Not “Drill, baby drill”? More than 25 years ago, Ted Levitt said – “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” That rings true for even digital marketing or social marketing tools. An enterprise is not looking for social media or other software. Instead, they want to be able to better connect with their target audience and become the brand of choice for them.

Up the engagement quotient: As ad man David Ogilvy said, “You cannot bore people into buying your product”. Enterprises can tap digital / social marketing tools to better entertain and engage their customers and potential buyers. Nike Shout, an application where fan messages posted on Facebook or Twitter were displayed on stadium screens, is an example.

See the video on YouTube or read about it here.

“Develop the art of listening”: Social media tools provide an excellent opportunity to listen to the customer voice and feedback in ways not possible earlier. However, many enterprises still approach the digital medium as a one-way street for sales pitches and lose the opportunity to engage in two-way conversations with customers. We should note here that there is increasing interest among enterprises for social media monitoring tools or “listening platforms” that promise to keep tabs on what’s being said about your brand. For example, see our earlier blog post on Jive’s social media monitor

“Analyze this?” Sentiment Analysis tools that scour social media conversations for positive and negative opinions about your brand are in vogue as well. These tools deploy language processing and data mining techniques to determine the prevailing attitudes towards your enterprise/brand. While this may (or may not) work well enough in a single language situation, we're not convinced yet that these can handle multi-lingual scenarios where different customers speak in different tongues. We, in the United States of India, are even known to employ two different languages like English and Hindi in the same sentence, or even write out a local language in the Roman (i.e. English) Alphabet. The tools may not be equal to the task of deciphering us.

“Fraudian Slip”: As they say, “half of ad dollars are wasted, the trouble is knowing which half.” In the age of pay-per-click advertising, we might as well say that a fifth to a quarter of online ad dollars are wasted due to click-fraud (based on estimates by Adometry, which tracks these things). It remains a cat-and-mouse game with the good guys and bad guys trying to outwit each other. Marketers need to stay alert and keep a close eye on their analytics for any suspicious behavior and patterns.

“TV is not the idiot box in India”: In India, where only less than 10% of the population regularly accesses the Internet, TV remains the influential medium and unmatched in its reach.  Flipkart (the “Amazon of India”) says that they were taken much more seriously once they started beaming commercials on TV. The larger message here is that depending on your situation, online may not necessarily be the cheapest or the most efficient channel.  

“Comment is Content”: Particularly for news and other community oriented sites, high-quality user comments are becoming as important as editorial content. We can second that based on our experience with clients who place great emphasis on the functionality like management of user generated content and community moderation in their social technology selection processes.

“Crisis Response Use Case” We’ve heard excellent examples of the general public and NGO volunteers rallying in the aftermath for the disasters in Haiti and Fukushima. They’ve created “people finder” apps and used social media tools to coordinate the relief efforts. There’s a lesson here for enterprises on having a plan for when things go wrong and be not caught flat footed. Have your public relations crisis plan ready before it happens.

“Greedy Brands” Earlier, companies just wanted a consumer to buy their products. But now they want them to not only buy their products, but be an advocate for them and also help with co-creating the products. From a software products perspective this has seen the emergence of co-creation and open innovation software tools. However, it is not yet clear why the consumers should participate and / or what’s in it for them.

“Did you know?” Finally, we promised trivia and tidbits as well. Here they are:

• Organized Crime is shifting from their traditional vices to cybercrimes -- equally lucrative but less physically risky.  
• The largest social media monitoring enterprise in the world? It could well be the Government of China, whose 40,000 officers analyze citizen postings on the Net  
• The average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer is only two years, according to Ogilvy; digital / social marketing projects need to deliver results fast, then

That last one must make CIOs -- whose average tenure is a bit more than four years -- feel pretty good by comparison...

- Apoorv Durga and Kashyap Kompella

1) "Bring Your Own Device" policies will push HTML5 adoption for mobile access to enterprise applications
This has definitely happened, although HTML5 adoption remains quite incomplete.

2) Content-rich customers will rebel against Web CMS marketing spins
The key phrase here is "content-rich." We've definitely seen some disappointment among high-volume publishers (e.g., media), who don't want e-marketing and other corollary services from their WCM vendor.

