It's a question that many of our advisory customers have been asking us, so we decided to answer it in briefing format.

Cloud-based file-sharing services have obtained some traction, even among larger organizations, because of ease of provisioning and mobile access, as well as for exchanging files with external parties. At least five major providers now target enterprise customers for hosted file sharing: Box, Dropbox, Huddle, Oxygen, and ShareFile.

Just today in fact when talking with a major industrial manufacturer, the excitement and possibilities of working with such suppliers was tempered with concerns over their readiness and maturity to deal with real enterprise needs. To quote this prospective customer, "All these vendors tell us they work with big enterprises, but when we speak to them it feels like it's the first time a real enterprise has asked real enterprise questions of them..."

Certainly cloud providers are here to stay, and if employed in the right circumstances can bring real benefits, but it's still early days as our research paper details.

Telligent Systems, a vendor of social software to enterprises, announced that it has acquired San Francisco based Leverage Software. Leverage also is focused on selling social networking software for enterprises but follows a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

Different enteprises have different preferences for running their software applications -- behind the firewall, on-demand, or some combination of both. Employee-facing functionality would seem to favor on-premise, but not always.  On-demand versions of software typically boast more frequent updates.  While on-premise versions might get a major overhaul only once a year (or every three years...), hosted versions tend get updated much more frequently. This can be useful in rapidly evolving sectors such as the social software field.

Not surprisingly, then, social software vendors follow a variety of approaches. For example, Broadvision offers only a SaaS version, OpenText Social Communities is available only as an on-premise solution, while Jive and Microsoft offer both SaaS and on-premise versions.  And so on.

With this small acquisition of Leverage, Telligent can tell investors and the market that it now offers an on-demand solution. Telligent says that Leverage has an iPhone app for social functionality as well, so the mobile box gets checked. Finally, both Telligent and Leverage products are built off the Microsoft tech stack, which might bode well for future integration.  Analysts have taken note and are gushing over all the buzzwords.

For you the customer, the reality will not likely be so rosy. New features from acquired vendors appear in marketing brochures long before they appear on your screen. Telligent has acquired a revenue stream, but now must add a new product line to an already somewhat unweildy set of incumbent offerings.  Also, it's not easy to operate SaaS and traditional delivery models in tandem.  I'm not worried about the vendor here; I'm concerned about you the customer.  Don't trust the initial "roadmaps" that get marched out. 

The enterprise social software suites marketplace is relatively young and we can expect to see more M&A activity in the coming years as larger and mid-sized vendors try to cherry-pick oppotunities. We'll keep looking out for your interests...

We will provide more detailed guidance about these in a future advisory paper, but in the meantime, here are the key points to consider:

1. Which Devices to target: This obviously depends on your target audience and what constitutes a mobile device for you. While simple cell phones, PDAs, smartphones, and tablets are quite obvious, what may be less obvious are devices such as gaming consoles or even the good old television that can act as delivery channels in some contexts. In my previous organization, I worked on developing a strategy for a hospital that wanted to be able to stream patient data on a linux-based handheld device carried by docs. Even without going that deep into what constitutes a mobile device, at the very minimum, you will need to decide what kinds of phones and tablets you want to target. This includes both the form factor (or the size) and operating systems (iOS, Android, et.al.). We've discussed this issue in these blogs before:
   • Thinking Holistically Beyond the Smart Phone
   • Android Tablet or iPad
2. Mobile Apps, Web Apps, or Hybrids: There are many ways to develop applications and sites for mobile devices. So you'll need to decide whether you'll stick to browser-based web apps, create downloadable applications, or use both for different use cases. We provide some guidance on which option is suitable for specific use cases in our advisory paper Mobile-Enabling Enterprise Applications: Browser or Downloadable Apps? as well as number of blog posts like:
   • Different Ways for Building Mobile Apps
   • Mobile Apps are Dead. Long Live the Mobile Web
   • Mobile brings site-building tools back from the dead
   • Mobile - the Next Web CMS Frontier
   • DAM and mobile: should you go with a dedicated mobile app?
3. Existing tools or new ones: You probably already have numerous enterprise applications that  provide some sort of capabilities for building mobile applications or web sites. For example, many Document Management vendors provide device specific applications to access a subset of functionality provided by their tools. Similarly, for a mobile website, you could possibly use your existing Web Content Management (WCM) tool or a Portal tool. Alternatively, depending on your scenario, you could invest in a sophisticated mobile middleware framework:
   • Advisory: Adapting Your Content Management Platform for Mobile Delivery
   • Blog: An iPad for DM and RM?
   • Blog: FileNet P8 on your iPhone
4. Managing content for mobile site and related architectural Issues: Publishing a mobile site will raise additional issues related to content duplication, publishing, workflows, and presentation. So you will need to have a handle on technical issues such as:
   • Do you employ a separate repository for mobile content (and this duplicate content) or do you use a common content repository?
   • How do you publish content from your regular web production environment to mobile environment?
   • Do you repurpose or recreate content?
   • How do features such as in-context editing and rich text editors work for mobile websites?
5. What happens to existing websites and content:  You obviously would not want to throw away your existing site, especially if it was not developed a long ago. So it'll be important to understand how you'd reuse existing content or mobilize an existing website. There are many approaches and tools to do that but if you've followed some basic principals of content management -- such as separating your content from its presentation -- you should experience fewer problems here.

