Billy Cripe

techdirt - one of my usual blog reads - has an article HERE that got me thinking.  The article talks specifically about how news aggregators (think RSS news feed collectors like Google News or your personal collection) are the scourge of mainstream (old school) news media outlets. 

The crux of the article is this:

"

What aggregators do is make it a lot easier for readers to find new news sources. That's good for an up-and-coming site with a lot of great content, because aggregators enlarge the potential audience for the content. But it's not good for a mediocre site with a large readership based largely on inertia.

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This is an interesting point when you remove the context of News Media.  Replace "readers" with "employees", "news" with "business information" and "site" with "intranet" (or other favorite internal enterprise information portal).  What you get is a good idea of why information aggregation matters in a business context.  Our new paragraph would read:

What aggregators do is make it a lot easier for employees to find new business information sources. That's good for an up-and-coming intranet with a lot of great content, because aggregators enlarge the potential audience for the content. But it's not good for a mediocre intranet with a large readership based largely on inertia.

The reality is that most internal corporate information portals (aka intranets) fall into the latter category.  They're mediocre with a large audience simply because the audience is captive.  However, business intranets are not *competitive* the way online news media is.  This means there is no reason to fear the aggregator within the enterprise.  What aggregation does is to expose lots of otherwise hidden but relevant information.  That means aggregation drives better business decisions, better business intelligence, better *business*.

Collaboration!  Content!  Art!

Click HERE for more.

But I can not look away.  It's like an educational catastrophic car wreck.

Peak Surgical PlasmaBlade Video Demo

ht: Engadget

The best *asynchronous* (we hope) collaboration to be found.  Cognitive Surpluss indeed!

larger view

Hat Tip to John's blog who pointed out that THIS SITE got a facelift.

There are some good links to stellent - now known as Oracle ECM - jobs as well as some forums that need YOU  to post over there and a decent downloads/samples page which I'll add to the downloads section on the lower right.

check it out.

I recently stumbled across THIS article by Colin White.  It's a piece on the changing role of data warehousing in Business Intelligence.  I found the last section on "Operational Business Intelligence" very interesting.  It outlines some of the trends in BI that I've been writing about for a bit.  Trends like predictive analystics based on novel and semantic data sources mashed up with tranditional ETL process loaded data warehouse data.  Trends like real time decisioning that takes behaviorial, structured, and web click data to pick the next best action or thow up persuasive banner ads on a web page. 

Coming from the world of unstructured data I find Colin White's following quote refreshing:

"

... at present, business intelligence is synonymous with data warehousing. This thinking is wrong and needs to be changed. Data warehousing is a component of business intelligence, but business intelligence may employ data in other data stores. In some cases, a BI application may not even use data managed in a data warehouse. The tight connection between business intelligence and data warehousing is causing terms such as virtual data warehousing and virtual BI to be used to describe other types of BI processing. These terms are unnecessary and just confuse everybody. (emphasis mine)

"

...on the public web. But just how long do you think it will be before *they* infiltrate *our* workplaces and *demand* the same (or better!) functionality and capability?

Late Gen X / early Gen Y-ers like myself are on the fore of this expectation curve (and largely disappointed with what the internal corporate capabilities have to offer!).  That's why we're working within the system to bring our employers out of the technological dark ages ( OMG, like 2 years ago AFIK). 

But the next 10 years - when these teens start getting internships and entry level jobs - are critical.  So far the public web has far outpaced and out-evolved the corporate behemoths.

LINK

The most productivity-enhancing collaborative software will fail (and has largely failed) to achieve critical mass in enterprises without a robust social network underpinning it.  There you go, a huge claim without a warrant but I'm sure I could find enough warrants (PDF) to prove it.

While Enterprise 2.0 is about more than social networking websites on the corporate intranet, more than corporate blogging and wikis, more than roundy corners, reflections and drop shadows, the massive uptake of Social Networking applications on the public web makes it the best paradigm for allowing Web 2.0 to infiltrate the enterprise. 