3) Microsoft will turn to partners to fix SharePoint shortcomings
Yep. It's an old story. As a SharePoint version ages, Redmond stops arguing that it's feature-complete and encourages customers to seek out supplementary tools from partners.

4) The top end of the Web CMS market will be redefined
This happened. OpenText/Vignette and IBM continue to fade. EMC gave up on Documentum Web Publisher, Oracle is effectively deprecating its UCM (neé Stellent) WCM in favor of its new FatWire acquisition, and the future of Interwoven TeamSite/LiveSite has gotten even dicier with HP's acquisition of Autonomy. The big boys, long fading, have almost disappeared, getting replaced by a bevy of more focused alternatives.

5) Intranet community managers will adopt public social functionality
We've definitely seen more of this, though it's still not pervasive.

6) SaaS vendors will try to separate from "The Cloud"
Nope, we were wrong. If anything the opposite: SaaS vendors have uniformly embraced fluffy Cloud terminology to ride that wave of hype. This was the case even among those SaaS players that don't actually employ Cloud-based technology.

7) Buyers will have a greater acceptance of newer standards
In some cases (CMIS, HTML5) yes, but in other cases (activitystrea.ms, OpenSocial) not so much, yet.

8) Case Management will become the leading application from high-end ECM vendors
Absolutely. Case management actually constitutes a family of applications relevant to many different types of organizations. It's where much of the non-SharePoint ECM action lies today.

9) Digital Asset Management vendors will greatly expand video management capabilities
This happened, though perhaps not as heavily as we predicted. It remains unclear whether traditional DAM players have the chops to compete effectively with more video-oriented vendors.

10) E-mail will remain the world's de-facto enterprise document repository and workflow system
Alas, we were correct. Companies ditching e-mail remain very much the exception and not the rule.

11) Portal software will increasingly produce services for other portals
Hard to know exactly. Major enterprise software gets talked about more than implemented, but portals seem the opposite. Enterprises who have committed heavily to portal technology continue to invest in those platforms -- or perhaps more tellingly -- in the systems around those platforms. Yet more enterprises are getting comfortable with multiple portals, including "portal lite" applications.

12) Specialized talent around managing content will begin to migrate out of large corporations
This is an organic trend that's difficult to track, but we saw increasing evidence of it last year, as consultancies and integrators desperate for more talent continued to comb the ranks of enterprises for experienced specialists. There's no recession in information management technology right now...

By my count, we were about 9 out of 12, or 75%. Not bad, not awesome. About the same rate as previous years -- and a reasonable co-efficient to add to our 2012 predictions. Look for those new predictions from us in the next few days....

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.

Nuxeo claims that VCS provides better clustering, tagging, join queries, and performance improvements over it's predecessor. Performance is probably the big driver in the move away from Jackrabbit.

Repository replacements are not trivial. Just ask Alfresco web content management licensees, who recently saw their WCM repository replaced with Alfresco's DM repository. Whatever good reasons for the move, changing an ECM repository is like getting a new brain; it's going to be hard to ensure that all your memories remain intact. We were joking today in the RSG India office: could you imagine the plight of an EMC Documentum or an IBM FileNet customer with millions of documents, if the vendor decided to change their repository?

Stay tuned to our ECM Evaluation Research for a deeper dive into Nuxeo 5.4.

Since its launch, ECM3 has been accessed by many thousands of people, and employed enthusiastically by both end user organizations and consulting firms around the globe. It continues to be the benchmark for ECM deployments, and has the breadth and depth to be useful in even the most demanding of situations.  If you haven't already downloaded your copy of it I encourage you to do so, and if you find anything in it that you believe could be improved or expanded upon, then get involved and help us make useful changes.

The Gartner model is basically sound, if though somewhat brief; I'm sure it will be of some value to Gartner clients.  I don't know if Gartner referenced the open source model in their work, though they surely must know of it. What I do know is that it's a shame that Gartner did not simply opt to contribute to ECM3/Mike 2.0, and I'd encourage them to consider doing so in the future.

I say long wait because myself and others first contributed to its drafting in 2009, and I am impatient, but that is how long these things take.  The reason for my happiness is that the goal of PAS 89 is to provide guidance to project, business, and technical managers who are beginning, or have ownership of an ECM project. I strongly urge you to take a look and add your thoughts to the discussion.

