Looking Beyond SharePoint: - AIIM

16 Pages·2010·0.67 MB·English

White Paper
Looking Beyond SharePoint:
selection considerations for ECM systems
Sponsored by:
About the White Paper
As the non-profit association dedicated to nurturing, growing and supporting the user and supplier communities of
ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and E2.0 (Enterprise 2.0), AIIM is proud to provide this research at no
charge. In this way the education, thought-leadership and direction provided by our work can be leveraged by the
entire community. Our objective is to present the “wisdom of the crowds” based on our 65,000-strong community.
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We are happy to extend free use of the materials in this report to end-user companies and to independent
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consultants, but not to suppliers of ECM systems, products and services, other than OpenText and its subsidiaries
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and partners. Any use of this material must carry the attribution – “© AIIM 2010www.aiim.org / © OpenText2010 t
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www.opentext.com”

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Rather than redistribute a copy of this report to your colleagues, we would prefer that you direct them to a
www.aiim.org/researchfor a free download of their own. p
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Our ability to deliver such high-quality research is made possible by the financial support of our underwriting
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sponsor, without whom we would have to return to a paid subscription model. For that, we hope you will join us in
thanking our underwriter for this support:
Open Text
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Thames Valley Park,
Reading, RG6 1PU (UK)
Phone: [phone]
Sales: [phone]
Email: [email protected]
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Survey demographics
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The SharePoint survey referred to in the report was taken by 624 individual members of the AIIM community
between May 6th and June 5th, 2010, using a Web-based tool. Invitations to take the survey were sent via e-mail selein
to a selection of the 65,000 AIIM community members. Full demographics can be found in the report:. cg
www.aiim.org/Research/Industry-Watch/SharePoint-2010 tion
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About AIIM ne
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AIIM (www.aiim.org) is the community that provides education, research, and best practices to help erao
organizations find, control and optimize their information. For more than 60 years, AIIM has been the leading tion
non-profit organization focused on helping users to understand the challenges associated with managing nsd
documents, content, records and business processes. Today, AIIM is international in scope, independent for S
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and implementation-focused, acting as the intermediary between ECM (Enterprise Content Management) Ch
users, vendors, and the channel. M
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About the author tee
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Steve Weissman provides expert guidance on enterprise information management, helping people work better, o
and work better together,through improved governance, compliance, and process efficiency. An AIIM-certified i
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ECM practitioner, specialist, and instructor, he is Executive Director of Holly Group, where he consults, writes, and
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speaks regularly on SharePoint’s role in, and effect on, content strategy, needs assessment, and RFP :
development. He can be reached at [email protected].
© 2010 © 2010
AIIM Open Text
1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100 420 Thames Valley Drive,
Silver Spring, MD 20910 Thames Valley Park,
301 587-8202 Reading, RG6 1PU (United Kingdom)
www.aiim.org [phone]
www.opentext.com
© AIIM 2010 www.aiim.org/ © OpenText Corporation2010 www.opentext.com 2
Table of Contents
About the White Paper: 5. General Capabilities
About the White Paper................................2 General Capabilities..................................10
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Survey demographics....................................2
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About AIIM.....................................................2 6. Integration Strategies it
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About the author............................................2
Integration Strategies................................11 P
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Common Ingredients in the ECM Stew........12 p
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1. Introduction:
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Introduction: Why SharePoint is
7. Conclusion: Do the Diligence.
in the Spotlight.............................................4
Speed Your Success
Conclusion: Do the Diligence.
2. ECM Vendor Dynamics Speed Your Success..................................13
ECM Vendor Dynamics................................4 You First: SharePoint Second......................13
Key Players in the Game...............................5
Sharepoint Changes the Conversation..........5 Underwritten by L
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Underwritten by..........................................15 o
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3. The Business Case OpenText .....................................................15 selein
The Business Case......................................6 AIIM .............................................................16 ctiog
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The Devil is in the Details..............................6 cB
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4. Domain Expertise and Specific tion
Functionality ns fod
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Domain Expertise and Specific Ch
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Functionality.................................................7 sa
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SharePoint in the Hot Seat............................8 tee
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© AIIM 2010 www.aiim.org/ © OpenText Corporation2010 www.opentext.com 3
1. Introduction: Why SharePoint is in the Spotlight
Microsoft’s SharePoint is the latest in a long line of “Next Big Things” from that American software goliath,
and it continues to receive a considerable amount of press coverage and general attention.
