It would seem that one man's archive is another man's backup/journal/file system. This has not always been the case but these days we seem to overload the term 'archiving' way too much IMHO. In fact, the definition of an archive seems to be multidimensional; based on why you archive, how you archive or even where you archive from - I'd proffer that there is no right or wrong definition, just different ones... << MORE >>

KDiddy responded to my EMC World write-up with a list of questions that arose from attending my session, (it is never good when people leave your sessions with more questions that when they arrived…if I was thought provoking then it would be great but I think I’m just confusing!)<< MORE >>

Well let's face it, it wasn't me..."post a Blog entry every day". I didn't exactly pull that one off but here are some random thoughts that I do have time to put to paper given that I have four hours to kill in Las Vegas airport. Just in case you care, I don't gamble or drink and I hate people so Las Vegas is about the last place on earth I'd like to be. It is a good job that the good Lord invented Minnesota otherwise I'd be in the actual last place that I want to be ...<< MORE >>

The run up to EMC World is always hectic but I learned something new this year...when you are involved with a phenomena like SharePoint, the weeks before the conference are totally out of control. Anyway, here we go...wish me luck...<< MORE >>

When I have time to spare I love to spend time browsing other people’s Blogs; one of my usual browsing locations is the Big Men On Content Blog. Earlier this month they posted an interesting article which discusses a CMS Watch article about SharePoint vs. Exchange Public Folders...<< MORE >>

As I mentioned previously, we had an internal writer's summit a few weeks ago. One of the recurring topics that came up related to how to deliver ECM-related functionality in the brave new world. I'm busy enough trying to keep up with SharePoint and Compliance to dive head first in to the wonderful world of SaaS but I wanted to share some of the specific items that I thought were interesting...<< MORE >>

Someone asked me if it was possible to have a single page with links to just the "Integrating SharePoint with Traditional ECM Systems - Eight reference architectures" articles. I think that they were politely saying that they had no interest in my other articles...so this is it, alternatively, you can click here to filter by the relevant category. I'll try to make it "stick" to the top of the Blog...<< MORE >>

In this model the ECM system stores the only copy of the actual payload of an object, (the document, spreadsheet, image, etc.), however the object can be managed, consumed and delet.ed from within SharePoint..<< MORE >>

We had a writer’s workshop a couple of weeks ago here at EMC. It was a great idea; we had a one day summit for internal and external authors, bloggers, wiki contributors, journalists and other general media contributors. We spent one evening and the whole next day not just discussing the intricacies, trials and tribulations of writing but also discussing some of the new concepts that are affecting our industry...<< MORE >>

So unlike little old RefArch 6, this guy is the real deal. In this architecture we aggregate the actual content from a multitude of SharePoint sites. The content is transparently taken from SharePoint's control then stored and managed in a truly aggregated single location. In theory, there are a number of different ways of doing this...<< MORE >>

In the previous architectures we were trying to create a unified model so that an end user could simultaneously see content that resides in the SharePoint systems and also the traditional ECM systems. In this, (and the next), architecture we are going to directly deal with the SharePoint "silo sprawl" in the data center. I call this approach 'aggregation' not unification...<< MORE >>

Craig Le Clair from Forrester Research posted an interesting article last week. In it, he suggests that the upper limit on a SQL 5 installation running on a 64 bit architecture is about 500GB...<< MORE >>

SharePoint and traditional ECM solutions overlap. They both have a repository, they both provide library services, (view, check out/in, etc.), they both have clients, etc. How can we pretend that they are anything other than head-to-head competitors?<< MORE >>

In the previous reference architecture we unified SharePoint and the ECM system at the Web Part layer and provided a limited subset of functionality, specifically passive operations. There's no doubt that this "passive connectivity" provides a huge amount of value, uses a nice, familiar paradigm and can constitute a complete solution in some cases. However, there are many times when you need to be able to act more fully upon the content in the disparate systems rather than just browsing and viewing the documents...<< MORE >>

spent last week in Seattle at the SharePoint 2008 Conference. As a opportunity for me to attend sessions it sucked but for a good reason; I spent almost the entire conference talking to customers, partners, analysts, competitors & the Microsoft SharePoint team - it was...<< MORE >>