So now we have CMIS (for Interoperability) and (soon) a BSI Code of Practice for ECM.  Add to that the continued development of BPMS and BPEL for Business Process Management and Moreq2010 for Records Management and things are starting to come together better for ECM practitioners. 

That is not to say that all these initiatives have universal support, but they have much more support and much more chance of acceptance than previous attempts.  More importantly I think finally have the basis for commonality, something of a level playing field when we discuss ECM, a term that -- let's face it -- has come to mean anything to anyone.

So to be clear, if you are a buyer of ECM (Document and Records Management) technology, you should insist on business process management functionality that's (wherever possible) BPEL compliant, and a repository that's CMIS compliant.  Yet as subscribers to our ECM advisory service know all too well, not all vendors have matched their enthusiasm for these standards with commensurate technical support in their offerings.

To be sure neither standard represents a silver bullets. Nonetheless they will likely help save you major headaches in the future should you come to change suppliers. This in and of itself is a huge step forward for our industry.

Likewise, though not a standard as such, I highly recommend that you make use of the ECM3 Maturity Model (via here or here) and undertake a simple assessment of your organization, where it is at now and where it needs to be in the future. Thousands have already done so and feedback has been extremely positive.

PAS 89 may not be finalized yet, but it too makes for a great introductory document to ensure that both business and technology get on the same page from the get-go.

These days there is simply too much content flying through our organizations. We will never get it all under control, but a common understanding of the problem and the potential solutions available -- alongside avoiding vendor lock-in -- can certainly help in the battle.

Digital Forms, also known as smart forms or eForms, are improving and becoming more useful, especially compared to paper-based forms.  Once you collect information or content via these eForms, you can apply business rules to the content, take it through a workflow or archive it.  As a result, it is important to consider eForms-based content acquisition as a component of overall content life cycle.

In our recently released advisory, Best Practices for eForms, we explore different aspects of eForms and provide practical advice for organizations that are considering a transition away from traditional forms.

Key sections of the advisory paper are:

• Comparative Benefits of eForms
• When to Use eForms
• Standards
• Some Best Practices for eForm Deployments
• Dealing with Signatures
• eForm Software

The advisory paper is available to our Document and Records Management research subscribers. 

This is particularly the case in the world of Records Management, where the US Military DOD5015 standard has long held sway -- at least in theory. Vendors claim DOD5015 compliance, but in reality few organizations actually use the systems in a DOD5015-compliant manner. It's an over-arching standard that demands a particularly complex and cumbersome working methodology, one that might be applicable in an agency like the CIA or MI5, but makes little sense anywhere else.

In practical terms,

• Vendors pay handsomely to certify themselves against DOD5015
• Buyers insist that any RM products they buy are thus certified, then
• Nobody actually uses the product in a standards-compliant manner 

Bottom line, it's a complete waste of time. 

Yet here's the twist in this sad tale: RM implementations should be standards compliant. Of all content management disciplines, RM is the most in need of a standardized method of working --  If for little other reason that records last a long time, go through multiple pairs of hands over their lifecycle, and can get consolidated with multiple disparate data sets.

Well there may be hope on the (distant) horizon, since after two failed attempts, the European Union-backed Moreq 2010 standard is emerging as a potential DOD5015 slayer.  Slayer because it does what it's supposed to do and no more. It's a standard that tells you what you must do, but not how to do it, or for that matter where to do it. In fact with this new standard, you may potentially even have your own internal RM program certified, rather than the standard simply being restricted to a particular vendor's software solution. This is a huge change in direction, and one that I certainly welcome.

Some basic factoids about the new standard:

• It has been quite radically simplified from the previous version
• The concept of a primary classification has been dropped in favor of a more flexible approach
• It accepts of a modular, SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) structure for an RM system

Each of these bullets deserve serious discussion and analysis that cannot be provided in a blog post, but I can summarize that the new specification both simplifies and allows far more flexibility in your implementations and vendor selections. With this new approach to RM there is no need for a monolithic RM system.