The reasons for this blanket enthusiasm are simple enough:
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(cid:2) SharePoint comes from Microsoft, which is the infrastructure vendor of choice for many organisations, h
and is so well established that there is no doubt about the company’s – or the product’s – longevity. i
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This makes it a “safe” decision, even if it may turn out to be less than optimal. e

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(cid:2) In many of its application areas, SharePoint works fairly well. First introduced in 2001, it took three
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major releases before most of the major bugs were ironed out. This isnot unusual for big Microsoft p
projects – Microsoft CRM and even Windows itself ran this same course – and now in its fourth e
generation, the product is ready for those applications that hit its sweet-spot, including basic document r
collaboration and intranet content management. How well it performs true enterprise content
management (ECM), however, is still open to some debate and depends heavily on how “ECM” is
defined.
(cid:2) IT departments have been quick to adopt SharePoint, particularly as a starter version is bundled with
Microsoft server products. AIIM survey figures1indicate that over 60% of organisations have some
level of SharePoint usage, with many moving quickly to a 100% rollout across all staff, most often as
an intranet replacement.
(cid:2) Unlike most ECM implementations, SharePoint is often categorised as an infrastructure project, rather
than a business change project. As such, it does not require line-of-business sponsors and is not
subject to stringent project management and management-of-change procedures. It may well be L
allocated to the operations side of the IT department rather than the applications group, and offered to o
users as a generic IT facility with no real strings attached - and with very little planning or governance. o
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collaboration, portals, search, content management, and business forms, although at this stage in its tio
development, the number of industry-specific use-cases is small in comparison to the number of n c B
adopters. o
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Scepticssuggest that the product’s versatility may in fact lead it to be too many things to too many people – ero
especially for those who are not yet clear about what they want it to do. SharePoint is versatile enough that a
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the unwary may easily leave this important question unanswered, thinking, “It probably does what we need” nsd
and “We’ll figure it out as we go along,” but this is hardly a recipe for success. fo
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It is common sense that the better informed you are about your organisation’s needs, the better results you E
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will get – a statement, by the way, that is true for any technology solution, not just SharePoint. This paper is M
intended to leave you better informed about what to consider when selecting a content management tool – sa
especially in this “Age of SharePoint” – and we hope it helps you stay focused on your normal IT project ystere
steps: requirements definition, cost justification, and system evaluation. mP
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2. ECM Vendor Dynamics t
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The core capabilities that define enterprise content management (ECM) once occupied distinct technology
and market silos: capture, imaging, forms, document management, records management, workflow,
collaboration, etc. As departmental initiatives expanded into enterprise-wide standards,organisations
realised that they often needed all of these technologies to construct a true enterprise solution, and the silos
naturally began to converge. In response, some vendor companies developed in-house extensions to their
own offerings, while others bolstered their offerings via acquisition. The result was the emergence of soup-
to-nuts “suites” that address customers’ end-to-end needs, albeit that focused products addressing more
dedicated functions continue to exist.
1AIIM Industry Watch report, “State of the ECM Industry 2010”, April 2010, www.aiim.org/research
2Jeff Teper, Corporate VP for SharePoint, Microsoft Corp. at the 2009 Microsoft SharePoint Conference
© AIIM 2010 www.aiim.org/ © OpenText Corporation2010 www.opentext.com 4
Key Players in the Game
Top-quadrant listings for ECM vendors today include EMC, Oracle, IBM and OpenText as the market’s
major players. The first three of these are best known for their experience and expertise as suppliers of IT
infrastructure, and in fact all three only entered the ECM market in the past four to six years – and then only
by acquiring the likes of Captiva, Datacap, Documentum, FileNet, Stellent, and numerous other early-in silo
providers. Their offerings do pretty much everything and integrate with pretty much everything else W
(solutions for ERP, HR, etc.).