So back to my point - collaboration software (like Oracle ECM, Oracle WebCenter Spaces etc) is great for managing project collateral, schedules, and providing granular security for "team members".  But that all pre-supposes that you know who your team *is*.  And THAT presupposes you know who your team *should be*.  And THAT presupposes that you are able to *find* reliable expert candidates for your teams.

Historically that was done with your personal social network stored in your brain, in your physical office cubical geography, and your sneaker net.  By bringing in social networking and, specifically, the FOAF (friend of a friend) structuring to social data we are able to bring those defined and programmatically accessible relationships to bear in collaborative settings. 

When combined with user ratings, reputation and expertise ratings that I've already written about, FOAF formatted and automatically parsed social graph data becomes the last (but heretofore missing) link in the collaborative enterprise2.0 productivity enhancement technology space.

I predict radical increases in uptake and adoption rates when this is incorporated OOTB.

It's not *really* a surprise that O is looking to trim costs and overlap - and not just from the BEA side of our new house.  Still it sucks waiting around for the faceless ubermenschen to make their decisions.

I've got absolutely no inside info on what - if anything - is coming and who it's coming for.  I'm just looking at the public news sources and blogging what most of us are thinking about.  This could all be a tempest in a teacup.  I hope that's the case.

From THIS article from the AP comes this confidence-boosting gem:

"Oracle has acknowledged job cuts are likely as it strives to maximize its profit from the BEA deal but hasn't specified how many workers will be jettisoned.

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There is really a lot of cool stuff going on here.  Whether it's ECM going invisible underneath the AppStack or exploring semantic capabilities of the treasure trove of unstructured data encapsulated in CM systems, Oracle has a lot of really smart people in the FMW group doing truly innovative work.  It would be a shame to see that go.

UPDATE: THIS Article  has names and numbers.

"
Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research said his sources tell him Oracle might let go 1,000 to 1,500 of its middleware staff and another 500 at BEA, principally in adjunct roles such as sales....

"

A fascinating article by Clay Shirkyon (Gin etc.) on the concept of cognitive surplus.  Go and read it, but to summarize briefly, his argument is that technological changes through history have freed up leisure time; and that the responses to this freedom have varied at different points in history.  At first, when people moved from rural areas to urban centres during the industrial revolution (a British invention, lest anyone forget), they filled their free time with drinking and licentiousness.

Aside - did they really have that much free time?  If I remember my British history and trips to dark, satanic mills, people were working all day, every day.  However, perhaps the social setting and street lights made for this change.  Sorry - not to derail Clay's thesis.

After this decline in social cohesion, it took some time before society as a whole woke up and put in place structures to fill this free time "usefully" - the Victorian flourishing of free libraries, art galleries, museums, broader access to education, etc.

Following the second world war (more so in the US, Canada, Australia and NZ than in Europe which was rebuilding), rapid industrial development led to a rapid growth in the middle class and people suddenly had even more time on their hands.  Some of them filled that with drinking and licentiousness (I'll avoid the easy Aussie jokes here, mates), but most people in the 'developed' world spent a lot of that time watching TV.  This was the rise of network television and these programmes became shared social reference points through the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Fast forward to the last 5-10 years and many people have moved away from this model.  This is where the time to post on Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. comes from.  This is the 'Cognitive Surplus' - where people use their brain power to post, to argue, to flirt, to learn, rather than working, watching TV, or doing something else.  Add to this the increased convenience of access - it's easier to read web pages, or blog, or watch YouTube on your iPhone than it is to find a TV - and you have a fundamental shift in behaviour.  The time for this interweb stuff doesn't come from nowhere, it generally comes at the expense of sitting watching TV.

So this leads to a number of fascinating questions and observations, but I want to focus on the impact of this idea for Enterprise ECM (you knew there must be a point to this somewhere, right?).  For knowledge workers - those of us who think more than do - the nature of our days' work has changed fundamentally in the last decade too.  There's a lot less paper (although still too much), more online applications; most of us are tethered to corporate networks and the internet all day, email has replaced memos, processes and workflows are automated and integrated with email, phone, web-apps, etc.

