KMWorld articles from March 2004

KMWorld archives from March 2004

What's ahead for ECM?
March 1, 2004... Between the partnerships, acquisitions and rumors, there's a lot to talk about with enterprise content management these days. So, we decided to ask vendors and analysts just what they thought the future might hold. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

What's behind the merger mania?(Verity to acquire Cardiff Software)
March 1, 2004... In a move that initially raised a few eyebrows, Verity (verity.com) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Cardiff Software (cardiff.com) for a purchase price of approximately $50 million in cash. But Verity is far more than just a...

A commitment to collaboration.
March 1, 2004... Fifteen years after the introduction of Lotus Notes and with more than 110 million Notes/Domino users, IBM/Lotus (lotus.com) has renewed its commitment to collaboration and introduced a number of products at the 11th annual Lotusphere...

Compliance, completely.
March 1, 2004... Built on FileNet's (filenet.com) ECM platform and its P8 architecture, the Compliance Framework is said to be designed specifically to help enterprises and large corporations automate critical compliance processes related to content. It...

KM: A case in point.(TripleHop Software)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... TripleHop Software (triplehop.com) has introduced CasePoint, an electronic filing system for litigation, patent and corporate matters. TripleHop explains the product enables legal professionals to file and search all documents, working...

Keeping customers in front.(News)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Nothing frustrates online shoppers more than failing to find what they want to buy. Too many clicks ruin a deal. That's why Patagonia (patagonia.com), known for its outdoor apparel, wanted to make sure that its Web site was consumer-friendly in...

Financial self-help.(News; enterprise software)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Wausau Financial Systems (WFS, wausaufs.com) is getting some knowledge-powered help with its customer support initiatives. WFS, which provides transaction-processing applications for companies of all sizes, was interested in a solution that...

Upwardly mobile.(News: British Telecommunications software)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Field service engineers with a large European telecommunications company have access now to more timely support information while they are in the field and disconnected from the network. BT Exact--the research, technology and IT operations...

Rush's remedy.(News)
March 1, 2004... Rush University Medical Center (rush.edu), located in Chicago, has implemented a distributed capture system to address its burgeoning paper volume. The Healthcare Revenue Systems division of Rush realized that it needed to replace its manual,...

Information takes flight.(News)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Britannia Airways (britanniaair ways.com) is providing PDA and laptop access to important information during flights, giving employees real-time access to the data. The PDAs have been rolled out to Britannia cabin crew and are used to...

The high cost of not finding information.
March 1, 2004... On Sept 23, 1999, NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft disappeared. The spacecraft had flown nine-and-a-half months and 416 million miles flawlessly. Scientists were stumped at first about what had gone wrong. They had checked and rechecked...

BPM--the promises and the practice art 1.
March 1, 2004... The simplest definition of business process management (BPM) is that it is a process-oriented way of thinking about existing IT systems, and of procuring, designing, building and integrating new systems. Just as object-oriented approaches to...

Business intelligence helps Centra Health improve care and lower costs.
March 1, 2004... Centra Health (centrahealth.com) is a regional, non-profit healthcare system located in the Piedmont region of Virginia, just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Over the past decade, Centra developed a reporting and analysis system that has...

Adapting ECM to enterprise goals.
March 1, 2004... Enterprise content management (ECM) is often portrayed as a monolithic entity, created by integrating numerous repositories into a unified application. But ECM is far more differentiated, addressing business problems that are as varied as the...

ECM in the eye of the beholder.
March 1, 2004... I once swore on everything I hold holy that I would NEVER resort to the "10-blind-men-describing-an-elephant" cliche. Ah, what the hell. I can't think of any other way to talk about the current state of Enterprise Content Management--ECM....

ECM: the new strategic imperative.
March 1, 2004... There are some pundits who believe Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is just a warmed-over version of technology that has been available for years. I would argue ECM is a blend of proven technologies with newer, innovative capabilities that...

An evolution: document to Enterprise Content Management.
March 1, 2004... For the past five years, the document management (DM) industry has undergone several significant changes in search of the one strategy that will finally yield the forecasted revenues that all of the industry analysts have predicted. These...

European Court of Human Rights opens up to the world.
March 1, 2004... Serving 44 member states with a total population of 800 million, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg processes thousands of documents every week and receives 800 letters and 500 phone calls every day. Because of this, the...

Maximizing the value of enterprise information; by leveraging best of breed search and categorization software.
March 1, 2004... The Holy Grail of knowledge management is that all individuals and communities of interest can gain instantaneous access to highly relevant information, whenever and wherever needed, to make better decisions, reduce risk, eliminate redundancy,...

Best practices in ECM: a business owner's perspective.
March 1, 2004... Organizations have spent a lot of money on IT initiatives in various business transformation processes. These investments are driven by various imperatives--from gaining a competitive edge, to creating a value network of partners and suppliers,...