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Open Text has a long history as a pure-play ECM provider and has captured a share of the ECM market t
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that is on par with EMC and IBM. Open Text is additionally intriguing because it has been a fairly active

acquirer itself over the years (Artesia, Captaris, Hummingbird, StreamServ, IXOS, Vignette, etc.),offers a P
similar suite of capabilities to those provided by the other “big boys,” and is the largest independent player. a
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The next tier of vendors includes a number of companies whose market - and mindshare - may be smaller e
than those of the suppliers just mentioned, but may make suitable alternatives for organisations with fewer r
resources and/or simpler needs. Companies here include such long-time independent entities as ASG,
Autonomy, Easy Software, Hyland Software, Optical Image Technology, and Saperion, all of which have
survived the big-company predation and are serving customers well on their own.
Rounding out the field are providers of point solutions for individual capabilities who also have sidestepped
the acquisition frenzy, including ABBYY Software, AnyDoc, Clearwell, Kofax, Metastorm, and Ultimus.
These and the others may prove to be excellent resources for you as you seek to add depth in specific
areas.
SharePoint Changes the Conversation
Then there is SharePoint, which occupies an interesting place on today’s ECM landscape by serving as L
both an application and a platform. While this is not the only solution for which this is true, it enjoys a o
visibility that is the envy of nearly all other players – especially those that have been around for a very long o
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SharePoint can behave like an ECM suite, but may require add-ons and/or extensive custom services work selein
to match the requirements of many larger organisations.(Capture, for instance, is not one of its native cg
capabilities, and its embedded workflow is relatively unsophisticated). This makes it both competitor and tion
complement to the other solutions on the market. The uncertainties it has thus sown have been distracting cB
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at best and disruptive at worst, as buyers and sellers struggle to decide whether to embrace or ignore it. nse
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One outcome of all this is that it is no longer enough to ask vendors whether their solution can do a ero
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particular thing; instead, you must ask how they do it. SharePoint has put the fine point on this by spawning tion
– in typical Microsoft fashion – a secondary market of add-on applications and utilities that raises concern nsd
over the simple answer of “yes, it can do that.” This is not to say that this response is untrue, but the more fo
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complete answer probably includes the phrase “yes, but” – where “but” means there is a need to E
add/configure/integrate with something else in order to make that particular ability real. CMh
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One obvious example here involves email management, where an add-on is required to enable metadata ysr
inheritance between Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010 – a need that would appear to be obvious but tee
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one that has been left unattended by Microsoft itself, and without which, users cannot simply drag-and-drop sP
emails and their attachmentsinto a records environment.Another area of confusion is records management o
standards, where very specific configurations and add-ons may be needed to achieve a “yes” for i
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compliance.
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The key to ensuring nothing important is missed – especially in a SharePoint scenario – is to firstwork out
what your business demands in the way of business results and system functionality, and thenselect your
vendor accordingly. Keep in mind that while it may be quicker and easier to buy point solutions or non-suite
ECM products for specific line-of-business problems, the continuing convergence of the technology stacks
means you will want to make selections that can be extended to embrace a wider set of applications later
on. Whether SharePoint is the best candidate to provide those dedicated point capabilities in the first
instance, even if it has a broad capability down the track, is very much in question right now.
© AIIM 2010 www.aiim.org/ © OpenText Corporation2010 www.opentext.com 5
3. The Business Case
SharePoint’s huge popular appeal – triggered by the bundling of “free” licenses and a relatively short initial
implementation curve – is causing many otherwise conservative managers to forego their usual rigors of
evaluation,and leap directly to installation. Unfortunately, this is a particularly bad economic time to forget to
make the business case for anything, and it is a particular concern given that the things SharePoint does W
are fundamental to companies’ core operations. These investigations should not to be taken lightly, for if the
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project goes bad, the fallout is likely to land hard on any number of important business processes.
