Sadly, in other areas I fall short. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview our keynote speaker Clay Shirky. The resulting podcast showcases two flattering things about Clay and two unflattering things about Toby that I couldn’t in all good conscience correct either through masterful editing or Auto-Tune.

Clay’s positive traits: expressive and insightful
Toby’s negative traits: monotonal and noncontributory

The good news: the event is nearly at-hand and thus the podcast has a limited lifespan unless otherwise syndicated. The better news: Clay’s giving the keynote address and should be masterful. Later in life I hope I forget this moment of humiliation, and thus encourage only comments that don’t do further damage to my self-respect.

Here’s the Gartner PCC Summit Link: gartner.com/us/pcc
Here’s the Podcast URL:  http://www.gartnerinfo.com/pcc9/PCC_Promo_V2.mp3

Let me explain. I travel often enough to encounter all kinds of differences between people, places, and things. Yet, in many countries there are similarities even among the differences. So, for example, when traveling in the UK, Bermuda, and Australia I can expect to hop into any automobile and drive it from the right side forward seat on the left side of the road. But I’ll pay for traffic violations with different currency even if a Queen is common among them. Elsewhere, the opposite is often true: left side driver on right side of road. However, a few weeks ago I rented a car in St. John. There, I drove on the left from the left. And, it seemed to me that others were probably doing the same (though as I said, it was raining).

So, the first rule of standards might seem to be that they are not often global – whether in a geographic or even a company-wide sense. And, since Enterprise Content Management is as much a contradiction in terms as Naked Mole Rat…

… It stands to reason that a standard which allows information to be better managed and accessed would be a good thing. However, to this point every enterprise content architecture is unique – and typically business leadership could detail “failure measures” more often than success ones. Maybe a success measure is allowing everyone a common access protocol to a virtual repository stitched together by a standard. But I also refer back to the first rule of standards and now add more detail: not only are standards rarely global; standards can also be deadly. Am I saying that CMIS 1.0 will kill people? Aloud?

Not yet. But in Contentville there are drivers (sponsors) and there are pedestrians (users) and protections are generally better for the former. And, without repeated warning, any changes to the environment may cause sponsor/user collisions, especially if users fail to >> LOOK RIGHT >> (as clearly indicated on the footpath) prior to crossing the road. In the real world, 12,567 pedestrians from countries with opposite traffic rules die each year in the UK, Bermuda, and Australia as a consequence of the absence of global standards. Amazingly, there are also 12,567 people in those countries who annually earn a living by painting warning messages on streets which are ignored by foolhardy tourists. So, effectively it’s a wash. And I’ve made a sorry mess of the analogy, too.

More interestingly, many of those people paid by certain countries to paint reminders on sidewalks reminding tourists of standards differences also continue to rely on non-standard coinage for many day-to-day transactions.  Even as inflation limited their spending power, their governments would produce more and more varieties on the same theme. It seems incredible that even as population trends indicate a small decline in the birthrate benchmark figures of industrialized nations – thus showing consideration for our overburdened planet – their pocket money has blossomed to the extent that at the end of any given day they carry the equivalent weight of a full-term newborn in their trousers.

Some of the coins have “jingled together” in pockets long enough to have spawned a second generation of tiny coinlets which numismatists once wrongly guessed were actually the pets of the larger denominations. My theory on a related subject: it’s the weight distribution of coinage in Europe which is causing the Earth to spin crazily on its axis, further stimulating global climate change. Furthermore, we may have to put both ‘belts and braces‘ on some of the smaller countries to keep them from slipping right off into space. So, the hope of all people-kind now rests on the euro as a standards superhero.

With the advent of the euro, a common measurement of value now exists for stuff across most of Europe. This represents more of a problem for some countries than others. The euro bills and coins didn’t yet exist even as committees populated by caring representatives from all nations struggled to assign meaningful figures (for solid basis of comparison) to all goods and services.  The cost of souvenirs is a good indicator – how much should a bullfight-themed folding pocket fan from Madrid cost by comparison to one which touts the Grand Canal in Venice?  Folding Fan Fights alone have cost at least a year of factional squabbling in the souvenir subcommittee on value-based pricing. Unfair global currency valuations, bailouts, and other inequities now plague the euro and cast significant doubt on its survival. If the euro falls, I presume more fragile standards like CMIS might too.

In terms of actual usage, establishment of new universal standards tend to yield lower enthusiasm than they might have during some ‘golden age’ of the past. Especially if the standard was actually gold, as I heard it may have been at some point in history. Because now… guess what?  Enterprise content management technology is the ‘gold’ of the new information economy^TM. A YouTube video used for sales training or product promotion – it’s content. A tweet related to project team meeting location – more content. An iPad application that presents ideas as text or images or full-motion media – again, content. A contract or presentation or invoice or sales order – all content. And, considering the difficulty of navigating the 4-15 different repositories most enterprises maintain for contribution and consumption of said content by people, something that allows all those repositories and users to interact more seamlessly would be of huge importance. And, perhaps as more content is contained within cloud hosts some kind of common logic about the containers and their access that creates a unifying user experience for those dependent on a hybrid content architecture (some stuff on premise/other stuff in the cloud) would prevail and be good. Such is the unique value proposition of CMIS 1.0.

