This week in links - week 19, 2008

"Alfresco's Social Computing Slant Shows ECM's Evolution" by George Dearing:

"I had an interesting discussion with John Newton, the co-founder of Alfresco, recently...//...Newton makes everything sound so damn easy when he talks about enterprise content management. And when's the last time you heard the words 'easy' and 'ECM' in the same sentence?"

"If you take into account the way information increasingly lives inside and outside the firewall, ECM becomes even more complex. Companies now have to figure out how to consume and create content in both environments, something Newton says Alfresco accomplishes by adopting a 'content-as-service' approach. He argues that most enterprises lay out their palette of required services based on the need to create content. The focal point shouldn't be centered so much on the ECM suite, he argues. It has more to do with looking at 'how the Web browser can help knowledge workers do their jobs.'"

[Newton:]"'Content services should just be accessible wherever knowledge workers are. We shouldn't be forcing workers to go into these ECM suites. In our view, collaboration spans far more than ECM.' "

Hear, hear.

"E2.0 Fundamentals" by Jeremy Thomas:

"As Dion Hinchliffe says (and as I have written before), 'Discoverability isn’t an after thought , it’s the core'...//...Organizations need to embrace the fact that their data will be federated. Sure, workers will put their documents in “wiki X”, but they’ll also put them on the file share, in content management systems, and on email servers. Data that cannot be found is useless. Enterprise search will unlock data and increase the propensity for information (and the knowledge workers who create it) to be discovered. Discoverability leads to recognition, and recognition leads to increased participation. Enterprise 2.0 must be approached holistically."

Hear, hear. Again.

"Report says enterprise mashups on the rise" By C.G. Lynch, CIO.com:

"A new Forrester report says that enterprise mashups, while not yet a panacea for connecting all the dots of corporate data, will help companies (and their employees) mix and match information to help them do their jobs better. According to the researchers, vendors will provide tools for business users to build a mashup on their own with no programming experience."

"'Mashups are trying to solve a long-standing business problem, which is combining disparate data sources,' says Oliver Young, the Forrester analyst who wrote the report. 'We think mashups are doing it in a unique way that's more user-oriented.'...//... "It absolutely starts to look like BI,' Young says. 'Mashups will eat into that market.' Forrester defined a mashup in the enterprise as "custom applications that combine multiple, disparate data sources into something new and unique."