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Making the business case for SharePoint – as for any new technology –involves accounting for all the e

costs in time and money that can be thought of related to its purchase and installation, understanding the P
resourcingrequired to maintain it(both human and hardware), calculating the savings to be accrued by a
virtue of using it, and figuring out how much the payback stands to be,and over what timeframe. Ideally, it is p
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best to know what the targeted operation is costing you to run and maintain now, so that you can quantify
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and document the improvement you achieve – and thus justify your purchase in no uncertain terms.
However, according to a recent AIIM research report3, “an astonishing 50% of SharePoint installations went
ahead without any formal business case being required, and only 23% required a financially costed case.”
(See Figure 1.)
Figure 1: Did you need to make a business case prior to your investments in SharePoint?
(N=410, using or planning)
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
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Yes, including financial ROI o
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Yes, based on general benefits selein
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Yes, but not in a formal way tio
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No, we weren’t asked to make a business case ation
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This, of course, flies in the face of established best practices, which call for the establishment of business sa
needs, definable benefits, and then system requirements before deciding on the most suitable product and ysr
vendor. This is not good news for the organisations in question since their failure to do their up-front due tee
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diligence means they will never be able to truly justify the time and money they are spending on their s
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project, and in addition, the project is likely to suffer from poor focus and a lack of governance.
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The Devil is in the Details t
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One reason so few did any formal calculations undoubtedly has to do with the popular perception that
SharePoint is quite inexpensive, if not totally free at its starter level, and thus a real bargain when compared
to the traditional ECM offerings. However, the practical reality is that the product requires a certain level of
infrastructure to run, has a price tag that depends heavily on the number of users and servers involved (and
an enterprise license that is good for only three years at a time), and probably will need extra modules of
functionality before it can behave as a complete ECM solution.
Without becoming mired in the details of the pricing model – which is too situational to encapsulate anyway
– here are some of the primary contributors to the cost of acquiring SharePoint 2010:
3AIIM Industry Watch report, “SharePoint - strategies and experiences”, August 2010, www.aiim.org/research
© AIIM 2010 www.aiim.org/ © OpenText Corporation2010 www.opentext.com 6
SharePoint License Type
• SharePoint Foundation 2010: a free download, though companies using it must be properly licensed
for Microsoft SharePoint Server .
• SharePoint Server 2010 plus Standard Client Access Licenses (CALs): requires purchase of
SharePoint Server 2010 and licensing of the Standard feature set through Standard CALs. W
• SharePoint Server 2010 plus Enterprise CAL (and Standard CAL): requires purchase of SharePoint h
Server 2010 and licensing of the Enterprise feature set through Enterprise CALs. FAST Search Server it
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2010 for SharePoint may be purchased for each running instance of the software.

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SharePoint License Model Other
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• Server plus CAL, for internal users • 64-bit architecture r
• Server-only, for external users • Back-up software and hardware
• Administration and user training
Additional Licenses Required
• Supporting developers/consultants
(but not included)
• Microsoft Windows Server
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Specific Web parts and third-party add-ons
With all this taken into account, the total cost can be comparable to that of a full ECM suite4,and the need
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for add-on applications still leaves you with a collection of “moving parts” that have to be individually
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managed, migrated, and/or upgraded to maintain compatibility with SharePoint and each other over time –
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and with that comes added layers of technical complexity and associated costs for IT time and resources.