Sadly, people tend to reveal differences and then revel in them. So, it’s likely that sponsors of some systems won’t want to provide access to lots of users or restructure the underlying repository or change the user experience in any way. Some vendors will use the upgrade path to CMIS-enablement as an opportunity to charge for upgrades and services. Others will embrace it as a way to keep their clunky technology relevant and forestall displacement. Moreover, It’s a developer standard in the era of SharePoint solutions and repositories out of reach like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Flickr. It’s a document management standard in an era of agile information. For CMIS to take a rightful place in the pantheon of de-discombobulating technology tools, it will have to attach itself to a high level strategy for designing content architectures for ideal user experiences as well as identify better ways of ‘relationalizing’ information of many kinds across many places. And, that might take more time than the market itself allows. Even as I write this, enterprises are adopting another approach to reconciling the content management mess. They’re adopting SharePoint, migrating content to it from network drives (and sometimes competing ECM products), and enforcing it as the universal content infrastructure. Whatever they use for governed content (the repository of record) already has a SharePoint connecter. And, now they’ll use SharePoint as the client for all their content.

So, a market standard emerges to trump any attempts by a technical one. And now, they’re waiting to use this platform as consumers do their iPhones, iPads, or Android devices – as the landing place for content apps downloaded (for dimes, dollars, euros) from an apps store. CMIS is designed to help lots of ECM applications work together as one to provision users better. But enterprises effectively started to formulate a content strategy when SharePoint 2007 emerged. CMIS allows technologists to hook up bunches of repositories that didn’t work together well or present information in the same way to users. In effect, it’s the savior for tired technology and rationalizing past bad behavior by the buyers of it. What CMIS could become instead is the governing review and certification approach for content apps – and how they play well with platforms and other information. Or maybe there’s an ever better path to success.

My Gartner colleague – Larry Cannell – suggested as much long before CMIS 1.0 was ratified: “Compliance with CMIS mandates a content system provides a fairly minimal set of capabilities, primarily support for navigating folders and opening documents. However, the optional features in CMIS could provide the basis for a significantly richer exploration of repository-based content by using metadata. For example, instead of being limited to a simple folder hierarchy, imagine content being explored by type of file, by date, or by custom fields that are meaningful to the business such as sales account, plant code, or engineering release. Content wouldn’t just be stored in one directory but could be found via multiple paths using this metadata. For example, a design specification might be found by exploring multiple paths such as product segments, regions, or suppliers. Content management vendors have been demonstrating these opportunities in CMIS for months.”

AHA! As I’ve said in earlier posts, metadata is the plastic of the semantic Web. Content applications are the gold. Combine the two and what do you get? Exactly. DITA. An XML standard for describing information across an enterprise (and even an industry). So, if we could get the CMIS folks to work together with the DITA team…. We end up with SCIMITAD: a sword that cuts content into meaningful components for human consumption.

What do you think? Are standards for content management systems and interactions more or less meaningful now for your enterprise (or platform as a vendor) than a few years ago?

Imagine Christmas morning and an excited near three-year old unwrapping her first tricycle. Eyes bright and cheeks flushed with enthusiasm, she hops on for a ride around the family room – only to stop suddenly, and with a cute but concerned stage whisper, ask, “Daddy – did Santa make sure this tricycle will be compatible with SharePoint in the future?” For analysts, hearing about new products development or corporate strategies from technology providers is much like Christmas for kids. We love unwrapping the new stuff. And, nearly every vendor briefing across a host of portal, content, and collaboration is now likely to include a Statement Of SharePoint Compatibility even if it’s obvious to an analyst that such claims are spurious or specious. Some technologies are close matches, some are distant cousins, and some are alien species of incomprehensible lineage.

It’s not that clients don’t want to know which ones fit better together – they do. But sorting out the gaps and overlaps will take some time and practical experience. And this is typically where pioneering Type A enterprises can provide some pathfinding. But even some Type B enterprises are being stimulated by vendors or sponsors to take some big plunges without the confidence that such effort will be rewarded. I have faith that SharePoint has a place in many enterprises. But I can’t take it on faith alone that it can be all things to all enterprises. The results from a Gartner.com search on SharePoint will yield less raw results than on Google. But the value of the refined research is exactly what business intelligence sometimes fails to provide: actual insight.

This is a re-post from 21 May, 2008. Almost two years later, the key issue remains: is SharePoint an ECM product or is it more part of an ECM strategy? What do you think?

Most PR firms with big brand clients stood up a digital media services team and toolbox long ago. Listening platforms like Radian6, Scout Labs, Visible Technologies, and Nielsen’s BuzzMetrics allow them to monitor social media (blogs, Tweets, YouTube, etc.) and identify reputation trends and those with the most influence in setting them. They sometimes also provide consoles through which agencies participate in conversations on behalf of their clients that they can’t always directly control… but must try. This is because their clients often face huge reputation risk and have no in-house command center able to spin opinion as effectively. Insertion of positive messaging in the social media chaos is not easy and can sometimes spur hostile reaction.

The good news is that on any given day, it’s usually the ‘other guy’ who is facing down problems from an employee-posted YouTube video or blog post rant or news story. Or so many companies that don’t have a plan for reputation management would like to believe. In some ways, they’re right: despite the huge (and growing) numbers of opinions and conversations, most companies are ‘net neutral’ in terms of positive and negative sentiment. Even Blackwater and Wal-Mart and Dow. They have a pretty good idea of what’s being published and aren’t running away from mobs with torches and pitchforks (or lawyers with class action lawsuits). Or they deal with each of those so frequently it’s now a matter of routine.