There are many more considerations -- such as information architecture and user experience in a mobile context, content migration, alternative development approaches, and so forth. Yet, addressing the key starter issues above will give you a good launch point in your mobile roadmap.

What has been your experience and what are the key issues you've faced? Please feel free to comment below, email or tweet me.

This is our sixth year in a row doing this humbling exercise. If you'd like to see how we've done previously, you can view past predictions here: 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.

Here's our 2012 technology predictions:

1. Big data meets web marketing
Digital marketing systems -- from analytics, to adaptive personalization, to social media monitoring platforms -- generate huge amounts of data. The ability to extract and leverage meaningful nuggets from these vast stores of information represents a persistent but increasingly important challenge for marketing specialists. 2012 will see specialist (typically SaaS...see below) vendors pull away from the pack of integrated WCM suites and other adjacent technologies that implement e-marketing functionality as a simple, add-on service.



2. Enterprise search marketplace opens up...again
The major vendors in this space are undergoing substantial transformation: FAST is getting sucked into the SharePoint vortex; Autonomy is facing an unclear future under HP; and Endeca remains fitful and distracted. Look for upstart vendors to fill the void as they did earlier this decade when the market was more open. In particular, look for specific applications based on the open source platform, Lucene.



3. Social services get called on the carpet in SharePoint
SharePoint has seen stratospheric, often viral growth in enterprises around the world. Licensees are beginning to discover, however, that its lack of contemporary social networking services and polished collaboration applications are limiting its effectiveness and driving business units to self-provision other tools. 2012 will see the rise of a variety of SharePoint-specific, supplementary offerings, from new and existing vendors alike.



4. CRM and CMS on a collision course
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Content Management Systems (CMS) have long been central pieces in the digital marketing toolkit; however the lines between these two systems will continue to blur in 2012. More and more, marketers want to set content and interaction experiences based on customer interaction, so CMS vendors continue to add CRM features, while CRM systems add more web publishing features. In the long run, we think integration is more promising than convergence; in the meantime, expect some messy collisions.

5. Death of the intranet as we know it
Intranet managers still have a key role to play in enterprise collaboration and information management, but employee expectations and the role of the intranet have changed dramatically over the past few years. Savvy companies will focus on the broader employee experience in a mobile, "digital workplace." 2012 will see a significant reallocation of resources from corporate communications to more business-oriented functionality.

6. BPM springs back to life
Process still matters, and workflow applications continue to dominate enterprise document and records management efforts. 2012 will see a renewed interest in good, old-fashioned BPM, as enterprises seek to orchestrate activities across organizational boundaries, including partner and supplier systems.

7. Rich media goes mainstream in the enterprise
Video is no longer an emerging technology for the enterprise. New social initiatives in particular will bring more media into internal systems. To be sure, a gulf remains in production quality (between professional and amateur), and employees will continue to look for increasingly sophisticated capabilities as both media producers and consumers. In 2012, enterprises will respond with specific, rich-media initiatives.

8. Big data blows into the cloud
More and more information management systems are generating or leveraging "big data." Yet, many enterprises don't have the resources, capacity, or expertise to properly store and mine this data. Fortunately, "big data" characteristics (such as unpredictable data inflow rates and the need for elastic processing capacity) make it a natural fit for the cloud. As a result, data-rich applications -- such as social media monitoring -- will increasingly go to market with SaaS-only delivery models.

9. Pervasive mobile-only apps
2011's mantra could have been "mobile first." 2012 will see "mobile first and last," as enterprises develop mobile-only interfaces to certain internal applications without focusing any effort on traditional, web-based (desktop/laptop) UIs. Many of these mobile apps will consist of specialized mashups among existing systems. A key driver here is the inexorable rise of tablets. We'll also see interesting examples where enterprises will tweak business processes to leverage tablets (e.g., in-store tablet catalogs).

