AIIM Expo and Conference 2007, Boston...what a week for CMS Watch! It was hectic with the release of the ECM Suites Report, conducting talks, panels, and tutorials, and conversing with more of our readers and others among the 30,000 participants than would be possible to count. I am assured, at the end of this week, that Enterprise Content Management is very much alive, that it is morphing in different directions, that it is growing rapidly, and that there is a mountain of confusion to deal with. This will certainly make much fodder for blogs and articles over the coming weeks. Some key trends bubbling under include ECM software-as-a-service, open source options, and ECM as middleware. For now though it's worthwhile to mention who was not at AIIM, rather than who was. Interwoven, Vignette, and Open Text all failed to show up -- and this sparked rumors galore. Contrasting their absence with the major presence of Microsoft, Oracle, and EMC left many wondering if this was a sign of things to come. Turbulence was the word we used in our press release last week, and buyers from large enterprises and small continued to express to us their deep concerns about the market they are expected to navigate today. The ECM seas are certainly very choppy.