To be clear, it is you the user of RM systems that either comply, or not, with any particular regulation, not the system itself.  Likewise just to be super clear, Moreq2010 has yet to be tested in the field, and suppliers and end users have yet to actually adopt it, since it's brand spanking new.

Similarly it's important to note that Moreq2010 will not in and of itself be a panacea for RM.  RM is going through a very difficult period of change, much of it depicted by extreme denial. The onslaught of digital records, cloud computing, the importance of email, the proliferations and chaos of shared drives, the emergence of social media, and a general lack of core IT skills have had a dramatic and largely negative impact on the world of RM. 

Moreq2010 at least is an attempt to move the discussion forward, and could significantly shift the ground rules. Whether it is actually adopted enthusiastically or not, Moreq2010 will help to fire a much needed debate.

Most of the time, how your content management system persists content does not impact end users. However, it can have a great impact on IT and admin folks. It also impacts your architecture as well as overall costs. Hence we recommend that when you are evaluating your content management needs, you should also explore how the tool persists content for its ongoing day-to-day usage.

In our recent advisory, Key Considerations for Choosing the Right Storage Alternative, we look at different considerations that are relevant when deciding if you should select a content management system that uses a database or a one that uses a file system.

Here's the table of contents for the advisory paper:

• Key Takeaways
• Introduction
• Management versus Archival Services
• Some Vendor Examples
• Key Factors to Determine the Right Persistence Alternative
• Conclusion

The advisory paper is available to our DAM, Web CMS, and ECM research subscribers.

While all these Portal-like scenarios have common aspects, they are also vastly different from each other. Consequently, there are multiple ways, ranging from out-of-the-box tools (many of which we cover in our Portals  as well as Web CMS Reports), to custom solutions to build such applications.

In our recently released advisory briefing, Alternatives for Building Portal-Like Applications, we explore different ways of building Portal-like applications and offer advice on which approach to choose for your specific requirements.

Here's the table of contents for the advisory paper:

• Key Takeaways
• Introduction
• What does a Portal do?
• Alternatives for Building Your Portal-Like Application
• Conclusion

The advisory paper is available to our Portals, Web CMS, and ECM research subscribers.

Earlier last month, ECM vendor Nuxeo proposed to contribute its Content Repository to the Eclipse Foundation. This after they dropped support for Java Content Repository (JCR), a repository spec that didn't really take off spectacularly, but was arguably more successful than most other standard related initiatives in this space. Nuxeo's contribution, named Eclipse Enterprise Content Repository Project (ECR), is CMIS enabled (incidentally, you can also access JCR via CMIS), and provides an opportunity for Nuxeo to compete with Alfresco on the CMIS bandwagon.

This was followed by Hippo's Rave Proposal to Apache. Rave is a "web and social mashup engine" that aims to integrate many of Apache's existing projects such as OpenSocial, Shindig, and Wookie.

Both these proposals appear very attractive on the surface.

Nuxeo's contribution hopes to evolve into a reference repository implementation that makes it easier for others to focus on developing content-centric applications without worrying too much about the underlying repository. In doing so, it assumes that the underlying repository no longer provides any differentiation, and therefore essentially can be abstracted away.  I've seen enough ECM and WCM implementations to argue this is not always the case.

Rave on the other hand wants to become a lightweight portal type container, but without the legacy of heavier-weight technologies such as Java Portlets. To achieve this, the project aims to integrate many other existing initiatives, and build functionality not yet present in those projects. In doing so, it risks itself turning into something that is as heavy as the current breed of Portal technologies that it wants to replace in the first place.

These are very early days for both these proposals. Nuxeo has just expressed its intention to contribute while Rave is in incubator stage. It will be a while before these reach a stage of maturity where they can be of much use to you the customer.  Even if they provide technologically superior alternatives to other existing options, there are other reasons, often non-technical, that define the success of such initiatives. A lot depends on how other vendors -- mostly bigger ones -- support them. Unfortunately, we don't have a good history of vendors collaborating on such initiatives.

So for now, they are probably more useful to respective vendors, since such announcements tend generate goodwill and visibility without spending a lot or marketing dollars. But for you the end users -- as I explain in "What happens when a standard dies?" -- you should carry out similar due diligence even when a new standard (or technology) emerges.

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.

