Box Announces Governance – Another Step Towards #ECMnext
So Box came out and announced Box Governance this week. For those of you thinking that Box is just one of the surfeit of file sharing providers on the planet, think again. Box has been steadfast in stating that they are providing content management and this week’s announcement is further proof of that.
Box Governance provides three important capabilities: 1) Retention Management; 2) Content Security Policies (really should have something about “sensitive information” in the name); 3) Defensible eDiscovery. While having these capabilities available is in and of itself a major step forward, it’s also important to note that organizations that choose to deploy Box can now claim compliance with a number of government and industry regulations and standards (e.g.: PII, FINRA, SOX, SEC 17a-4). However, the most important thing about this announcement, in my opinion, is that it serves to remove additional barriers to including Box in the conversation when talking about Enterprise Content Management vendors (pay attention Gartner, Forrester, IDC, et al). Coupled with Box’s Enterprise Key Management (my post on the topic) announcement earlier this year, organizations relying on FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) to exclude Box from consideration are losing rationale for doing so. Security and information governance are what separates true managed content from just another shared drive, and Box has them. Bleat all you want about cloud not being secure and cloud content repositories being unmanaged messes, it’s not working anymore.
Since BoxWorks last September (my thoughts) Box has made a number of feature additions, announcements, integrations, and alliances that are moving it closer to being able to deliver the right balance of System of Record and System of Engagement. At this point it’s still a little ugly and cumbersome for administrators to configure the backend to deliver the various governance, workflow, and security bits to work properly, but that’s what the team at Box Consulting is paid to help with. Those paid to worry about security, legal, regulatory, and audit have less to worry about now than a few months ago. From a content consumer/contributor perspective it’s all pretty slick and that’s what it’s all about.
It’s no coincidence that a white paper I wrote for Digital Clarity Group was released yesterday. The paper is about the next generation of ECM (#ECMnext) and how Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) platforms will provide it. We’d (Box, DCG, me) love to get your thoughts on the paper. Feel free to reach out to any of us (you can reach me via email at chris.walker@phigsimc.com as I am no longer with DCG) to rant or rave. There’s no data collection, fees, marketing gates or other intrusive nonsense to get the paper, so download The Next Generation of Enterprise Content Management to your heart’s content.
Image taken from http://ontheedge.dezignstuff.com/survey-ends-today/1404/mis-megaphone
The Metamorphosis of Enterprise Content Management
Image by Luna sin Estrella, used under Creative Commons 2.0.
Regardless of what you’ve been hearing, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is not dead. For years ECM has been harangued as being overly cumbersome, overly expensive, overly difficult, and underwhelming when it came to delivering benefits. That’s all about to change…
The manner in which ECM is delivered is going to change. Taking a cue from what consumers have come to expect in terms of the technology they use for personal reasons, a subset of Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) vendors, led by Box, are emerging as purveyors of ECMnext – the next generation of Enterprise Content Management platforms. The focus is on how and why people create, consume, and share content, supported by a foundation that provides the security and governance required in today’s digital business environment.
This whitepaper explores the short-comings of legacy ECM platforms, and how ECMnext vendors can step up and deliver what we’ve wanted out of ECM all along. While there’s still a ways to go for ECMnext platforms to be able to completely replace legacy ECM platforms, the basic building blocks are in place and the roadmaps are pointing in the right direction.
You can download the whitepaper directly from here.
If you need a little more evidence that ECM is changing, take a look at Box’s announcement about their governance functionality: Introducing Box Governance – Delivering Control and Compliance in the Cloud.
If you’d like additional insight, this 15 minute podcast from February 2015 features Connie Moore of Digital Clarity Group and me discussing EFSS and ECM.
Case Study: Managing Information – How and Why
This is the second case study type thing I’m trying. It’ll likely be the last for a while as I have nothing left that I can publish without getting sued. Ah, the joys of being an independent consultant. Anyways …
This case study has to do with the project referenced in the two posts linked below. You may want to read them to get a better overall view of the project :
The document I’m sharing is part of a set of four docs that were delivered to the client. The purpose of each document is explained in the case study document.
The client in the case study builds electricity infrastructure; they are heavily regulated. They took the decision a while back to use SharePoint as their ECM pillar (though they don’t really know what ECM is). They also don’t have an Information Management strategy, nor any type of dedicated information governance structure. Though they rely heavily on information, and generate tons of intellectual property, they don’t do much about treating information as an asset. As far as they are concerned, information is IT’s problem and the business is just a client.
I was working as a subcontractor with ARC Business Solutions on this project. One of the key contributors to the project and the document was Chris Riley. You can follow Chris on Twitter at https://twitter.com/HoardingInfo. We knew early on in the project that the client was in ECM trouble and needed help. Though not part of the project mandate we wrote the docs up anyway (No. We didn’t bill the client extra.).
Without further ado … click the link and check it out: Managing Information at client name.
Feedback is appreciated.
The image in this post is my first attempt at visually representing the Principles of Holistic Information Governance. Click on it for the original PHIGs post and a larger version of the image.
Chris Riley, along with Shadrach White, is a co-author of Enterprise Content Management with Microsoft SharePoint.
Adopting ECM – A Case Study in Failure
Earlier this year I completed an assessment of Alfresco for a university client. The university licensed Alfresco several years ago and did not have much success. They hired me to find out why, and what to do about it. The options they wanted to look at were to continue on with Alfresco or switch to SharePoint. An option they weren’t willing to consider was a cloud based option. I gave them one anyways, based on Box. Unfortunately I was asked to remove that option from the final report. Oh well.
While the platform in question was Alfresco, I can’t stress enough that the failure had nothing to do with the platform. Under the circumstance nothing would have succeeded. You can read a bit about it in an earlier post here.
I’m trying something a little different; because of my altruistic nature I am making the final report available as a downloadable PDF. I figure there’s stuff in it that many could use, and perhaps critique that would be helpful.
I want to thank Laurence Hart for his contribution to the report and the overall project. Thanks, Laurence. You can follow Laurence on twitter at https://twitter.com/piewords and check out his blog at http://wordofpie.com/.
Anyways, just follow the link and you ought to get to the report (no fees, no signup, no tracking). Feel free to provide feedback.
University ECM Assessment – I’m using Box to share this content. Please let me know if you have any issues.
Image: “Paris Tuileries Garden Facepalm statue” by Alex E. Proimos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/4199675334/. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
PHIGs IMC Inc. 