In absence of crisis, the delicate art of building Reputation equity always involves investment. Money for everything from a great web site to allocating time and responsibility for visible participation in social media. Add to this the cost of tools like search engine optimization or Web analytics, and of monitoring Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to both protect the company and to help promote a positive image. Further add costs to relentlessly track those competitors, members of media, regulators, employees, and now customers who could pose risk by merit of their ability to spark a negative reputation event. The balance between resiliency (how much good will has accrued in the online world) and recovery (what resources and time are required to remediate problems there) broadly described the Internet reputation management strategy of any company any given day.

Until today. Because today reputation risk is measured in Real Time. And neither your company nor mine can hope that even the most gifted internal or outside agency resources can defend against the risks to reputation posed by the collective. Real time search is the first – still dimly perceived – threat to traditional digital PR that demands a whole new approach to engaging your customers and managing reputation in real time. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that every unfounded or anonymous complaint deserves immediate response from the CEO.

I am suggesting, however, that a mechanism needs to be in place to detect all complaints and consider appropriate responses even at a level hitherto avoided. I am also suggesting that the former 24 hour clock used to manage negative reputation event response rates be reset. The Reputation Risk Advisory System is hereby elevated to Orange. You’ve got somewhere between a New York minute and 8 hours to begin responding to the flood of sentiment related to a negative reputation event. To illustrate this point, I’ve chosen Toyota and its PR machine as my canary in the real time coal mine:

• Because Toyota is in crisis
• Because I own a Toyota
• Because Toyota has enjoyed very positive reputation equity built over years
• Because all that resiliency is being tested by challenges on all fronts
• Because Toyota’s PR machine is generally considered top of the line.

But primarily because I suspect it of whitewashing a technical issue in the Prius that I’ve lived with for quite some time. Though I’ve never complained about this to the dealer and have always recommended the Prius to others, my 2008 model has always had a peculiar problem on washboard surfaces. I’d try to brake while on rutted roads and would find it much harder to control the car. This is an occasional irritation, but one exacerbated by two factors: 1) the only Italian restaurant with decent takeout food requires a trip down a bad road; and, 2) Toyota seems unwilling to fix the problem and contends that any accidents I suffer from loss of control are due to driver error. The 2010 Prius has effectively the same braking/computer setup and is being recalled. This, likely, to keep new models rolling out the door. Never mind those who have had a couple of years to learn how to drive all over again to offset the bizarre behavior of their paid-for car. Let them eat spumoni.

In the auto business, I believe that customer loyalty is worth any investment – particularly important is listening for their voices whenever/wherever possible. CBS has a new TV show called Undercover Boss that tries to humanize CEOs by filming them doing the regular jobs of regular employees even though we know they’re drawing irregular pay checks. The premise is that they can relate better to their employees if working in their shoes. Or something like that. I think of it as a long vanity ad in disguise – intended to polish the tarnished images of companies and bosses alike.

It’s an ‘eat your own dog food’ reality show that misses a better chance to engage audiences. By letting the CEOs be their own customers, TV magic may result. Imagine a software CEO sitting on hold for hours before finally talking to disinterested foreigners about his virus alerts. Imagine a wireless telco CEO trying to use his mobile phone to schedule a flight while stranded in a snowstorm and getting no signal. Imagine all the revenge fantasies delivered by this premise. Or the fixes to broken customer relations management interfaces that might result, too. Maybe this could be a series on YouTube instead… the Six Minute CEO. He/She lives a customer nightmare and fixes it in a tightly-edited upload. Call it mediaCRM and think how it might relate to SocialCRM.

So, I wondered how much the shiny Toyota PR machine had invested in social media monitoring and what shows up in real time. So, naturally, I used Twitter to test my theory. I imagine when a very large brand has a negative reputation event that requires a few months to manage, there’s a plan to quickly hire seasonal employees (like Reputation Reindeer) to pull the sled and deliver presents to all the good boys and girls in social media. And it is so, I surmise, as evidenced by this hugely optimistic posting that nearly collided with my own:

Isn’t that good news! Well… Maybe not. Maybe this doesn’t come directly from the CEO. Maybe it is coming from the shiny PR shoe stuck in his mouth.

Was this a nearly immediate response to my tweet, you wonder? uh… No. I think it is a robot tweet auto-generated every six minutes to stay in the first page of search engine results on real time Google. Or maybe I just got incredibly lucky to see the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner unfurled for the 2010 Prius at the moment all doubts were laid to rest. For the record, I haven’t heard back from Toyota or its PR people despite having written my 140 character complaint. I suspect the software they use to measure influence has found me to be unworthy of direct reply. Toyota is Horton, I’m a Who. But things can change quickly in Whoville….

Your comments are welcomed.

Why, though, do people willingly submit their purchase information (“Blippy is a fun and easy way to see and discuss the things people are buying. Automatically share your favorite purchases from iTunes, Amazon, Groupon, Woot, Zappos, Visa, MasterCard, and more”)? It’s a logical extension of the Twitter model (which is a fun and easy way to see and discuss the things people are thinking or doing). People you follow – and who follow you – share ideas and information often in tiny increments. Blippy and Twitter might co-exist in this sample scenario:

Twitter: @tobybell: “Just pre-ordered my iPad. Delivery to be advised.”
Blippy: “TobyBell Spent $499 Pre-Auth at Apple”
Twitter: @tobybell: “Woot!! Am 4 millionth in line for Apple’s expensive Kindle alternative. Getting coffee at Starbuck’s to celebrate!”
Blippy: “TobyBell spent $0.79 on coffee at BP Gas Station”

And people can comment on all that! Fun!