10. New job titles emerge
Major technical and operational changes are driving new roles -- often informal, hybrid roles -- within the enterprise. 2012 will see the formalization of some of these roles into broadly recognized job titles. Samples include:

• Marketing Technologist - to master the increasingly complex services around e-marketing at scale
• Social Media Monitor - to interpret, understand, learn from, and respond to the fire hose of relevant activity on public social networks
• Enterprise Community Facilitator - to support localized community managers and foster productive cross-silo interaction
• Enterprise Media Producer - to produce or edit high volumes of video for internal and external consumption
• Director or VP of Digital Assets / Digital Media Manager - formal DAM roles emerge to establish ownership -- not just of assets, but of the systems and metadata -- of DAM and MAM

11. Security fears rise: phones, tablets, portable drives, the cloud -- where is our content?
Nearly everyone is a mobile worker. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets means that employees are walking around with disk drives containing company information. A lost or stolen phone or tablet containing sensitive information will likely cause a backlash in enterprise security departments. We've already heard of some highly regulated enterprises banning enterprise access from employee phones. For many employees, 2012 will bring even more rules and regulations around how they can use their mobile devices and renewed enterprise interest in digital rights management applications.

12. Lines blur between commercial and open source technologies
In the WCM and portal marketplaces, major open source projects are "commercializing" fairly rapidly, while many (though certainly not all) commercial vendors are adopting more open development and support models. This means that in 2012, customers will see increasingly less distinction between commercial vendors and "commercial open source" suppliers. The bigger gulf -- though it remains largely one of licensing -- is emerging between commercially-oriented open source projects and community-oriented projects across the WCM and portal landscapes.

Here is RSG's Alan Pelz-Sharpe to shed some more light on our predictions:

OK, this is partly an argument about labels, but labels matter. What most employees understand as their "intranet" -- updates from corporate communications, some HR forms, and a mountain of outdated docs -- is increasingly irrelevant.

The issue here is not that traditional intranet services have somehow lost value. Rather, it's that business units are moving on. They don't want to be "lured" to your vision of an intranet. They want some fairly specific services. From what I can see, there is a confluence of factors here:

Applications over platforms
Platforms are good for the kind of long-term planning and prep where IT excels. Unfortunately, platforms are less amenable to delivering short-term benefits to business units. Put another way, your colleagues don't need "SharePoint." They want a contracts management system, or a project scheduling utility, or any one of thousands of practical business services.

Ability to self-provision and employ SaaS-based solutions
This can be a tough one to swallow at an enterprise level, and you'll want to keep some controls in place. Yet, you also need to get ahead of practical business needs by offering some real alternatives, or your business colleagues will simply use their credit cards to buy what they need in the cloud.

Rise of Portal Lite
Rather than a big, heavy, developer-intensive enterprise portal, business units are increasingly seeking simpler forms of integration: basic dashboards / health meters, simple mash-ups, activity stream aggregation, and so on. And they want these services available ubiquitously, and not just in a corporate-wide portal. The good news is that some vendors are adapting. Are you?

Emphasis on collaboration and social
If you've spent the past three recessionary years trying to automate processes to cut costs, you're only getting half the picture. Sales, Marketing, R&D, Product Development, and other revenue-generating units want to be more agile, more innovative, and work more closely across silos. It takes much more than technology to do that successfully, but the right collaboration/social toolset is a key part of the overall solution here. When intranet teams deliver the wrong tools or approach, business units take matters into their own hands.

Blurring lines between enterprise applications and enterprise information
Employees don't want services bereft of supporting content; nor do they want content delivered in a way that's not immediately actionable. The sharp divide between applications and documents on most intranets is becoming anachronistic. Savvy intranet managers are focusing on content-enriched applications. The rise of mobile is really pushing this. Even the simplest static intranet "websites" make more sense as applications on mobile devices.

* * *

Let's not have a funeral. The death of the intranet heralds the re-birth of something better: a more practical set of tools that help people get their work done. Intranet managers should re-align with this new world and focus on services that businesspeople can use in the flow of their daily work. The digital workplace is actually less a specific place, but rather a mindset that creates services so badly needed that you'll never have to complain about "poor adoption" ever again.

That's hard, and you may skin your knees at first. Age-old challenges of security and interoperability can get tougher before they get better. Yet your colleagues are already looking way beyond your official intranet. It's worse to be irrelevant than to have experimented and failed. If we can help you, let us know...

* * *

P.S. This post was informed by some great chats at the recent KMWorld event with two of my favorite Digital Workplace gurus, Jane McConnell and Martin White.

Now that is obviously not a very scalable model especially if you have to support end users with different types of mobile phones and tablets. Many organizations are increasingly encouraging employees to "Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)" and so supporting all different types of devices that employees could potentially bring may not be trivial.

However, this argument is starting to get diluted, as emerging approaches can get the best of both worlds, albeit with tradeoffs. So while building a native app using proprietary APIs and platform specific languages (such as Objective C for iOS) is what many people think of for building apps, you can also build cross-platform apps using more standards-based technologies like HTML5 and Javascript. 