If you are lucky enough to have a ticket to the hottest show in town next week then I invite you to come along and hear me talk about the eight architectures...<< MORE >>

The objective of this fourth architecture is to create an environment where the end user is not aware of where an object actually resides. If the end user needs to see three documents in order for her to do her job then she should see all three documents in a single Web Part...<< MORE >>

Dateline Hopewell, NJ. Early today disaster struck the seven reference architecture model as an eighth contender emerged as a late entrant...dozens of Andrew Chapmans will be dispatched to try to change blogs, presentations and reports... << MORE >>

I am not sure that this information is really supposed to be shared with the general public, I overheard it in the exec bathrooms in Hopkinton this week so that makes it pretty "public" domain to me...<< MORE >>

In the previous two examples we focused on moving content from the SharePoint document library in to the traditional ECM’s repository behind the scenes. That “publish to ECM” paradigm may work for you but you must consider that once the content has moved in to your traditional ECM system’s repository you will lose sight of it from within SharePoint...<< MORE >>

We brandish around the term archive without much thought do what it means. I was reading some internal EMC literature the other day and...<< MORE >>

In the second of the seven architectures I take the general premise from the previous example and extend it. The content still lives natively in SharePoint while you are collaborating on it and is then "migrated" in to the traditional ECM system at a predetermined point in time...<< MORE >>

One of the great things about blogging is that you have to think hard about what you are writing, literally tens of thousands of people might read your blog...granted I am lucky if half of my immediate family read this drivel but conceptually you get the point. Realizing that once you've written something you cannot retract it really does make you think twice about what you say...<< MORE >>

I was reading one of Craig Randall's recent posts about creating new market opportunities and it got me thinking about how we collaborate around documents today and whether it really is optimal...<< MORE >>

I have been dictating chapters into my new book and found a small flaw in the NaturallySpeaking software. In 99% of the cases it does an excellent job of not just understanding the words that I am saying but also the context in which they are being used. Here is one exception...<< MORE >>

aka Hobson's choice. In this architecture, an end user moves a piece content from SharePoint into the traditional ECM system by manually exporting the object from SharePoint on to their desktop and then importing that object back in to the Enterprise Content Management system as a net new object. Equally, if a user needs to get content between two SharePoint sites they will follow the same procedure, i.e. they will export the content from one SharePoint site out onto the desktop and then import it into a new SharePoint site....<< MORE >>

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find time to work on my book... it is not just that I'm very busy in my new role I'm also an exceedingly slow typist. In order to try and make things a little bit easier I decided to try out a new piece of technology...<< MORE >>

Apologies for the brief Blog hiatus but I've been busy working on something that I think will be of great interest to many of you; how to allow you to yield the benefits of integrating SharePoint and your traditional ECM systems. In fact, I am now heading up a new group at EMC which is tasked with creating the SharePoint integration strategy and developing the necessary products to support it. I’ll also be working closely with partners who are developing SharePoint-based solutions for EMC – if you fit in to this category then feel free to contact me with details ...<< MORE >>

Life at EMC can be cruel and heartless, take last week for example; I was forced by upper management to attend our annual European Documentum user conference in Monaco. If you have not have the pleasure of spending a week on expenses in somewhere like Monaco then you should make this happen at least once in your life! The location was amazing...the conference was pretty good too...<< MORE >>

Firstly, I want to take my hat off to the team at the Microsoft booth at ARMA last week - I expected a less than welcoming response from them and I could not have been more wrong. I spent a considerable amount of time with members of their team at ARMA and was pleasantly surprised with the reaction, responses and rational that I got from them. ...<< MORE >>

I'll be at ARMA next week in Baltimore. If you'd like to chat then either find me at the EMC booth, buy me a drink at the OmniRIM launch party in the aquarium, come along to my session or email me ahead of time to arrange a meeting. ...<< MORE >>

Sharepoint bashing?
Let me be perfectly clear about my attitude towards Sharepoint. I have nothing against it as a product, in fact it is very compelling. My concerns are about how it is being deployed by companies today. Just because I work for a company that competes in some areas with Microsoft does not automatically mean that I am taking a competitive...<< MORE >>

I am meeting with Microsoft this week to discuss some of my concerns about enforcing compliance with content in Sharepoint repositories and to also talk through some of the potential solutions. It seems to me that there are a few different approaches to managing records that reside in Sharepoint Document Libraries. 

