Interesting article on Enterprise Content Management systems, "ECM - Don't buy it", by Jim Howard, himself CEO of a vendor in the ECM market.
"I firmly believe that the problem content management buyers are experiencing is driven by vendor misinformation and a penchant for over-generalization. There are many examples of generic labels creating confusion and vendors pushing products regardless of suitability; however, the label "Enterprise Content Management (ECM)" is especially guilty in propagating confusion."
As well as confronting the gap between vendor hype and real-world requirements, Howard offers a short list of sensible guidelines, including (very much abbreviated):
- Content management should be built around the workgroup. Pick a solution to meet the needs of the group who is managing and publishing.
- Simple implementations typically work best - especially at first.
- Don't enable publishing for every employee unless you want a big mess.
- Workspaces should be very simple to set-up and self-manage.
- Professional services costs and complexity are what make a CMS fail. Low implementation costs = low management costs.
- Trying to accomplish too much is one of the biggest hazards in the CM world. Keeping the project goals simple is a winner.
- Personalized content is difficult to set-up, difficult to manage, and almost always costs much more money than it's worth.
- Do not let the vendors set your selection criteria.
A recommended read for anyone thinking about implementing a large CMS, especially if you find yourself being dazzled by long feature lists or tempted by document/asset management systems when you really want to manage and publish web content.
[Thanks to Column Two.]
6:23:54 PM 
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