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Some of this picture changes when SharePoint is removed from the premises and run in the “cloud” – i.e., selein
acquired on a subscription basis, hosted on a service provider’s server or a Microsoft server, and connected cg
to your organisation via the Internet. For example, issues related to maintaining and upgrading licenses and tion
infrastructure essentially go away as the responsibility is shifted to the provider, and fee structures tend to cB
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be simple and comprehensive. ne
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The down side is that the service-level agreements you will be asked to sign are rather generic and may not ero
address all of your particular requirements, and you lose the ability to truly customise the platform to meet ation
your specific needs. While it is generally possible to pick and choose from among supported add-on nsd
capabilities, the choices are limited to what the provider has decided is relevant, and there is usually no way fo
to integrate directly with the provider’s server, nor with your own enterprise applications. r ES
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The bottom line is that it is imperative to look into as many financial, technical, legal, and operational M
corners as you can before climbing on any vendor’s bandwagon. Even between established ECM vendors sysar
there can be significant differences in total cost of ownership, and this is particularly true in the realm of tee
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SharePoint, where the possible need for infrastructure improvements and the near-certain requirement for P
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additional licenses and further services (from Microsoft and others) tend not to surface in initial o
conversations, and come as quite the rude surprise when they finally do. i
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4. Domain Expertise and Specific Functionality
With a clear understanding of the business case now in hand, it is safe to turn your attention more fully to
the vendor community, where the products being offered are so similar technologically that it can be difficult
to tell one from another just by looking. Happily, you conducted your internal due diligence first, so you can
now begin credibly thinning the herd by holding various offerings up against your needs and casting aside
the ones that do not match. This gives you a tremendous head start in picking a solution provider and puts
you squarely in the driver’s seat when it is time to start negotiating.
4For example, a popular line of SharePoint content and collaboration enhancers can add around £120 per seat to the equation
– plus the cost associated with, for example, restoring the metadata that is lost when email messages are dragged and dropped
into the repository.
© AIIM 2010 www.aiim.org/ © OpenText Corporation2010 www.opentext.com 7
Your initial investigation should range far beyond mere technical capability to include the vendors’ familiarity
with your industry and your business dynamics. The issue here is the same as it is in sports. A golf coach
can probably improve a tennis player’s swing but cannot provide the same level of support as a tennis
coach can. It is terribly important, therefore, to ask your prospective suppliers about their depth of
experience in your field so that you can best differentiate among them.
Virtually all vendors will loudly trumpet their ability to address what they consider to be sector-specific needs W
such as privacy protection, litigation support, regulatory compliance, etc., but these issues are shared by
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any organisation of any size. It is important, therefore, to ask more detailed questions because established
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practices and specific statutes vary by industry and country. Here is a quick list of typical domain-specific t
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requirements to help get your thoughts flowing:
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Aerospace/Manufacturing:contract and project management; collaborative partnering; patent defence;
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invoice and delivery note processing; large-format drawings; mobile access; engineering change
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management; multi-language technical documentation; integration with ERP, project management and
service management systems.
Energy/Utilities:high-volume in and out-bound consumer correspondence; web-billing; multiple capture
channels (email, fax, text, etc); case management; capital plant project management; asset information
management; long-term environmental regulation/litigation; integration with CRM/help-desk, contract
management and asset management systems.
Financial Services:high-volume forms input; field-based forms validation; branch-office integration;
case management; content analytics and fraud-detection; report distribution; long-term (lifetime) records
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archive; detailed compliance and regulatory scrutiny; M&A information merge; integration with claims,
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underwriting, trading and other specialist line-of-business systems.
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Healthcare:role-based security; back-file patient notes conversion; case management; forms selein
management; records portability; clinical knowledge management; content analytics; multiple cg
correspondence channels; e-discovery; multi-role user interfaces; integration with national systems, tion
appointment/referral systems, radiography and screening systems, HR systems. cB
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Public Sector:forms processing; legislative changes to workflow processes; data protection; freedom- erao
of-information; agency information sharing; records keeping to statutory standards; long-term (for ever) tion
records archive; citizen portaling (self-service); case management; in-source/out-source flexibility; legacy nsd
system consolidation; integration with finance, HR, and numerous agency and line-of-business for S
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applications. Ch
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Choosing a partner who does not know his or her way around your precise space can have as deleterious ysr
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an effect on your ultimate success as choosing a mismatched technology. But don’t stop with questions mP
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about particular bits of industry-specific functionality, request to speak to any customers who may be just
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like you. A lack of a ready response may indicate either that a company has never worked with anyone in
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your field or is selling products that are so generic that they will probably require considerable customisation n
to succeed in your context – neither of which is ideal for you. t
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SharePoint in the Hot Seat
Providers of SharePoint-based solutions should be questioned with special intensity because that product is
certainly more generic than the full ECM suites are, and because – especially in the case of SharePoint
2010 – it is new enough to be still building its portfolio of positive case histories.
