Real Story Group. Make Better Technology Decisions.

SharePoint exposes lack of information management commitment

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 11-Nov-2011

Last week we ran the SharePoint Symposium in Washington DC and kicked off the two-day event with a question to the audience.  What single word best describes "SharePoint" to you?  The preponderance of negative answers thrown out surprised us ... Continue Reading

Death of the Intranet

Added By Tony Byrne on 10-Nov-2011

Intranets are dead. Long live the Digital Workplace!

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employees understand as their "intranet" -- updates from corporate communications, some HR forms, and a mountain of outdated docs -- is increasingly irrelevant ... Continue Reading

What is a Community, anyway?

Added By Tony Byrne on 24-Oct-2011

This question is popping up pretty frequently among our advisory subscribers. It's a subtle question in some ways, but also laden with great import for both intranet/collaboration managers and public website marketers ... Continue Reading

From Vignette to Microsoft - Web Content Management Orthodoxy

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Oct-2011

Below is an excerpt from an interview I had with with Australian journalist David Walker. I thought it worth re-publishing here too. In a wide ranging chat undertaken whilst I was grumpy and jetlagged we discussed amongst other things Interwoven (now Autonomy soon to be HP), Vignette (OpenText), and Microsoft ... Continue Reading

SharePoint Licensing Mysticism Explained

Added By Shawn Shell on 25-Aug-2011

While SharePoint has been on the market since 2001, customers still get quite confused by Microsoft's licensing schemes.  When I speak at conferences, I'm commonly asked about how to license SharePoint.  Questions like "what can I expect to pay for SharePoint licenses" or "what specific licenses to I have to buy" are frequent topics of discussion ... Continue Reading

Predictions for CMS, Mobile, and Social

Added By Tony Byrne on 23-Aug-2011

Earlier this summer we held a mini-summit of some RSG analysts and captured each others' thoughts in a series of short videos. In this one I make three broad technology predictions: ... Continue Reading

Do we need more ECM Maturity Models?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-Aug-2011

The research and consulting giant Gartner recently released a maturity model for ECM (Enterprise Content Management). Since its release (it's an overhaul of an earlier model), I have had a number of people point out to me the similarities between it and the open source maturity model for ECM that we contribute to, called ECM3, which is now a part of MIKE2.0 ... Continue Reading

How does your intranet stack up?

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 29-Jun-2011

Benchmarking anything is challenging, but benchmarking your intranet is really hard. It's likely just not practical for you to conduct multiple site visits to other organizations, and you can only go to so many conferences where other enterprises share their successes and challenges. Luckily, intranet managers have another option ... Continue Reading

The ECM skills shortage continues

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Jun-2011

It's a discussion that reoccurs regularly enough with Real Story Group Document Management (ECM) subscribers -- how do I get skilled ECM staff? It's a tough question to answer ... Continue Reading

Implementation Cost Multipliers

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 23-Jun-2011

Rules of thumb can be dangerous -- because of the inherent broad generalizations. But they can also be quite useful, especially if they highlight something that may be unpleasant to hear, but shouldn't be ignored.One such truths is that in general, your implementation cost for an enterprise implementation will come to 7 to 8 times that of initial licensing ... Continue Reading

How to accurately budget for CMS projects

Added By Apoorv Durga on 30-May-2011

The software engineering community has spawned many different methods to estimate levels of effort for implementing projects. You could debate the validity or accuracy yielded by these projection methods, but the fact remains that they're widely employed. ... Continue Reading

Cloud on the rack

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Mar-2011

What could have been a snoozefest in fact turned into a full-on attack of the value and promise of Cloud Computing ... Continue Reading

SharePoint leadership starts with a SharePoint strategy

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Feb-2011

On the 28th and 29th March, my colleague Jarrod Gingras and I will be hosting the inaugural SharePoint Strategy Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona ... Continue Reading

Faking a CMS? You're Not Alone

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 7-Feb-2011

If you agree with the adage that enterprises need a new Web CMS every three years, then it's easy to assume that in the year 2011, most organizations would be working on their third or fourth Web CMS implementation. The real story is that some of the largest enterprises -- including some of the biggest names in healthcare, retail, and banking -- are still trying to move to their first real CMS ... Continue Reading

In praise of TIMAF

Added By Tony Byrne on 29-Dec-2010

There's a great new book that begins with two questions:

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

And then proceeds to answer them both. ... Continue Reading

Develop the Right Shortlist with an RFI

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Dec-2010

We have a new new advisory paper out called "Develop the Right Shortlist with an RFI" that hits on a key gap in many procurement processes. For with most prospective content technology buyers, great effort gets expended on an RFP process at the cost of the RFI. In fact, there often is no RFI. This is a mistake ... Continue Reading

The complications of vendor pricing

Added By Theresa Regli on 23-Nov-2010

At any given time, I'm in the process of helping three or four Real Story Group research subscribers through a procurement process. Oftentimes, the most complicated part of the process isn't creating an RFP, determining the short list, putting together the evaluation team or use case scenarios. It's normalizing the pricing ... Continue Reading

Our ECM Maturity Model meets MIKE2.0

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 18-Nov-2010

ECM3 is without a doubt the most successful maturity model for ECM, with downloads of the model passing the 5,000 mark recently ... Continue Reading

Education versus Training

Added By Tony Byrne on 6-Oct-2010

Most enterprises I encounter who are implementing new information management systems (like Web CMS, Portals, Collaboration, DAM tools, etc.) understand the importance of employee training, and we certainly advise customers to pay close attention to it with RFPs and program planning ... Continue Reading

The high cost of support

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Sep-2010

In many end-user organizations, software support fees can make up the bulk of the yearly IT budget. This is hardly surprising when vendors typically like to calculate support contracts on the basis of ~20% of list pricing per annum, in perpetuity ... Continue Reading

Cri Du Coeur for Records Management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Aug-2010

If you were to trust in the marketing swill that comes out of the vendor and analyst community these days, you would believe that large organizations are not just embracing ERM (Electronic Records Management) but that they are positively hugging and kissing it too ... Continue Reading

ECM Price Lists: Why the Secrecy?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Jul-2010

Yesterday morning I was reading through Oracle's recently updated price list (yes my Monday mornings really are that exciting). I was thinking that I have long valued the fact that I can access simple, clear and open prices from major vendors like Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. I might occasionally gasp at the prices listed ... Continue Reading