So, as you might imagine, I don’t care about Blippy. Even if its name is a charming reference to radar. But I do care about the implications of technology for my clients. And, because the recent global economic woes have spurred a large number of inquiries about technology contract details, it seems possible that the emergence of Blippy foretells a more impactful event: the emergence of transparency in software and services pricing for procurement of big-ticket systems.

Today, for example, if a line of business leader in property and casualty insurance wants to revamp the claims handling process to be more dynamic, collaborative, and cost-effective, he or she is likely to start the project by evaluating the present system. And all its interfaces, custom code, support requirements, user population and acceptance, other stakeholders, software and service providers, and estimated maintenance costs.  This is the Run Rate. Unless moving away from Run Rate (which is easy to budget for as it continues the same spending year over year) moves the business closer to new, improved, and calculable values, it is hard to get sponsorship for change. So the software business is less about new licenses and more about maintenance. The services business is less about initial engagement than support and follow-on work.  I call this pairing Software Stockholm Syndrome and Services Stockholm Syndrome.

Wikipedia defines Stockholm syndrome as “a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims”. So, I am suggesting enterprises are in some ways captive to vendors. Shocking, I know. But I think – after having reviewed dozens and dozens of million-dollar software and services proposals – part of the problem is a general lack of transparency about the specific cost of systems.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked for even ballpark estimates of average per-seat, per-hour, or per-server costs. Obviously, it would violate all kinds of Gartner guidelines for me to post all the bids from all the vendors sent to all the clients. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for our clients to make the right decisions every day. We don’t deliver discount price lists or negotiate lower fees.

But you can. Granted, it won’t be through Blippy – unless you use a corporate debit card to buy your next CRM or ECM suite. All it takes, perhaps, is a Facebook Group. Set one up for your industry, geography, department, or whatever. Call it “Anonymous Financial Services Procurement Pro” or “Legal Technology Spend Analyst” – just don’t use your regular Facebook name unless you don’t mind repercussions. Throw some real numbers out there: “Just signed a $475K contract for a 3-year software and services deal with (insert vendor here). 400 seats, 2 servers, 20TB of cloud-hosted storage. Did I get a good deal?” Get feedback. Invite others. Repeat. Maybe look for people with similar titles and interests on LinkedIn and connect.

The nice thing about Blippy is that it makes spending a social skill. Enterprises may not be willing to expose their technology spend to similar public scrutiny, but (somewhat) anonymous peer review is now possible and a positive first step toward transparency. Now, I completely understand why software vendors are willing to discount licenses in favor of other value propositions like maintenance, services, hardware, or references. Many similar businesses have made a successful transition toward democratized pricing information. Did the auto business suffer broadly just because average buying costs became a matter of public record? Oh… that’s right. It did.

For the record: I give Blippy six months unless a major conversion of its business model occurs. If it is re-launched as a software and professional services buyer resource on a paid subscription basis, I give it one year until competition from free providers overwhelms it. If exactly the same technology were part of Gartner’s Web site and also part of our subscription model for IT execs and business leaders, I’d give it a much better chance. Of course, it may have an effect on our relationship with vendor clients. But at least they’d know what the competition was offering. Is Blippy a signal of what could happen in enterprise software and services soon enough? Let me know what you think.

Toby Bell’s Recent Gartner Research

This might be a real quote, albeit by a relatively wordy poor person. It’s more likely that it is a logline – perhaps one from a Greek tragedy written centuries ago. Maybe I’d be more willing to spend my drachmas as a theatergoer if the description weren’t so complex… thus the emergence of pithy taglines: “Hero finds gold – pays with death.” And, thus too the emergence of today’s theme: “The clearer the information, the better the outcome.” Hmmm…. Must work on pithy.

Idiocracy, by the way, is a 2006 movie about a future imagined by our present focus on celebrities as culture and money as our only motivating force. Here’s its logline: “Private Joe Bauers, the definition of “average American”, is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, he awakes 500 years in the future. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he’s easily the most intelligent person alive.” Here are its taglines: “The Future is a No Brainer;” and, “In the Future, Intelligence is Extinct.” Really, the concept was more political: a future government of the idiots, by the idiots, for the idiots (see Gettysburg Address) emerged with a suspiciously southern drawl. Or maybe Texan. Maybe the movie had too much fodder for too few cows. The movie wasn’t a huge hit, though it does speak to some urgent issues demanding enterprise attention. I’ll note one or more here, I promise.

So, prompting this whole new outburst was a cursory inspection of what little remains of my daily newspaper. You remember newspapers, don’t you? They were the sometimes inspired result of a marriage of rhetoric, politics, and advertising that meandered toward misery over centuries. And, to my doorstep yesterday, bringing in it a section optimistically entitled “TV Listings.” This relic from a distant past haunts me now because I see how it could make even my future less meaningful. Here’s how… <insert sounds of static and tuning-in here> … oh, wait. I can actually insert that here.