However, it should focus you the customer on an important topic: what happens when a standard dies?

The case for employing standards (as opposed to proprietary approaches) is that standards allow you to:

1. Easily integrate and interoperate with other enterprise applications
2. Rationalize your skills, hardware, software, and resources
3. Enable faster time to market because you can buy applications off-the-shelf
4. Create portable applications
5. Enjoy a more predictable and simpler development lifecyle
6. Focus on your business, rather than commodity tasks

These are powerful arguments, but they easily become irrelevant if the standard you've adopted fails to gain traction or simply dies off. There are many reasons that could happen --  lack of support, over-complexity, rise of a simpler competing standard -- to name just a few.   Most of these are true of JCR, have been true of its many predecessors, and could cripple the anointed successor, the CMIS standard.

I am not suggesting that you give up on standards and follow proprietary approaches. Instead, what I do recommend is that you keep an open mind and don't just assume that a standards-based approach is always better, or automatically lowers your risks.

There are always trade-offs, so be sure to conduct due diligence to decide which standards are relevant for you. I delve into this in more detail in my Best Practices article titled "Do Standards in Content Technologies Matter?" -- available in TIMAF Information Management Best Practices Vol. 1.

Different vendors use different approaches. Some allow you to be flexible while others offer fewer choices. Consider the following examples:

1. Oracle is pushing "Secure Files" to allow users to store Oracle ECM content, including large files, in their database, as an alternative to their traditional file-system-based repository.
2. Microsoft SharePoint has always stored all content, including files, in SQL Server database. This has raised concerns about SharePoint for certain scenarios and Microsoft has responded with mechanisms such as External Blob Storage (EBS). In fact, a large number of third-party vendors specialize in only this aspect (or weakness) of SharePoint.
3. Plone has taken an approach opposite to that of Oracle. You no longer put large files into Zope's database (ZODB), but instead store them in file system
4. Many other vendors, such as Alfresco and EMC Documentum, use a custom repository for storing files. The repository itself can be a file system or database, but the vendors provide some sort of an abstraction layer to access it.

As you can see, there is no universally right approach. In fact, some people also argue that standards such as Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) and Java Content Repository API standards (JSR 283/170) make it irrelevant.

That's not correct though. Some factors to consider with respect to storage requirements are:

1. Do other applications in your enterprise need to access content managed by your Content or Document Management System?
2. Does your organization mandate certain requirements such as "All file type content should be stored in an Oracle (or DB2 or SQL Server) database'?
3. Your requirements for backup/restore and whether you want to use your database's backup utilities or something else
4. Availability of system administration skills

There are many other considerations that we will detail out in a forthcoming advisory paper.  Meanwhile, we dedicate a good amount of space to advising you on such architectural issues in our Document & Records Management (ECM) as well as Web Content Management vendor evaluation reports.

1. "What does an information manager do?"
2. " How does she do it?"

And then proceeds to answer them both.

The book is called TIMAF Information Management Best Practices Vol. 1. I recommend it.

The longer I'm in this business, the more I see the common problems we all face as -- at their core -- information management challenges. The problem with the term "Information Management," though, is that it feels very abstract and doesn't seem immediately relevant to the workaday struggles of the typical website or data warehouse manager. Consequently it's a term that gets bandied about in academia, but not so much within the modern enterprise.

I think this book -- edited by Bob Boiko and Erik Hartman -- will help change that. It's a preliminary collection of best practices that's more specific and detailed than you'd see in the trade press, but more actionable and case-oriented than you'd see in an academic treatise (the authors are all practitioners and consultants). It's also mercifully vendor-free. [Disclosure: two of my colleagues (Alan and Apoorv) contributed chapters.]

If I had any criticism it would be that the book perhaps over-emphasizes content (versus data) in general, and structured content in particular -- a faint shortcoming that's more than redeemed by the step-by-step approach taken in most of the chapters.

As you prepare for a new year, consider going back to the basics, and check out this book.

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.

Some enterprises only have a license for a production instance of their CMS. Why? Because that is how software licenses are sold to them.  Development and Test environment licenses are considered and listed as optional extras -- luxury items on an extended price list.