Firstly, let's recap the issue caused by the success of Sharepoint here. Some companies are letting Sharepoint instances be created with little control whatsoever. I got a lot of comments from my last Microsoft entry saying that companies don't have to do this but my point still stands - ...<< MORE >>

From a compliance perspective there are a lot of things that concern me about applications like Sharepoint. For example, their relative ease of deployment makes them viral in nature, the lack of centralized repository makes risk management & discovery difficult — security and scalability are another blog entry all together but these are not my biggest concern. My biggest concern might be somewhat less obvious. I'll try to make this very brief because I don't want to belabor the point; as always email me or post comments if you want to discuss the implications. ...<< MORE >>

I know that this blog entry is a bit long but you try explaining this kind of abstract concept in less words, it is hard! I work for EMC, as well as making disk drives, (I'm a software guy so that's just exhausted my total knowledge of hardware), we are actually the 6th largest software company in the world. One the the most challenging things about this is understanding the capabilities of all of the other applications in the company — more importantly one needs to be able to assess how the other applications can be used to ...<< MORE >>

There seems to be some confusion in the world of federated records management about what exactly is being federated. There are 2 distinct use cases what you might want to consider:
1) Federating just the records/retention policies. The use case here would be where you would manage the master policies in one system - the master policy management system. Each remote system looks at the master policy management system to get the policy information or the master policy management system pushes the policies out to each remote system . In this model, each remote system applies its own policies locally, ...<< MORE >>

I started writing a lengthy and concise overview of federated records management and the assurance component. It grew and grew in to a 2000 word overview. That's the good news, the bad news is that it was so good that marketing stole it from me ...<< MORE >>

I've always been careful to remain "employer agnostic" in my blog but there are times when I cannot help but to draw upon EMC's resources...<< MORE >>

Here's a 350 word explanation of the premise behind Assured Federated Records Management. I am working on a longer, more explicit description...<< MORE >>

I've had a couple of questions about why I don't talk about assured federated records management in the book. I guess there are two parts to that question - the first might be "What is assured federated records management?" and the second would be why it is not in the book.
Let me address the latter question first. Although I did indeed invent the integrity assurance engine before I finished the book I did not have the provisional patent application filed. In North America you cannot talk about something publicly before the patent application is filed so I had ...<< MORE >>

Did you see the recent story about the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce losing a file that includes the confidential details of 470,000 current and former clients of Talvest Mutual Funds? This is not that unusual but it reminded me of one of my favorite non-compliance stories... << MORE >>

It was a busy day at Blog Central today. I was peppered with quite a few people asking my opinion. It is quite flattering really - thanks!
Anyway. One question I was asked today was what I though the most important factors were to consider when keeping records efficiently in a medical practice. Rather than answering it in isolation I said that I'd post my response here for all to see. ...<< MORE >>

I saw this very interesting article about indexing the content of tapes to enable eDiscovery more easily.
www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2022487,00.as...
It is probably too late to drop this one in to the book but it is worthy of 10 minutes to take a quick look. If you have a lot of archived data this could be a life saver. ...<< MORE >>

Someone emailed me over the weekend to ask me what the exact topic of the book is. I explained that it was primarily aimed at Compliance in relation to Enterprise Content Management but I thought that it might help if I was more explicit.
So...here is an excerpt from the book's 'Quick Start Guide'...I hope that this helps. ...<< MORE >>

I firmly believe that the only way that we will be able to achieve truly successful compliance solutions is to have systems that:...<< MORE >>

I had a meeting with a very large financial institution today and we were talking about compliance, eDiscovery and enterprise content management...<< MORE >>

I spend my time at work setting strategic direction for our compliance products. I decided that writing a book would help me to get focused...<< MORE >>

My book is almost ready to publish so I wanted to start to share some excerpts from it...<< MORE >>