Again… here’s how: having recently been bothered by the movie industry’s use of box office receipts to hype their product – thus “The Hangover” is now touted as having surpassed “Beverly Hills Cop” to become the “Most Successful R-Rated Comedy in History” – by measure of Money. By Accountants. Of the Studio. With an interest in Selling the Movies.  So, in the future I will no longer remember Beverly Hills Cop (BHC) as having two fine actors at the peak of their careers – one of whom went on to become my favorite Halloween costume of 2002. I will remember instead that it was not as popular as The Hangover (TH) and therefore will tend to prefer the more recently hyped movie. This despite the fact that BHC actually delivered more money in real (1984) dollars as well as a higher overall score from reviewers. (Rotten Tomatoes, by the way, routinely delivers value with a reputation scoring system worthy of 100 on the Tomatometer itself… and of being studied by every other Web community seeking a standard that works as well as RT in its media milieu).

So that’s what I’d remember If my memory serves – which it won’t. So, I’ll have to follow hyperlinks. Which are the trail marks of agile, instructive minds trying to develop a meaningful bridge from a discordant, Dewey decimal’d, paper-bound past to an elegant, persistently-connected idea-rich future where if one link fails, reliable redundancy among certified sources will sustain information’s value by bridging any gaps. The truth as we will come to know it retains currency and gathers even more over time. Memory becomes positively institutionalized unless wretched commerce intervenes in utopia.

So, scanning for movies in the TV listings in the newspaper I realized it wasn’t intended to benefit future civilizations. Or at least the one I want to occupy – where one version of the truth gets built from reliable sources. Entertainment Weekly has already embedded a video player in the print versions of its magazine in certain markets. This means something. Mostly it means that longer-form video (and less often film) will get snippetized and become source material for delivery to people with short spans of attention across a huge span of modalities. Like ringtones from songs got monetized without the need to expend any further creative effort. It also means that the relative cost and quality of the source (and its measurable popularity) will become the first pass criteria for its selection and insertion in whatever content it is I consume. Thus, I am more likely to see “Neil Patrick Harris” and less likely to see “Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio”. More “Dancing with the Stars” and less “Dances With Wolves”.

In sum, more is less. Setting the stage for this media-rich void are the present descriptions and ratings assigned as part of the source databases for movies shown on television. If you were surprised to hear that NASA had lost the original video footage from the live TV broadcast of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the lunar surface, you’d be flabbergasted by what else will fail to traverse the void from film or TV to Internet. Let’s broadly call it “metadata”. The stuff we partly use to describe content containers. Hence the taglines and stars associated with critical reviews constitute – along with titles and dates – common descriptors in these listings. The problem? It’s bad and getting worse. We don’t know the source of either the original review or the taglines. We can’t help but suspect, though, that linkage to either Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb is missing… and a cheaper source is mined. The “Faux-lex” of such data. Looks like the real thing but is constructed poorly and will not last. Maybe the next billionaire in tech will be a broker of cheap media context.

Here’s the listing for “My Cousin Vinny” – no year listed, no stars, tagline is “Brooklyn Lawyer.” (I’m sold…) “Saving Silverman” – (2001), two stars, tagline is “Wrong Woman.” (Wait… now I’m torn). “Sixteen Candles” – (1984), two and a half stars, tagline is “Girl’s 16th Birthday Gets Overlooked.” “Scream” – no date, three stars, tagline is “Teens Murdered.” And so on…. insufficient, incomplete, incompetent. By the time Gasblechistan gets cable, their program guides will be polluted by such mediocre metadata. By linking out from paper to reliable sources – as I’ve done in this posting – we set more reasonable expectations about what these movies are. And what they’re worth.

Enterprises should consider this example, too. Open any file and review the Properties to see all the missed opportunities to better describe content for present – and future – reuse. Though I have failed to follow my own prescription (see example below), I advise Gartner’s clients to do better. As content begins to traverse enterprise repositories and then migrates in whole or part to Cloud-based hosts or mobile devices and otherwise reconstitutes itself for various users and means, you’ll want to keep this in mind: The farther your content will ultimately have to travel, the more ways you’ll want to have to recommend it, protect it, and call it home.

All the Money is in Metadata. It’s the Plastics of the semantic Web.

Your comments as always are welcomed.

Actual Properties

With yesterday’s announcement of its intention to acquire Vignette, Open Text has reminded us that standards and practices in typical software M&A don’t always have to apply. You don’t have to intend to leverage the actual technology or brand or channel or partner ecosystem. You just need to leverage seatholders. Fact is that Open Text’s acquisition algorithm is fairly successful. Another fact is that many of the assets under management within OTEX’s portfolio haven’t gone completely away, they’ve been layered under a brand management hierarchy that positions those assets toward new buyers and markets. The only question for which no fact has yet emerged: “After maintenance from product inventory shrinks to a specific level, can it upsell or cross-sell effectively?” In other words, can it farm as well as it hunts?

Generating loyalty in enterprise software markets can be tricky. Generating ‘sticky’ is not quite as hard. Vignette’s products are often tied to long-running processes for mission-critical applications – whether Web channel or imaging-based. Open Text seems to have wisely waited until the falloff of potentially more fickle customers and prospects had been completed. The business core thus revealed, it swooped in with the right offer at the right time. VIGN’s value to Open Text is not the technology, it’s the seats. The very plushy ones of large enterprises with global potential to look at one of its own (now) incumbent suppliers to provision other user needs. And, Open Text has options for those enterprises in spades.