As an example, the open source framework PhoneGap (now acquired by Adobe and proposed to be part of Apache Software Foundation) allows you to create HTML5-based applications that can run on many mobile platforms.  The difference between these HTML5-based cross-platform apps and regular web-apps is obviously that these can access native device functionality (like the camera) by using a "wrapper" that PhoneGap provides. There are other approaches as well, such as those that allow you to code your app once but then compile it for each of the specific platforms you want to support.

So if you do decide to offer downloadable apps to your employees or customers -- ideally in addition to a regular web app and not at the expense of it -- remember that building an app does not necessarily mean you will have to employ proprietary or platform-specific technologies. There are many ways to build apps and you should evaluate each of these approaches with respect to different factors such as functionality, cost, time to market, user experience, and performance.

This is a longstanding debate and proponents of both approaches will point to numerous benefits.

By using mobile web, you get the benefits of a standard based approach using which you can target a broader population of mobile devices. Downloadable apps --  they include device specific native applications as well as those based on so called RIA (Rich Internet Application) technologies like Flash - promise a richer user experience optimized to specific devices. 

As with any technology, there's no single answer for all scenarios. As with desktop environments, I believe multiple approaches will co-exist on mobile devices as well.  The question is how to discern when to go browser versus app.

In our recently released advisory briefing, Mobile-Enabling Enterprise Applications: Browser or Downloadable Apps?, we explore this very topic and provide some guidance on when to use which approach. The table of contents for the advisory is as follows:

• Key Takeaways
• Introduction
• The Case for Web Apps
• HTML5 Brings New Mobile Browser Capabilities
• The Case for Downloadable Apps
• Conclusion

The advisory briefing is available to all of our research stream subscribers.

1. The recent CMS trend towards website interaction management will get balanced by a renewed emphasis on content, driven by specialized mobile experience needs
2. For enterprise applications, mobile web will prove a better common denominator than mobile apps
3. The next frontier of Enterprise 2.0 lies in socializing existing applications and work processes, rather than creating new info and interaction silos

If any of that piques your interest, you can check out the interview above, or via our YouTube channel.

So if you are a web publisher and want to use your Web CMS for publishing to social channels, what should you do?

Many site owners will want to press their CMS vendor or open source community to build specific integration paths to enable publishing out to these social networks. Most tools that we evaluate have at least begun to answer this call.  But that's not really a scalable model in my opinion. What happens when another social network becomes hot, and you need to publish to that too? What happens -- as is often the case -- when a network changes its APIs?

Instead, you should take a step back and take a more long term approach. Out of the box integration with individual networks is fine, but insist on an integration framework that allows you to add additional social networks or channels in future. The framework should allow you to add a new external destination but also provide core plumbing services such as security, logging, exception handling and reporting in a consistent way across all social (or other) channels -- rather than one at a time.

Also remember some basics of multi-channel publishing.

Many Web CMS products provide in-context (and inline) editing capabilities that enable you to write new content within the visual context of your website. However, if you are pushing selected content to Facebook and Google+, you have multiple contexts and experiences, so you will want to think in a more agnostic way. Therefore, whenever you ask vendors to demo their slick inline editing interfaces, make sure to spend enough time evaluating the usability of their traditional, form-based interfaces.  In a multi-channel world, you'll be using them more often.

You should also evaluate how the tools segregate presentation from raw content. This becomes important especially if you use rich text editors and allow your content contributors to apply styles on content. This will become problematic when published to multiple social networks. So ensure that there is a clear separation between presentation as well as content.

Your content contributors should understand that if what they write travels to multiple other channels, they really have to be more disciplined about using styles, rich text editors, and inline editing interfaces. (BTW, I could say "mobile" instead of "social" and end up with the same advice.)

Finally, remember that with growing number of external destinations where you can publish content, more than tech integrations, you need to have a true interaction strategy in place. Don't auto-publish blindly; as my colleague Tony says, "Because you can, doesn't mean you should."

We also updated the Trends for 2011, and in particular, delve into detail on the challenges of mobile asset management.

Our subscribers can access the research here. If there's other vendors or topics you'd like us to explore in our DAM research, don't hesitate to let me know. For those of you who missed this week's conference in New York, I hope to see you in London in two weeks, where I'll be reprising my presentations on what's new in DAM technology and how to pick the best DAM vendor for you.

Several DAM vendors, most prominently OpenText's Media Manager (formerly Artesia), offer Flash-based user interfaces. Others, such as MediaBeacon and celum (a vendor whose IMAGINE software will be evaluated in our next DAM research release), are very strictly HTML-based. North Plains, who will roll out version 9 of Telescope in a couple months, has a new HTM5-based interface, as well.

Since Flash applications don't work on the iPad, vendors like MediaBeacon use HTML5 as a selling point -- their application can work on the iPad, because it works in Safari. OpenText, meanwhile, has developed its own iPad-specific DAM app, which allows for asset review, video playback, and workflow approvals. 