So do you feel like you have time on your hands?  Has this efficiency got you down to a 32 hour work week with 6 weeks holiday? (apart from you Genevieve and Pierre, thank you very much). 

I'm guessing the answer is no and that you are busier than ever.  How can ECM help with this?  Well, we can start by providing search technologies so people can find stuff.  We can rationalize storage and versioning, so that everyone knows which is the latest and greatest version of a policy.  And we can provide conversion and transformation so that I can access content in PDF from a mobile device or  as XML or HTML within an intranet page. 

Once we have these efficiencies, though, I think we need to aim to use that time wisely.  Capture the internal knowledge, share the lessons learned.  Update the content.  Look to the virtual world and see that people contribute to the knowledge total (even if that knowledge is a debate on the correct spelling of Lemmy from Motorhead's last name).  Now take that model and bring it within your organization. 

The transformation is from a passive, centralized, consuming model of network TV or corporate pronouncements and documentation to an active, decentralized, contributing model of wikipedia or organizational blogs, wikis, knowledge base articles, etc.  Even if the quality is spotty (which it will be - see wikipedia) there will be nuggets in there.  Even if 50%, 70%, 90% is junk - there will be value in that 50%, 30%, 10%.  And isn't even 10% of something better than 100% of nothing?

This way lies the path to Web 4.5 (h/t Bex)

CHOMP!

it's funny though, that the Announcement has a longer safe harbor statement than any actual news. (that's true for the lowly O. Employees as well)

I've been in several situations lately where large organizations are realizing about the power of using more rich media and more social networking capabilities with their own customers. Everyone realizes that these two trends go hand in hand: the more power you give to end users, the more video you'll have to manage. Looking at the volumes on the web, the proportion of rich media compared with the static text and image does nothing but grow. In addition, customers find that video and audio actually help in the way they promote, communicate, train or even support their customers. So far so good.

What most of them are then wondering is should I build my own internal capacity to deal with this? Or should I simply give it to someone who takes care of managing my rich media assets and processes? Is it efficient for me to develop the infrastructure to store, manage, serve, stream these assets?

The ability to use CM systems in a form that allows corporate customers to satisfy their needs for rich media and social networking in a hosted environment, while keeping control of other information assets, is emerging. We're actively exploring the topic and we're interested in comments or references to similar needs in other places.

Check out THIS POST from Johns Blog for a nice primer and component download for doing the automagic Crtl + Shift + F5 hot key combo to move from a consumption to contribution site.

Of course, test it in a safe environment first. 

HatTip: John Sim

David Roe writes HERE about the advantages of tapping the potential of  Oracle's 11g Database SecureFiles capabilities within Universal Content Management.  He's also got some great tips on settig up the SecureFiles system for storing UCM managed files.  Also see Bex's take on UOA and secure files here.

If you're using UCM 10.1.3.3.2 or earlier, you can configure Oracle UCM to leverage SecureFiles technology with the File Store Provider capability.   Remember, File Store Provider is OOTB with Oracle UCM.  It is the rules engine that directs the content bits to their new home.  There can be an entire neighborhood with FSP directing content traffic to their homes, dorms and temporary (cache) locations.  Some content  - especially small file size web content IMHO - should still go into/onto the file system or at least a filesystem based cache.  Fortunately, that's not a problem for FSP. 