Now it remains to be seen if – having won and wrung value from many other vendors’ customers – it can wean them off last year’s (or even last decade’s) models and move them toward an interesting ECM future. Open Text has been playing its cards right if revenue growth and seat share are the only measures of success. But I think it’s betting on other hands we can’t yet see. With combinations of Portal, Content, Collaboration, Process, Social Software, and Digital Asset Management technology, it isn’t hard to imagine that Open Text has all the table stakes necessary to buy into the big game with other new media titans as much as hold ‘em in the $4B ECM world.

Am I seeing the same things you are? Comments are welcomed… As are attendees at the Gartner Portals, Content, and Collaboration Summits in Orlando, 8-10 June and in London, 16-17 September. We’ll discuss the turmoil in ECM during a Magic Quadrant Megasession in both locations.

Scoring mechanisms for Internet reputation management are in
their infancy. In an earlier post, I suggested that typical “5
Star” systems fail to cast effective light on quality of goods,
services, companies, or even people. Sharp readers contacted me
indirectly and called out Gartner’s Magic Quadrants, Marketscopes,
and Vendor Ratings as examples where scoring is fundamental to the
overall reputation of technology providers. “Why,” they wondered,
“do you think average people can’t effectively rate technology as
well as analysts do?” And, perhaps adopting the same tone of voice
as any doctor, I might reply “because we’re experts in our field”,
or better still, “because I said so.”

Actually, scoring for our branded documents like Magic Quadrants
is transparent, comprehensive, dynamic, appropriately triangulated,
and effective. The merits of the vendors and products are compared
and then clearly articulated. It’s a beautiful thing. Especially
when conducted by me personally at events like Gartner Portals,
Content & Collaboration Summit June 8 – 10 2009 in Orlando,
FL at JW Marriott Grande Lakes. But we have yet to invite public
participation in Magic Quadrant scoring – though that day may come
soon enough.

This is because Reality TV and the Internet have stimulated
belief that just about anything could soon be turned into a talent
contest. Rather than hearing “This is… American (or Bolivian or
Armenian) Idol!”, expect someday to hear instead the annoying
introduction of yet another episode of “Crazy Brain Surgeons” or
“The Fastest Colonoscopy in Canada” or “Hand Surgery on Roller
Coasters”. The key point being that comparisons make the most sense
when they’re apples-to-apples rather than… um… apples to
orifices. Sorry for that.

So, Angie’s List is the first major Web player to effectively
pit plumbers against heart surgeons with public judging of
reputation on a single scale. Is an ‘A’ for one the same as an ‘A’
for the other?

Uh… no. Out of a scoring alphabet of 26 letters, Angie’s List
has chosen only three to represent the spectrum of difference
between every professional (and every layperson): Price, Quality,
Responsiveness, Punctuality, and Professionalism. Fact is, the only
things that doctors and plumbers have in common is that they get
dirty, fix leaky things, take pride in their technical competency,
and have an apprentice program that involves a serious investment
of time. They don’t like to have to explain every detail of what
they’re doing. They routinely deliver bad news. They respond in
emergencies. But doctors and plumbers (and technology industry
analysts on occasion) might all agree that Price or Punctuality may
not be the best basis for comparison.

Ideally, there would be a scoring mechanism unique to each
profession that fairly provides evidence of qualifications and
experience and references without bias. Sure, doctors could still
score doctors, but so could the medical media, membership
organizations, patients, and even ex-spouses. Oh. That’s the point
I was searching for: the Internet isn’t meaningful as pieces/parts,
but more as a collective with various scores tied to roles, rules,
and identity. But as a professional, it is unfair to opt-out just
as the world begins to tune in.

Some physicians are asking their patients to sign waivers
indicating they won’t provide their feedback on sites like Angie’s
List. Think about it: when was the last time you were asked to fill
out a survey about your experience – at any point – while a patient
in the US healthcare system? According to doctors I interviewed,
the only people qualified to evaluate any doctor are other doctors.
I wonder what basis they would use to score each other? I seriously
doubt they’d emphasize “bedside manner” and “relating to family
members in the waiting room with sincere empathy”. I suspect it
would have something to do with accurate diagnoses, high recovery
rates, teaching, advanced education, etc. I should have asked the
doctors these and other questions but I didn’t have “interview
insurance” and they were called away on “emergencies”. But what
would you expect to see after searching on Angie’s List for a heart
surgeon?

Okay… I figure I could save a little by using a doctor with
mostly ‘B’s. Maybe a Chevy instead of a Mercedes cardiac surgeon.
And, maybe since most doctors I know seem to have common goals in
dealing with patients generally, these attributes could be the
basis for a new approach to scoring:

I don’t want to appear to be overly critical considering I am
very likely to get sick in the future and wouldn’t want to be
tended to by my plumber. But the simple fact is that scoring
everything on the Internet depends on simple rules: 1) the sum of
the business or individual reputation should include more than one
source; 2) the less anonymity in scoring mechanisms the better -
with visibility comes responsibility; and 3) scoring mechanisms
have to evolve to more fairly reflect qualified perspectives of
both the supply and demand sides of any goods or services.
Understanding how doctors would score themselves – as colleagues of
each other as much as in the role of patients – could serve us
better in dealing with them.