So which is "better" -- the application that works on an iPad because it works in Safari, or the application that's designed for a specific device?

Neither is inherently better, despite vendors asserting otherwise. Though it's nice to be able to access a DAM application's full functionality via a tablet's web browser, that application isn't necessarily taking advantage of the form factor and the touch screen the way a custom tablet application might. Many web-based apps detect Safari and say, "this is a Mac, deliver the UI as if it's a Mac," without taking full advantage of touch screen gestures. It's still a mouse-oriented, drag-this-little-bar-to-the-right function to make assets bigger, as if the tablet was just about touching the screen in one place.  

So, even if an application works in your tablet browser, that doesn't mean the application is working any differently than it does on your bulky laptop (or desktop). This can be considered good or bad, depending on your perspective.

Despite the hype about tablet apps, there's no reason to choose or eliminate a vendor from your selection process just because they don't have a mobile-specific app. Be sure to look at what your real mobile use cases are: you may not need to edit video segments on your tablet -- even if a vendor tells you that you can.

I'll be exploring the topic of DAM and mobile further for our DAM research subscribers over the coming months, as well in my presentations at the upcoming Henry Stewart conferences. 

Sure, customer demand has caused the Web CMS marketplace to react, and several vendors have responded accordingly. However, much remains to be done.

If mobile is a part of your Web Content Management strategy (if it isn't, it probably should be), then you'll want to investigate Web CMS vendors' capabilities in supporting HTML5 and understand how their mobile experience translates to your content creators and editors.

This finding came from the latest major release of The Real Story Group's Web Content Management Evaluation Report. The new Version 20.0 represents its 10th year of publication. Originally launched as a review of 12 Web CMS vendors in 2001, the Web Content Management Evaluation Report now evaluates 43 web content management vendors head-to-head.

You can read more in today's press release.

Since a mobile site is the new "in thing" now, many of these services that were popular in early days are making a come back -- albeit in different form. Today you can use services like Ubik.com (powered by Volantis), Mozeo, MoFuse, and many others to quickly create sites  optimized for delivery to mobile devices.

Services like these provide a low cost and a quick way to create mobile presence. Some of them can also provide  advanced features for customization, such as specialized branding templates in lieu of existing canned templates.

But you should also ask yourself, are you still just creating another Geocities-style presence for the mobile world?  It's worth asking, because you may quickly run into limitations. If you're exploring any these options, get answers to these questions:

• Can you modify the user experience for different types of handsets based on devices' capabilities and limitations?
• How will you ensure that your main web presence stays in sync with mobile web presence?
• Do you have to create content twice - once for your web site and then again for your mobile site?
• How will you embed applications to enable transactions or build features such as personalization?
• If you employ a mobile site-builder service today to get up and running quickly, can they provide a migration path should you opt for another alternative in future?

There are many more such issues. Once you start addressing these, you may find that building a mobile site is no longer as quick and inexpensive as you might have thought.

In any case, as with other tools, evaluate these services from a longer-term perspective, and not just today's quick time to market.

To quote:

There’s a bigger picture here: information management is becoming gamified, consumerized, socialized, mobilized, cloudified, and caramelized. Enterprises should turn their attention away from core information assets and focus all digital energies on linking up with the next Facebook, whatever that may be.

To get the real story on what's going on in across the different content technology marketplaces, download some research samples.

As a result, Antenna can now offer mobile apps as well as web apps and can serve different use cases. It also gets access to new markets: Antenna is primarily USA based company while Volantis is headquartered in UK and has offices in Europe and Asia.

Although the offerings are complimentary and might not require any major rationalization, the back-end infrastructure of two underlying platforms will still need to get integrated such that applications can use same resources (such as a content repository). An example of this could be a native mobile app created using Antenna's platform that employs Volantis' device database to fine tune display logic.

If you are a potential customer, the benefit is obviously that now you have one company that can cater to both native apps and web apps. On the other hand, it could be riskier as compared to betting on two different companies.

IBM licenses parts of Volantis technology for its own Mobile Portal offerings including the Mobile Accelerator which is targeted to customers of WebSphere Portal. Even though Volantis open sourced their Mobility Server a while back, not all parts of their offering are open sourced. So if you are considering IBM's mobile offerings, add this consideration to your checklist of items to be clarified. Make sure you understand their roadmap and resulting implications.

On a side note: having acquired Volantis and its well regarded technology for delivering web sites to mobile handsets, perhaps some day Antenna will actually start eating its own dog food. The screenshot shows how its site appears on a Nokia E71 smartphone. 

Regardless of whether Android tablets can compete with iPad, the fact remains that Android has taken operating system out of the equation now. And this has serious implications for site publishers targeting mobile devices.

