8 reasons why CMIS will transform the ECM industry

Stefan Waldhauser is the founder and CEO of WeWebU Software, a specialist in Enterprise Information Management. With the WeWebU products, enterprises can access their complete information infrastructure via a unified, process-oriented working environment. WeWebU operates internationally. It cooperates with leading EIM manufacturers and consulting firms and is an IBM Advanced Business Partner as well as Alfresco Solutions Partner. He can be reached on Twitter (@WeWebU) or via LinkedIn http://de.linkedin.com/in/stefanwaldhauser.

AIIM has been extensively involved in the CMIS project. In the later part of 2008, OASIS announced the formation of a committee to standardize a web services interface specification that will enable interoperability of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. EMC, IBM and Microsoft lead the way by developing the initial draft for the standard. Other EMC vendors such as Alfresco, Open Text, Oracle, SAP and others reviewed this intial draft and provided comments on the draft prior to selecting OASIS to advance the standard through the standardization process. There are a host of resources and presentations available at the AIIM Official Guide to CMIS.

8 reasons why CMIS will transform the ECM industry

1 -- CMIS is the SQL for Content Management.

According to OASIS the objective of the CMIS standard is to define a common content management web services interface. This approach is very similar to the standardization of SQL by ANSI in the 80s. SQL enabled software application vendors for the first time to offer database applications that could run against different databases. So SQL boosted the growth of software markets like ERP and CRM dealing with structured data. 25 years later CMIS will now enable ISVs to offer content-centric applications that can be run on top of different ECM-platforms. That will enlarge the opportunities for vendors of Content Enabled Applications drastically and will lead to a lot of innovation in this marketplace.

2 -- CMIS is not just another standard.

Maybe you’re thinking that CMIS is just another standard like JCR, ODMA or others which where not adapted by the majority of vendors. But CMIS is different because all major players in the market are backing it: IBM, EMC and Microsoft proposed it and now most of the relevant players like Adobe, Alfresco, Open Text, SAP, SAPERION joint the OASIS CMIS group working on the standard. And many of them have already shown that they are serious about adapting CMIS into their products. Because they know that in a few years CMIS will be a key for successfully selling an ECM Product. Or would you buy a database system today that couldn’t easily import and export data?

3 -- CMIS is already well accepted by the customers.

According to a survey published by AIIM more than 50% of the customers have more than 10 repositories that could fruitfully linked or managed in one place. Some organizations plan to migrate their multiple repositories to one system but for mid-size or large enterprises this will not be possible. In another survey conducted amongst AIIM-members more than 15% already said that CMIS would be important for them in order to link multiple repositories. For me that is a great number considering that CMIS is not an approved standard yet.

4 -- No more lock-in to one ECM-vendor because of CMIS.

Until today the ECM industry was driven by high complexity and proprietary systems that prevented to switch to other vendors. Even when a vendor dramatically increased maintenance fees (many customers know what I’m speaking about) there often was no choice to go somewhere else because of the tight and proprietary integrations between the customer build applications and the ECM-infrastructure. CMIS will help separate the applications from the ECM-platform and so there will be no more lock-in to one vendor. Doesn’t that sound great?

5 -- With CMIS the ECM infrastructure will become commodity.

During the last years the differences of the relevant content-repositories in the marketplace became smaller and ECM-systems are a kind of commodity right now. Customers know what functionality they want when looking for an ECM platform and this is why the market is ready for open source alternatives now. These trends are serious issues for the traditional ECM-infrastructure players and with CMIS it will be even harder for them to differentiate on the backend side.

6 -- CMIS-based applications will become the differentiator.

Many smaller ECM-vendors have to recognize that the proprietary ECM-infrastructure they are offering will be history in a few years. Their chance to survive the market consolidation is to make their backend systems CMIS-compliant and to differentiate themselves with outstanding CMIS-based applications that are portable and can be run on the different ECM platforms. New companies and business models will evolve serving the fast growing markets for CMIS-based Composite Content Applications as well as Transactional Content Management Applications.

7 -- CMIS will help to create a 360° view on your customers.

Most large organizations have multiple ECM solutions and the integration of all these into one application is today very expensive to implement and maintain because of the proprietary APIs. CMIS can enable interoperability across repositories and we’ll see CMIS-based standard software in the market that can be used to easily federate multiple ECM systems. So CMIS will help to make sure that even large organizations are able to create the 360° view on their customers. That’s exactly what they’re looking for.

8 -- CMIS 1.0 is just the beginning.

Some people criticize the fact that CMIS will be a kind of lowest common denominator and say that it will be incomplete in a way that not all the functionality of the different ECM-systems will be covered. That’s true but for me it’s much more important that very soon we’ll get a lean standard which is easy to learn and will be well accepted. Of course there is some proprietary work to do beside CMIS to make a complex content centric application run on the systems of different vendors. But that’s the same kind of work an ISV has to deal with when supporting the different flavors of SQL. I’m convinced that CMIS is the right standard at the right time and can make the ECM world a better place.

Later on let’s discuss CMIS 2.0…

-----

There are a host of resources and presentations available at the AIIM Official Guide to CMIS.

8 Comments

Thanks for the interesting perspective, Stefan!

I'll be interested to see whether CMIS also provides ECM architects with a more standardized set of modeling and manipulation tools. In my work with DBAs, I have found that the standardization of SQL made it very easy for DBAs to move between tools like TOAD, MS SQL Enterprise Manager, and MySQL Workbench.

Obviously, DBAs aren't purely interchangeble in the fact that they need to understand the complexities of their database of choice, but the standardization of SQL certainly provides common ground and makes it easier for an Oracle DBA to work with MS SQL databases and vice versa.

Providing ECM architects with similar common standard and tools leveraging that standard would be a huge step forward in developing ECM solutions and allowing organizations to unlock the power of the information stored in disparate systems.

Thanks again!

--Sean
http://www.intranetexperience.com
http://www.twitter.com/seanrnicholson

Posted by: Sean R. Nicholson | December 12, 2009 at 05:41 PM

As long as customers (end users) see a need and demand it from their suppliers - CMIS has a much better chance of success.

Some standards seem to take hold, others don't. Look at the fibre channel standards in data management that really never dominated the landscape as promised (IMHO). As a former rep to some standards orgs - and ECM'er - I hope CMIS gets proper support and a decent chance to evolve.

Posted by: Ralph Severini | February 25, 2010 at 08:05 AM