I am a fan of AIIM and its market research, so I always make a point of reading and absorbing any new reports that come from them. The latest "Electronic Records Management - still playing catch up with paper" is good one. Yet the thing with broad poll-based research like this, is that often the focus of the original research turns out to be of less interest than the unexpected side issues that such a survey uncovers. Case in point here is CMIS (Content Management Operability Specification) a topic briefly touched upon in the report, and as our ECM subscribers know, we are interested in standards, we think they are a good thing.

Based on a poll of 768 AIIM members, the survey revealed that CMIS has already gained traction in 15% of these organizations. Considering that CMIS is not even an approved standard as yet (just a specification yet to be ratified), that is a remarkably high figure. When one factors in to this figure those organizations that do not have interoperability as a requirement, and most importantly that few new systems have CMIS connectors, and none currently exist for legacy systems, it is more remarkable still.  Remember, standards typically take many years to gain traction.

We have a long history of well-meaning, well-designed, and well-intentioned standards in our industry (remember ODMA and DMA anyone?) that failed to stick. CMIS seems like a good bet to succeed where others did not.