In earlier days, one of the features that differentiated one mobile phone from another was its operating system. Companies like Nokia and Apple invested huge amount of dollars developing Symbian and iOS. But what Android has done is that it has allowed lesser-known or even unknown vendors to compete with the Nokias and Apples of the world. 

It has also opened up a huge potential for companies to target a big mobile population that can now afford a "smart phone" without shelling out a bomb. In several countries in Asia and Europe, mobile phones are expensive because they are not subsidized by wireless service contracts.  But with less expensive phones now having the ability to access the web -- and mobile penetration far exceeding PC penetration -- the universe has suddenly expanded.

With opportunities come challenges, especially if your organization is one of those who want to target this population. Unlike iOS where Apple controls the hardware, Android does not have that benefit. Android devices range from small 2" form factors to large 10" form factors. They also vary hugely in capabilities: some run on a 500 MHz processor while others run on more powerful dual core, 1 GHz processors.

You could of course create "apps" for your applications. But that obviously is not a scalable proposition.  For one, you don't want to be creating an "app" for everything, and secondly, it is not trivial to create apps for all different operating systems and deal with the intricacies of  different "app stores."  You will probably need to achieve a balance between an "app" for some scenarios and a web application for remaining scenarios. In any case, if you are not sure, its best to take an incremental approach.

Start with getting your basics right such as by maintaining a strict separation between your content and presentation (and therefore beware of rich text editors). Focus more on standards-based output that can support basic re-purposing with minimal effort. You can then decide whether it make sense to create a native "app" or invest more in a web application to achieve more fine targeting.

In a wide-ranging discussion, we talked about the challenges facing US federal managers in selecting the right technologies for their agencies. John keeps things moving, and our conversation flowed from web content management, to social computing, to open source, to (inevitably) topics like Cloud and SharePoint.

If you work in the federal technology space, I hope you find it useful.

• That new technology whether good or bad usually gets an audience by what are called "early adopters" -- if these early adopters give the new technology the nod of approval then there is a chance that the market will grow, and eventually "cross the chasm" to the mainstream
• Secondly that technology firms that want to get to the mainstream should try and shine in one vertical market sector first, then use that credibility and enthusiasm to build a bridge to expand onward and upward into different vertical market sectors.

In his presentation Moore seemed to be applying this same theory in some measure to the world of ECM (Enterprise Content Management). He posited that the credibility and experience gained in managing content held in what he called "systems of record" (think mission-critical repositories and business applications) could be used to bridge the gap to the much bigger stream of content flowing into "systems of engagement" (think social media).

I agree with his claim that there are two separate systems in play here. I disagree that that ECM systems can or even should bridge any gap.

There can be no doubt that there is far more content in terms of volume in so-called "systems of engagement," and this represents a huge potential market for the industry that AIIM lobbies for.  Where I have serious doubts is whether one forms a path to the other.  In this study Moore states that we will move from systems of record to systems of engagement. That employees will demand that they get the world of consumer IT in the workplace.

Certainly the enterprise software user experience begs improvement, and clearly more content can be supplied to and from mobile devices. As far as that goes one can argue at a pinch that the world of consumer IT will pervade enterprise IT. 

But the harsh reality is that we come to work to work, that much if not most work is transactional in nature, and that it needs to managed closely and repetitively. Systems of record represent the real world of loans and applications, of assessing insurance claims, conducting sales transactions, processing accounts payable and receivable, and so on -- a real world that will remain as relevant tomorrow as it is today. 

Meanwhile, the collaborative -- dare I say social -- environment that employers want to cultivate in the workplace is a very different one, with very different aims to the social world people want to cultivate in their personal lives.

There is no move from one to another. They are separate and often quite different beasts.  Whereas the content in systems of record demand close attention and management, not so the bulk of content in systems of engagement.  That is not to say there is no value in the content in systems of engagement, but in reality there is typically only value (and liability) in a very small subset of it.

It's the same thorny problem that we have been trying to tackle for at least 30 years: How to bring order, and extract value and context from a vast pool of noise? In fact whilst we are looking at the work of one past guru, maybe its worth us remembering another, Professor Ikujiro Nonaka the father of Knowledge Management, and his theories of socialization, externalization, combination, internalization, and the worlds of tacit and implicit knowledge.  For whether we call it KM, E2.0, or Systems of Engagement, the problems are the same, and we have been trying for a long time to reconcile these worlds without success. 

The reality of today, the past, and the foreseeable future is that systems of record will need to be managed tightly, and that systems of engagement much less so.  The slow convergence of BI (Business Intelligence) with Search and Analytics offers hope in extracting more value and context from the huge pool of noise, but bringing order to this pool is counter-intuitive. Systems of engagement work because they are free-flowing, and any efforts to control that flow will typically fail.