I also think I might finally give my personal physician an ‘A’
for trying hard to keep me from needing to score a more urgent care
provider. Maybe one factor is how well a doctor focuses us on
resiliency rather than recovery – terms already familiar to many of
my colleagues in technology. So, it’s clear the way we score may
have to take into account bias, experience, ability, and other
factors that qualify us to qualify others. I don’t propose to
certify doctors – but I would certainly be more interested in the
opinions of those qualified to do so. There are dozens of such
scoring mechanisms already in place for medical practitioners.
Learning to use all the resources to effectively judge reputation
is at present more art than science. And, can be a very interesting
topic for further research. Watch for more here. Or add some as
comments.

Mostly, though, we still think we’ve got a better handle on what’s inside us (magnificent potential) than any outsider could see. Really… how much life experience and sensitivity could this person have? She lives under a dry cleaner, surrounded by cats and furniture made from trees long extinct obviously carved by woodsmiths high on a Transylvanian peyote equivalent. It smells like a leaky basement filled with wet boxes of leather-bound books, kitty litter, and an unwrapped bar of Irish Spring soap in the corner near the boiler. And, time suspends itself there. I worry that she’s not eating very much. She wears no rings and her fingernails are polished (but not red). She has photos of her son and his kids on the mantel. Her breath smells like Tic Tacs. She offers me one and I take it. I want her to like me. I promise not to tell the rest. But I believe every word she says. She knows.

So, though most of us reject fortune telling every day in a formal sense, we become participants in it casually. The human mouth has, by some accounts, more toxins potentially deadly to other species than science can catalogue. Partly we don’t know the particulars because “biting kittens seems somehow wrong”. Even science knows where to draw some lines. Despite having no formal training in the discipline, human mouths generally do much more damage to other humans than to kittens, I’d suggest with confidence. The killer toxins are transmitted via air directly to another human ear. But imagine the damage mouths do when they bite off the words that otherwise might spare victims of ignorance. Maybe unspoken truth is a greater risk to us than the possible damage done by lies. Imagine any wedding party and the thought bubbles we can draw over the heads of the guests as if we’re there:

He’s going to beat her like he did me….

She’s lost too much weight….

His father’s a worthless drunk….

They’re too young….

She’s probably pregnant….

He’s about to lose his job and doesn’t know….

She’s already cheating on him….

Is it harder to think that the thoughts might be positive and not negative? And, can you as quickly put together a list of positive thought bubbles for the imaginary wedding guests?

Their kids will be beautiful….

Uncle Harry looks much better these days….

She looks so pretty dancing with her father….

What a perfect day….

We’re all so lucky to be gathered here….

I’m going to offer him a job….

I’d better get going before traffic gets too busy….

Sorry for that last one. So, what’s the difference between truth, gossip, and slander? It’s intention, I’d aver. In the case of a wedding party, some of the thoughts would, if expressed, likely end the celebration altogether. We might actually foresee that the relationship is doomed because elements of the character of the couple has been revealed to some of the guests and exposed in the thought bubbles. But rarely aloud to the bride or groom. Love isn’t all you need… but love is an anti-venom. Love can offset gossip and slander, but won’t ultimately affect the truth. Love is a delaying tactic against the truth – one that perhaps allows us to deliver a better version of ourselves over time than our past otherwise predicted.

This is why I suggest to my daughter that she spend her life gathering a council. Find wise, experienced, expressive, and committed advisors of all ages willing and able to guide her when she faces choices and consequences larger than her own inventory of ideas and strengths and education and intellect and experience alone will suffice (or even those of her father by extension) for solving problems. Willing to tell her the truth as they see it; and willing to not withhold evidence that – though unsavory – might spare her longer-term suffering if presented immediately. I have tried to do the same in my life. And, I try to do the same for my clients as a Gartner analyst.

So today we have a new couple – Autonomy and Interwoven. And they have chosen to merge and become a new combined entity. And I know them both reasonably well. What Autonomy brings to the union is intelligence and governance. What Interwoven brings to the union is a Web channel for that intelligence as well as a dowry of millions in revenues generated from relationships with blue-chip customers and law firms. There are thousands upon thousands of interested and affected individuals and enterprises invited to the party. Let the champagne flow and the thought bubbles blow!

What Gartner thinks of the prospects of this union will be made apparent in forthcoming research. What I think can be exposed right now. Web channel technologies are critical to the success of nearly every business that matters. Media management is an imperative because what we think of as ‘information’ will undergo radical transformation in the next few years. My colleague Whit Andrews has posited that something like 50% of the information you receive in 2012 will be composed on the fly when you request it. It won’t exist in any particular format – whether words or audio or video or the likely combination of all – until it composes itself on your behalf.

Because you’re mobile. Because you’re a CIO. Because you need a little. Because you want it all. Because you’re rich. Because you’re smart. Because you want to be. And you’ll experience it via Web channel technology – where Interwoven is a dominant vendor. And you’ll experience it because something can successfully predict what the many ‘becauses’ of your interests, abilities, roles, etc. are – and Autonomy is a dominant vendor in intelligent analytics that can understand the meaning of information and relate it to users prescriptively on behalf of its customers. The Web is becoming a council in its own way, thanks to social media. “Thought bubble harvesting” is what Autonomy does. Some may call this correlative analytics. I see a bubble machine and hear Lawrence Welk and add a dash of action and dialogue from Jack Bauer on TV’s 24… and that’s what Autonomy and Interwoven might do in combination. Or maybe not.

My other thought bubble tells another truth. Here’s what people want (uncheck the box that omits adult terms if you’re alone):

Dogpile SearchSpy

Autonomy says it wants to help prescribe what they need. Two truths… two possible outcomes. But if Autonomy is willing to express this and Interwoven is willing to commit as well, I will raise a glass today and toast along with the rest. If you want to know what I’m thinking about the merger next week, you’ll have to be a Gartner client.