Let's just be clear on this... Never develop anything in a production environment, ever!  Remember your production environment is just that: it is your live environment, the working, living, breathing system. It is where your colleagues go to manage content and frequently modify website behavior as well. You should never under any circumstances be making changes to functionality directly in this environment. There are just too many variables to be sure that when you fiddle around, something won't go terribly wrong.  Sometimes things go wrong immediately and it's obvious; just as often things go wrong but they can take weeks or even months to emerge as critical issues, corrupting the system. Then tracing back the problem to its roots can be near impossible. 

By the way, this is a similar issue with many other technologies we evaluate, including ECM, Digital Asset Management, and others.

It should be standard that all vendors bundle in Test and Development server licenses with their core Production server licenses. They are not optional items and should never be offered or promoted as optional. As a buyer you should insist that any quotations include full pricing for a Development-Test-Production environment, and as a vendor you should be upfront with buyers that a Production-only environment is not just inadvisable, but downright stupid.

An automobile dealer would never be allowed to offer brakes as an optional extra, why should it be an option for a mission-critical business application?

For instance, my colleague Apoorv Durga blogged about mashup vendor JackBe's app store a few months ago: "interesting but not new". But it's part of a bigger trend: by next year, nearly every product we cover, from Search to ECM, will have its own app store. I hear a new one being announced almost every month.

As Apoorv noted, the concept of a digital catalog of add-ons isn't novel, but the hype around it certainy is.  Alas, the sexy term "app store" doesn't remove the traditional burden to carefully assess the performance, stability, accessibility, security, upgradability, and play-nicely-with-others attributes of any 3rd-party modules you incorporate into your system. 

Things will get particularly confusing if you have multiple systems and services. For instance, Google has the Google Apps Marketplace. It contains anything from add-ons to single-sign-on cloud services, and even professional services. (Really, even consultancy is an app now?) Presumably, all of these would be excellent upgrades to your Google Apps environment. Perhaps you'll find Google Apps a bit limited for collaboration. So why not get Jive from Google's App Marketplace?

Even better, Jive has also announced its own App Store. It's not available yet (it's coming in version 5, slated for early next year), but over 50 third-party developers have already signed up to provide apps.

And what better way to use these than through an iPhone? Thankfully, that, too, is provided for: just get Jive's iPhone application. Of course, you'll have to go to Apple's App Store for that.

And then, you'll have the app for your iPhone from the Apple App Store, to work with the apps from Jive's App Store, while interfacing with Jive as an app from the Google App Marketplace, added on to Google Apps. One reason I could imagine this wouldn't work, is if Jive Express (the Google Apps app) wouldn't support the Jive Mobile Module (which is required for the Apple App Store app). But I'm hopeful it will.

A cynic would say I've intentionally tried to confuse you. Just in order to sell you more of our research, by telling you it would clear up this confusion. Of course, I'd never stoop to that level. (Though let's be clear on this, our research would certainly clear up the confusion.) In reality, what I'm looking forward to is a larger cloud service to house all of these app stores. Maybe we could call it the Sky Mall...

One of my pet peeves about both mobile and social is the amount of hype surrounding the topics. There's no denying they're of huge importance to any enterprise right now, but the buzz can be deafening. However, conference organizer Erik Hartman has created a great program, with a nice mix of theory, tools, and a lot of practical use cases. I think attendees will get many useful ideas out of it.

I'll be talking about mobile delivery and social engagement through the tools and systems you may already have (such as a web content management system). Theresa will focus on digital assets -- getting video, audio, and brand assets to the mobile web. But of course, we're not just there to talk -- the interesting bit of any event is always to listen. (Fortunately, about half the presentations will be in English -- so no need to learn Dutch to attend.)

So join us the 7th in Utrecht, and if you're there, come up and talk to us. As a reader of this blog, you'll receive a 200 euro discount by using the discount code RSG2010.

Enterprises frequently inquire about what format to employ when archiving electronic documents. There are two competing formats for archiving electronic documents: TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) and PDF/A (Portable Document Format - Archival). The TIFF format is the most widely used globally and pre-dates the PDF/A format. However, the PDF/A format has some very distinct advantages and therefore will continue to grow; it could potentially become more popular than the TIFF format in the future.

ECM research stream subscribers can download the briefing here.