I think the study commissioned by AIIM is good; it clarifies in today's language the problem we continue to face as managers of information. As a rebranding and repositioning exercise for AIIM as an organization this study may well offer great value. But beyond that I don't know that it really added anything new to the discussion.

Less obvious are the myriad non-PC devices that can access websites today, including mobile phones of various sizes and capabilities, eReaders, Netbooks, and IPTV devices. Some specific examples include:

• Delivering content on TV screens via NetFlix
• Gaming consoles such as WII or PlayStation
• Non-traditional, non-browser clients such as TweetDeck on your Laptop, or the Facebook app on your mobile phone
• Linux-based based handheld carried by doctors, for receiving streamed patient data

Of course, even within each of the above, you'll find variability within each category. There are variations based on features (such as availability of a camera), form factor, screen resolution, input capabilities (e.g., touch vs. keypad), or even context (such as whether the person holds her tablet horizontally or vertically). 

So whether a mobile phone or one of the platforms mentioned above, you need to be able to first identify the device and then based on its capabilities as well as limitations, target the right content without compromising the user experience.

Now, in order to provide a first-class user experience on such devices, many enterprises prefer to offer native apps. That's certainly a good option but you can easily see it doesn't scale easily to support multiple platforms. There are a couple problems here:

1. Device manufacturers each support their own SDKs and APIs
2. End users typically place a limit to the number of apps they load on their device

The other option -- creating a simple style sheet or theme -- is too simplistic to be of much use in such scenarios because of the need to provide the lowest common experience.

This is why my colleague Adriaan Bloem makes the case for investing in a flexible mobile web platform instead of building apps for each device individually.

The key arguments in favor of using native apps instead of web apps for mobile devices are:

1. Mobile browsers don't yet provide an equivalent user experience
2. You cannot access certain mobile-specific capabilities -- such as GPS support, so  you can stream a list of restaurants around person's current location

However, with advancements in HTML and JavaScript, many of these concerns are beginning to subside. For example, HTML5 provides capabilities to identify your location, and when combined with libraries such as jQuery, can provide a much more comparable user experience. When used in conjunction with a mobile platform that has the intelligence to identify variations and perform heavy-duty rule processing for content targeting based on those variations, you now have a good foundation for a more inclusive strategy. This will allow you to serve customers that use not just "smarter" smart phones like iPhones and Blackberries, but also those customers that use other, not-so smart-devices.

We've been spending more time looking at this from a vendor-capabilities perspective.  For more details on how different products fare when it comes to multi-channel content management and delivery, you can subscribe to our evaluation research.

The thing is, the rumor of the web's demise has been greatly exaggerated. Rather, what we're seeing here is warped statistics. As the old adage has it: "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics." Or another favorite: "Statistics are what a lamp post is to a drunk: mostly for support, rarely for enlightenment."

Wired's article is a case in point. It opens with a large colorful graph, showing how web traffic is decreasing in importance. Of course, the graph is relative. That is to say, if the total volume of internet traffic has increased, it's likely that web traffic has increased a lot over the past few years, as well. It's just that web traffic hasn't increased as much as say, video. But video files are a lot larger than webpages: a small amount of video downloads creates a disproportionate amount of traffic, which distorts the view even more. Last but not least, let's not forget that the source is Cisco; and of course, with all this video traffic, you'd really need Cisco routers to cope, right?

Instead, Wired draws the conclusion that what's really happening is that traffic is shifting from the web, to mobile apps. That, too, is the apotheosis of a buzz building the past few years. Because the general consensus is that mobile now equals iPhone or Android apps. It's the applification of the mobile internet.

Enter more statistics. A study released by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs last year clearly showed that most of the mobile internet usage was through Apple iPhones. (Also, there were 20 million mobile phones in use in The Netherlands -- on a population of about 16.5m.) Or look at the world map of mobile marketshare. Clearly, IOS reigns supreme almost everywhere in the world. So if you want to go mobile, you'd better build an iPhone app, right?

Then again, maybe not, because if you look at a more recent graph, perhaps the picture is slightly more nuanced. There's plenty of Opera (which runs on many different platforms), Nokias, and Blackberries; plus, Android is moving up. And to add even more nuance: all three of those -- that last graph, the government report, and the world map are using the same source of data. Yet, they don't quite match up? And about that source -- it's StatCounter, which provides free visit counters for websites. What they don't provide, however, is a breakdown of who actually uses their free counters.

So let's turn to one last stat: as TechCrunch's headline put it, "Android Share Jumps To 25.5 Percent, Now Second Most Popular OS Worldwide." Apple is steady at around 16-17%, Blackberry dropped from 20% to 15%, and the biggest looser of all is Symbian, steadily declining from 45% to 36%. So at least, if you hedge your bets with Android, iPhone, and Blackberry apps, you'll be safe; everybody understands by now Symbian is loosing the battle. Except, you see, it's not: in absolute figures, Symbian went from 18m handsets sold to 29m! The big winner is the smartphone -- the big looser is the non-web-enabled "dumb" phone, not a specific smartphone OS.

