I am scheduled to deliver a track keynote at the AIIM Expo in Philadelphia next month on the future of ECM. The idea of the session is to look at where things might be in 10 years time - so real future gazing.
I have a lot of thoughts on this already and have been talking to some people who's opinions I respect but would love your thoughts too!
Please comment here or email me direct if you prefer - but what do you think will still be with us in 10 years time, what will be gone and what will be new?
I am just as interested in business practice and process as well as techology. And my focus is probably more on document and records management than web cm - though maybe you believe it will all be one by then :-)
Seriously, don't hold back, any and all contributions much appreciated and will be acknowledged!
5 comments:
The future will hold the following:
1. Vast majority of software will be open source.
2. ECM will embrace security standards such as XACML
3. There will be no distinction between content creation tools, office tools and publishing tools
4. Wikis will be pervasive and become a first class citizen
5. Syndication via RSS will be pervasive.
Thanks James!
Will that open source software be the commercial type like Alfresco:
Designed and built by a commercial company
Run by a commercial company
Generating substantial revenue from support contracts
Or built by real communities??
Cheers
Alan
In 10 years, I predict the following:
1. Most files being created will use XML as their native file format - not just Office (ODF vs. Microsoft: who cares?) but the images, audio, etc.
2. As a corrolary to that, image-type formats will have XML that includes increasingly intelligent semantic tagging (think OCR+XML) as well as the graphical representation as e.g. SVG.
3. As James indicated, wikis and RSS will be key technologies in the ECM stack.
4. I think imaging will be in significant decline as the "copy of record" is born, sent, received, and processed in its native electronic format.
5. Corollary: e-forms become better accepted (and more interoperable).
More as I think of them - but I am on AIIM deadline as well. :)
Hi - This relates to ECM's place in the enterprise software sun in the future:
Occasionally (and more frequently so) these days one hears that ECM is (or going to be) as big as ERP, SCM (Supply Chain Management) or CRM sectors of the software industry. When examining the state (or fate) of the Content Management Industry 10 years hence, it would be interesting to if this scenario will play out.
My take : If a category has to be as big and important, then not only has the business need for that technology be significant but the discipline itself has to have strong theoretical foundations. Let me try to explain what I mean:
Using an example from outside the technology world, index funds have become popular because of the evidence in favor of the efficient capital markets theory proposed by the academia. In the software realm, could we say ERP software boom has been helped along by Hammer and Champy's "Reengineering the Corporation". And of course, the Supply Chain Software draws heavily from the advances in Operations Research and various Optimization models.
Currently, as I see it - there may be strong demand for ECM technologies but the ECM discipline is not backed by any academic or other research - so that theoretical foundation of ECM for business may be missing. (Of late, there is focus by Forrester et al on Information workplaces and content as the center of enterprise applications but it is just be a start)
I would say that the category of Web Services software is going to be big as books like John Hagel's "Out of the Box" serve its cause.
I think, the ECM space requires such articulation to emerge as a major category.
-Kashyap
http://www.kashyapkompella.com
Fantastic comments - thanks to you all . I have a first draft now for my presentation and Peggy at AIIM is expecting them a couple of weeks ago!
I genuinely think this is going to be a good presenation - certainly the content and info is good - thanks to all the great imput - the pressure is on me to convert that to a terrific presentation on the day.
Post a Comment