Here. Have a Tic Tac. Toby Bell’s Recent Gartner Research

Is this person safe to date?

Will this surgeon heal me?

Is it OK to give my credit card number to this Web site?

Can we trust this outsourced manufacturer not to exploit our trade secrets?

Should I believe this scientist’s warnings about global warming?

Is this published content an opinion or the truth or a lie?

What’s the best software for my enterprise content management needs?

There’s a reputation corollary to Moore’s Law which states that ‘the sheer numbers of opinions will soon exceed any reasonable attempt to analyze them’; and that Reputation algorithms will have to constantly adjust to ultimately score the perception of corporate, individual, or product character versus attributes that contribute to actual character. Simply put, hype beats out reality. Moreover, the speed at which a reputation can be concretely made or ruined by means of Internet promotion will become calculable (and therefore monetized) by 2010.

It is a truism that even professional people who need to use it really begin to relate to technology only when it relates to their personal interests. And so is it the case with me. I became interested in reputation management technology not after discovering and helping to manage the risks faced by my clients, but instead after the Internet taught the kid next door how to steal my bike in 2004. Prior to that moment, I gave little thought to how quickly the seemingly ineducable truant might become a threat in any way. But, as Mark Twain suggested even in the day when the capacity of information delivery technology was agonizingly limited: “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.”

The fact is that the truth got its boots on in 1992 when the first stories about how to pick a Kryptonite bike lock with a Bic pen broke on BBC-TV. Then the truth failed to depart – like a Phileas Fogg of its day – for its visit overseas to the very doorstep of my then-five-year-old neighbor. It would take another 12 years before the single truth registered there, and all the lies that I’d succumbed to about the lock’s impregnability became apparent. Until that point, had any search engine – Google or Yahoo or AOL – been queried about “bicycle locks and security”, the results would have been overwhelming and favorable regarding Krytonite bike locks. Now, the many opinions and reviews and stories shared for decades unraveled compellingly quickly to reveal a new truth… these locks could not protect themselves, much less an expensive bicycle. Moreover, YouTube posts gave instruction in how to pick or break the lock using a variety of tools – just in case a cheap pen wasn’t handy at the moment. Perhaps you’ve got a potato chip? How about a kazoo? And so I knew, too, that my cherished Schwinn might be taken from its place in my garage and sold to some little thug across town for a few dollars.

Granted, the company offered a buyback program as well as a reengineered product in response to the clamor, but I suspect the costs were huge in dollars and trust. I now carry twenty feet of chain weighing forty pounds and secure my bike with a lock more resembling an anchor or anvil and still feel unsettled when leaving the whole mess on some lamppost. I suppose this qualifies as emotional damage and I might be able to sue either Kryptonite or the Kid. But I have other causes for concern and little time to invest on my own behalf any longer because one of my clients now faces business losses stemming from technology that far exceed what I’d thought possible. The truth is now again in its boots and the number is somewhere near $10 Billion dollars, according to the value of its reputation expressed by a recent client.

Now, imagine this moment: I am engaged to provide an executive briefing to the CIO and his colleague at a major multinational enterprise. Though the initial invitation seemed more focused on some secret technology investments, it becomes clear that something else is bothering the two executives as the meeting progresses. Their combined demeanor is close enough to panic that I can’t ignore it even given my limited capacity for empathy. Did I mention that this particular company has global business interests and huge dividends that have accrued over decades owing to the ruthless power-mongering of a small cadre of leaders seemingly intent on unimaginable personal wealth gained partly by leveraging the lowest possible wages and most limited opportunities for advancement of its workforce – not to mention the questionable quality and safety of its products and services?  At least that’s what the Web message boards are saying. I know… could be anyone these days. Even some countries match this profile. Perhaps more detail, then.

We are sitting in the office of the head of risk management. Not the typical technology executive’s digs. This one is more scholarly/lawyer-ey but not without a few of the explorer-type trophies won by the big game hunters of the distant past. In his case, they were lucite-encased contracts and other documents signifying his legal acumen and forecasting ability. Both the CIO and the lawyer seem eager to get past my initial presentation. No comments or questions, just the ‘hurry up’ faces of people with limited interest and time. I wonder why I’d bothered to wear a clean shirt and tie my shoes correctly. I had initially hoped my old-school blazer and tie would tell them that I understood their clubby culture and could therefore relate to their technology interests. But it becomes immediately clear to me that we aren’t at all part of the same collegial business tribe after I ask, “I know you’ve got something else on your minds. Would you like me to stop now so we can talk about it?”  And they nod.

If you’ve ever looked into the bright eyes of a child with a fever – unable to adequately express his discomfort and begging for relief – you might think I would have been more sympathetic than I was. But if that same child was able to then speak the words, “To what extent have we secured you? Are we under a non-disclosure agreement? Would you be willing to sign one now?” you might react as I do. With a cringe and suddenly aware that time passes slowly for the cornered animal. I indicate that we are covered by a general confidentiality policy between my company and its clients and that all I hear would remain secret. At least until now.

I’ve summarized the findings in a number of research notes and encourage enterprises and individuals to review the emerging best practices in enterprise Internet reputation management I’ve posted to Gartner.com: http://tiny.cc/Toby