution to this challenge, but their architectures have not caught up with their marketing here.

The cloud seems to be manna to most analysts, investors, and vendors these days. As my colleague Alan Pelz-Sharpe writes, "It's a great term, ‘Cloud Computing,' since it conjures up visions of an invisible internet—an ether-like zone in the sky where computing power and storage is unfettered by the petty restrictions of boxes, cables, and technicians. Cloud computing sounds fluffy, it sounds cool, it sounds limitless, it sounds like the future."

Blogging has always been controversial, but the newest critique argues that you should pursue a leaner, sexier alternative: "microblogging." Microblogging can take many forms on the public internet or within the firewall. You can microblog most famously via Twitter "Tweets," Facebook status messages, or various other similar services.

A significant segment of the enterprise social software landscape has gone comparatively under-reported: white label community services. These commercial offerings allow companies to use their platforms to create branded online communities. They employ a mixture of social applications—discussion, blogs, podcasting, profiles, tagging, rating, and so on—to get customers, partners, and employees interacting.