By contrast, companies like EMC (Documentum) and Open Text have ECM résumés that literally stretch
back more than two decades and embed so much real-world experience into their software that they do not
require the same level of consultants and programmers that seem so often called upon to attend to
SharePoint after the event. The sales and pre-sales consultancy staff of the traditional suppliers will likely
provide a process analysis of your specific needs upfront, and will include fixed fees for post-sales
consultancy. Highly regimented and regulated organisations like government agencies, financial services
companies, and utilities find this especially appealing since ‘what they see tends to be what they get,’ and
they don’t have to go back for additional resources or funding after the fact.
© AIIM 2010 www.aiim.org/ © OpenText Corporation2010 www.opentext.com 8
AIIM research corroborates the need for a thorough investigation of both domain expertise and specific
functionality when it comes to SharePoint, as nearly a quarter of the people surveyed felt it had
considerable shortcomings, and nearly two-thirds either had to customise it or use third-party add-ons to
meet their needs. (See Figure 2.)
Figure 2: How would you summarise your experience of SharePoint as regards general functionality?
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(Check all that apply). (N=362, using or implementing)
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0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% e

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It does all the things we need, in the way a
we need them p
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It does most of the things we need, and
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we have found ways to do the rest
We have customized it to meet some of
our needs
We are using third-party add-ons to meet
some of our needs
We have struggled to meet some of the
par(cid:2)cular needs of our industry
We feel it has considerable shortcomings
in some areas
We feel it has considerable shortcomings
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in many areas
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Too soon to say
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Now, this finding by itself does not mean these issues had to do with the particulars of their field. But ne
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something approaching 20% of respondents said they struggled to match industry-specific processes and idy
meet regulatory requirements (see Figure 3), and personal experience and customer anecdotes suggest ero
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this to be true a significant portion of the time. So finding a vendor with expertise in your field can only be a tion
good idea. nsd
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© AIIM 2010 www.aiim.org/ © OpenText Corporation2010 www.opentext.com 9
Figure 3: Which of the following information management issues have you experienced with your SharePoint
implementation? (N=362, using or implementing, multiples allowed)

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
Records management (in SP 2007) is not
sufficiently robust W
Insufficient granularity of security and h
access se(cid:4)ngs it
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No way to enforce a classifica(cid:2)on
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template/policy for new team sites
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Data volume/scalability issues with p
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Cannot map file-plans and taxonomies
into our exis(cid:2)ng Archive/ RM system
No capability for volume scanning
and capture
Problems with backup
Struggled to match our industry-specific
processes
Struggled to meet our regulatory
requirements
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Email volume is overloading system
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None of these
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5. General Capabilities cB
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Working outward from the industry-specific core, there are a number of more general capabilities that – ero
SharePoint 2010’s many improvements notwithstanding – are widely acknowledged to be either outside of a
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SharePoint’s sweet spot,or lacking altogether in terms of enterprise content management. Security, capture, nsd
image storage, email handling, case management, records management, BPM, and social media are all central fo
to ECM and have all been called into question. Not only do these likely therefore represent the heart of r ES
Microsoft’s upcoming release schedule, they are also at the centre of a remarkable and thriving market for third- Ch
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party additions. sa
AIIM’s research again shines a bright light on a critical point by ascertaining that six of ECM’s most fundamental ystere
functions are at the top of the list of add-ons that users are planning to bolt onto their SharePoint mP
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implementations. (See Figure 4.) In order, these are workflow, security and rights management, search/analytics, o
archiving, classification/taxonomy management, and records management. i
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© AIIM 2010 www.aiim.org/ © OpenText Corporation2010 www.opentext.com 10