Comments on: Business Communication Infrastructure and Utility Services

By: Max J. Pucher

Max J. Pucher — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:24:17 +0000

Roel, obviously standards are good, because that is what enables interoperation, but what if you don’t need interoperation? What if you consolidate and do not need to match up your best of breed products wth extremely complex SOA? What if you don’t have to analyze and rigidize your processes? I suggest that before standards would help you to move to another tool all your processes would have changed anyway! I understand that companies do not want to depend on a single vendor, but then who can really drop Microsoft or step away from SAP or Oracle once in use? No one …

We at Isis Papyrus always look for standards that we can use practically. You are right that there are just a few in ECM and BPM. The problem with standards is the time it takes to standardize. By the time things are standardized it is far behind the scale of things needed by the marketplace. BPEL 2.0 is a good example of lagging standardization. Everyone claims to use standards and no one really does, just look at XML. You can not standardize ‘a little’ just as you can not be ‘a little pregnant’. Either you follow a standard or you don’t. Once you follow a standard, forget innovation. You are no longer on the forefront of technology. Do we need to be on the forefront? Could we not see IT as purely a commodity, as Nicholas Carr has suggested in ‘Does IT matter?’ I do not think so. IT is not about technology, IT is not about standards, IT is not about cost reduction – IT must be about human focused quality and the best available is just good enough. Holding IT back to standardize will hold back the users and thus the business. As long as IT is focused on improving service quality swiftly and dynamically as needed the business wins. So no big projects and no long-term plans. Nike got it right – JUST DO IT. (pun intended)

All the best, Max J. Pucher
Chief Architect ISIS Papyrus Software

By: Roel Derksen

Roel Derksen — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:03:26 +0000

This sounds as a very good product that can solve a lot of problems for our business.
However, as you stated in the beginning of your post, isn’t the real problem the lack of open standards in the ECM enterprise? Several vendors being involved in one organization/project should not be a problem with proper standards.

Readying your post I started to think about this and did a bit of google-ing…
As far as I can oversee it, the first steps towards such standards are taken by: http://www.aiim.org/standards.asp?ID=29284
Anyway, maybe you can share your view on the absence of standards in ECM in one of your next posts?

I will keep following your blog!

Cheers,
Roel

By: Ed Steenhoek

Ed Steenhoek — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 05:06:26 +0000

Interesting post.

I’ve looked at ISUS Papyrus but fail to see it as another apple in the basket that is filled with apples like EMC Documentum, and IBM FileNet. To me it is the orange. A juice orange however.

I’ve not gone into the depth (yet) with ISIS-Papyrus to understand how it deals with the side of ECM that is not related to business communication. I think of collaboration in projects where lot’s of MS Word documents are created and of which the majority is of no interest after the project has delivered. Wehere tasks are being created, milestones defined and discussion is captured. I think of Case Management parts e.g. just storing a scanned copy of an identity paper in the client dossier. I thionk of the next generation ECM (e.g. Alfresco) that will be incorporating Enterprise 2.0.

I have the open mind if only it were because you can’t trust neither IBM nor EMC on there blue eyes as they tell you that they can do anything. And maybe it requires a third read as well. As for now, I’m willing to beleive ISIS-Papyrus can all handle it – open mind . Maybe you can elaborate about the examples in one of your nexts post (my 3rd read…)
Looking forward to it!