So look away for a minute from the Androids and iPhones you and everyone around you are using 24/7, and all the cool kids on the Sillicon Valley blogs are talking about. This is not a time for early-adopter egocentrism. You can't really rely on statistics to guide your mobile strategy, either. It's very hard to quantify even current usage and to find numbers you could trust. But more importantly, mobile devices are a very volatile market. Even if you'd have the money to waste on building four different apps for the most important platforms, you may be hopelessly behind in a year's time. If the new Windows Phone 7 or MeeGo make a surge, what will you do? Ask for the budget to create even more apps? And if existing platforms start coming out in new form factors, will you update each one to make use of tablet resolutions? Do you really want to tie your mobile presence to something this fickle? (Unless, of course, it's actually an application, and not just a nice wrapper for your content.)

If you really want to be on the forefront of the mobile revolution -- and by now it should be evident that's where we're heading -- invest in a flexible delivery platform. That platform is the mobile web -- not apps. And the mobile web is delivered by a capable Web CMS. Start planning for publishing to a whole lot more than just one-size-fits-all, be it a large or a small screen. Take a look at what features you'd need (and of course, our Web Content Management vendor evaluations would be a good place to start). Because, well, you read it here first: the Mobile Web is an App killer... And for most purposes, Apps are dead already.

1) Enterprise Content Management and Document Management will go their separate ways
This has largely happened, primarily because customers have persuaded vendors to (mostly) give up the ghost on "enterprise" content management and return to practical applications.

2) Faceted search will pervade enterprise applications
This has definitely happened, though what constitutes best practices is evolving (c.f., difference between SharePoint Search and FAST Search results).

3) Digital Asset Management vendors will focus on SharePoint integration over geographic expansion
Definitely. The North America / EMEA divide in this marketplace remains stark, while vendors push SharePoint "connectors" -- albeit of varying stages of maturity.

4) Mobile will come of age for Document Management and Enterprise Search
Yep, though that was an easy one; questions about usability, persistence, security, etc. still remain.

5) WCM vendors will give more love to Intranets
No, didn't happen. Wishful thinking.

6) Enterprises will lead thick client backlash
Yes, I think we are seeing the back-side of flex-based clients for enterprise applications.

7) Cloud alternatives will become pervasive
Sure, but that was another easy one.

8) Document Services will become an integrated part of ECM
Sort of. ECM vendors are starting to promote document composition services more, but integration with other document management systems remains thin.

9) Gadgets and Widgets will sweep the Portal world
Definitely true, and more interestingly, they are making inroads into the non-portal world.

10) Records Managers face renewed resistance
We argued that, "the movement for simple retention rather than detailed RM practices will continue to gain ground." And by that measure, I'd say yes.

11) Internal and external social and collaboration technologies will diverge
Yes, though to be honest, this has been an organic trend in the marketplace for a couple years, mitigated only by an emerging trend to extend some internal collaboration services to limited sets of external partners.

12) Multi-lingual requirements will rise to the fore
Sort of. This is obviously a long-term trend, yet some smaller vendors still suffer in delivering multi-lingual capabilities.

So, on the whole, we were 10 for 12. That's slightly better than 2009's 9 out of 12, though one might argue that the future is getting clearer rather than us becoming more prescient.

Meantime, stay on the look-out for our 2011 predictions, which promise to be a thought-provoking collection...

Over the past 10 years our lives as consumers of personal electronics have been turned upside-down. A little over 10 years ago there was no Google. There was definitely no iPhone. I remember a colleague in 2001 showing me something cool called "Wi-Fi" on his MacBook. Today, 10 years later, I cannot imagine going out of the house and not being able to wirelessly connect to Google on my iPhone. Yep, as consumers we have all been on a wild ride.

Unfortunately, enterprise technology missed that boat. Over the past two weeks, I have been doing demos and reading up on the latest and greatest in the WCM space. After looking at one CMS after another and one input screen after another I am reminded of the year 2000 - not the year 2010.

I wrote a blog 5 years ago called "The Silly Simplicity of ECM" that briefly outlined some of what I thought the future would bring in the world of content management. It's true that these recommendations for the future set the bar pretty high, but shouldn't the companies that are well known for managing and processing information be in the innovation vanguard? Maybe our industry will never have an Einstein or Newton but maybe we can hope for another Steve Wozniak.

Yet the world of mobile content -- though not terribly complex -- is one that is fraught with compromise.  Hence I'm leading an online event that strives to provide businesspeople with the key parameters you need to consider when thinking of a mobile content strategy.

So join me at 9am EST (3pm GMT) this coming Wednesday 10th November to join our presentation and put your questions to us about mobile content management.