Here is a File Store Provider to SecureFiles setup sample (that I've not verified):

1.  On your Content Server instance, install and enable the FileStoreProvider component.
2.  Configure FileStoreProvider to create a JDBC storage rule as desired.
3.  Upon restart of Content Server, FileStoreProvider will create the table to store files.
4.  Log into the database instance for Content Server
5.  Drop the filestorage table created by FileStoreProvider (which uses Basic LOBs)
6.  Recreate the filestorage table to leverage SecureFiles.  Here is a *sample* CREATE script:

CREATE TABLE filestorage (
DID number(38),
DRENDITIONID VARCHAR2(30),
DLASTMODIFIED TIMESTAMP(6),
DFILESIZE NUMBER(38),
DISDELETED VARCHAR2(1),
BFILEDATA BLOB,
CONSTRAINT PK_FILESTORAGE
PRIMARY KEY (DID, DRENDITIONID)) LOB(BFILEDATA) STORE AS SECUREFILE
TABLESPACE <YOUR TABLESPACE NAME>;

7. That's it!

You can leverage other SecureFiles capabilities like compression, deduplication and encryption be setting the appropriate flags in the CREATE TABLE script.  Additional information about SecureFiles technology can be found on OTN HERE.

Today, the Red Stack is Green.  Oracle ECM is Green ECM.  How?  Here are several ways - If you have more ideas on how ECM is Going GREEN post them in the comments area!

Save The Trees

• electronic content means less printing, less paper consumption, more trees saved
• scanning of paper you already have means information is preserved electronically and old "hard copies" can be recycled - which saves new trees from being cut to be made into paper...

Cut the CO2 and Emissions

• electronic and web based distribution means less snail-mailing, FedEXing, UPSing, DHLing or courrier-ing of packets of information to shareholders, stakeholders, team members and collaborators.  Less physical paper travel means less fuel burned getting it there.

Efficiency Boost Means Less Waste

• doing the same things better, quicker, smarter means less waste of the resources that support those efforts - from paper to fossil-fuel based electricity to automotive and airplane fuel.

Ok, but that's just theory you say.  How about a real case study showing that going GREEN with Oracle ECM makes sense not just for the tree-hugging, dirt-munching crowd (of which I am a proud member) but also for the shareholders. 

Situation: 2000 Manuals and 65% are redistributed per year, so in 2 years, 2600 Manuals would be distributed.  Each Manual is averages 5 pages, so a total of 10,400 pages would be produced during 2 years.  These documents go to 65 locations, each getting a complete set which would make a total of 850,000 pages that would be printed at a cost of .02 per page.  $15,000 in distribution costs.  Based upon a survey, each location would spend 1 hour per month handling these documents for a total of 24 hours over 2 years - 65 locations. 

Earth Impact Actions: printing, distribution, handling

Solution - Oracle ECM:

• Less Document Handling at the Sites - $46,800 (24 hrs. X 65 sites = 1560 hrs X $30 per hr)
• Less time for Document Publishing - $18,000 (9 minutes less per Manual to load & maintain over the 2 years for 600 hrs. less at $30 per hr.)
• Materials Cost Savings -  $17,000 (not having to print over 850,000 pages of documents at .02 each)
• Shipping & Handling Cost Savings - $ 15,600
• TOTAL SAVINGS - $97,400

Michelle showed off a bunch of the coolest features of Oracle UCM 10gR3  - Folios, Annotations, the new WCM Contributor (cross browser, swoopy UI, in-context editing of web pages etc), as well as some of the extensibility of the platform - as evidenced by our Tre SEXEH PicLens integration (viewer for images from RSS feeds).

Props to UCM and Michelle!

Check out John Sim's recent post on John's Blog on how to move stuff around.  Useful.  As always, be sure to test in a safe environment before you go moving important files around in a live production environment...

LINK

Today Oracle announces a new addition to the ECM Suite, Oracle Universal Online Archive (UOA). 

UOA dovetails nicely into the ECM and Fusion Middleware stack and specifically addresses the business needs for long-term management of historical content.  The explosion of enterprise content, particularly email, means that significant cost and competitive advantages can be had for organizations with a fully integrated content solution.  UOA takes advantage of several new capabilities in the Oracle 11g database to provide an archiving solution for ALL enterprise content.

More product information will be coming soon, but for now, please check out the press release (linked in the title), the UOA page at oracle.com, and the podcast with me and Greg Crider.  (Thanks to Billy for the unofficial UOA avatar! As far as three letter acronyms go, this one is the most fun to say and thus the karate man was born.)