Managing for usability: Enterprise Content Management.
March 1, 2004... In the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, intrepid archeologist Indiana Jones searches for the Ark of the Covenant, going through a series of hair-raising adventures, finding the lost ark amidst strong opposition, and un-covering its mystery only...

Beyond "availability": content productivity still a key challenge.
March 1, 2004... The goal of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions is to enable organizations to improve the management of the estimated 80% of corporate information that is unstructured content. ECM solutions have been available for several years,...

Automating the business-forms lifecycle: making the business case.
March 1, 2004... How can integrated electronic forms processing cut costs and improve key business processes for a typical global enterprise? Everyday business forms define, structure and regulate the data-entry tasks performed by millions of consumers,...

E-mail management: how to succeed step-by-step.
March 1, 2004... E-mail management has become mission-critical for organizations concerned with mitigating legal risk, meeting federal regulations and ensuring business continuity. According to Ferris Research, 35% to 60% of business-critical information is...

Publish accurate, timely content to multiple channels: moving at the speed of the market.
March 1, 2004... We've all seen the advertisements: busy workers receive critical information on cell phones and PDAs and are instantly connected to customers, suppliers or other employees. They make smart decisions based on timely, up-to-date information--and...

Content integration: simplifying your environment.
March 1, 2004... In a recent survey, Forrester Research found that 43% of the firms surveyed claim to store content in more than five repositories company-wide--and 25% are contending with more than 15 repositories. The challenge is compounded by the...

WCM vs. ECM--what's right for your organization?
March 1, 2004... This may be the year that Enterprise Content Management (ECM) finally becomes a reality. It's certainly been promoted by major industry analysts, who have been forecasting a time when there will be all-encompassing solutions to manage all types...

The value of document management within ECM.
March 1, 2004... Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is currently showing dramatic growth and receiving considerable media attention. This growth is being fuelled by organizations seeking to raise profits, reduce costs, focus more on strategic and core business...

Enterprise trend: linking content and processes.
March 1, 2004... The abundance of information available has created content chaos in the enterprise. Disconnected silos of both structured and unstructured data are forcing businesses to turn to Enterprise Content/Data Management solutions for help in managing...

Single-platform capture in content management.
March 1, 2004... Content management systems bring the promise of increased organizational efficiency, but they are only as good as the information they contain. Documents and files that are initially saved within the system are easy to handle. But organizations...

Will these be the good old days?(From the Editor)(outlook for information technology)
March 1, 2004... In the January issue of KMWorld (page 18), we mentioned a report in which Frank Gens, IDC senior VP of research, predicts we'll see a 6% to 8% jump in IT spending in 2004. Now, the Gartner Technology Demand Index points to a surge in IT...

When a window isn't a window just a pane.(Opinion)
March 1, 2004... All my elderly friend wants to do is use a Web browser to pick up his e-mail. You'd think he'd be qualified, what with his law degree from Harvard and all. But, nope, he can't do it. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I started him with Windows...

Creating knowledge on the run.(Personal ToolKit)
March 1, 2004... In my last column, I suggested that the collaborative, networked nature of business today requires more--not less--from each individual knowledge worker. The more people there are in a formal or informal network, the number and types of...

What's ahead for ECM? Consolidation, sure--just about everyone agrees with that. But what will that further consolidation mean for solution providers and users? We asked that question of vendors and analysts. Here's what they have to say.
March 1, 2004... Analysts' angle Ferment, chaos, consolidation--you can use any of these to describe what is going on today in the content technology markets. In the past year or so, we have seen more than 60 mergers and acquisitions. Large vendors such as...

Content management makes a comeback; despite unexpected pressures from regulations and consolidation, the ECM market is strong, vibrant and paving the way for 2004 and beyond. Here's a review of recent news from the market's many "tipping points.".(ECM Breakthroughs)
March 1, 2004... 80-20 Software * 80-20.com Integrated document and records management vendor 80-20 Software announces support for the Oracle database as the underlying store for its core document and records management product, 80-20 Document Manager....

Calendar.(Calendar)
March 1, 2004... April 04 Smart enterprise suites Solutions for local/state government KMWorld's "100 Companies That Matter" special report May 04 Records and document management Solutions for digital asset management/information...

It's all in your mind.(Industry Watch)(MindServe Legal)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Described as a concept-based search solution for attorneys, MindServer Legal from Recommind (recommind.com) is designed to help lawyers and their staff quickly find documents stored in multiple systems across the firm with one search. ...

Why didn't I think of that?(Industry Watch)
March 1, 2004... Addressing the problems of ever-increasing competition for desktop real estate, ePeople (epeople.com) Teamwork 5.1 seamlessly integrates with Microsoft (microsoft.com) Outlook, allowing users to access relevant information, find help from...

Ixos and Convera strike a deal.(Industry Watch)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Ixos Software (ixos.com) and Convera (convera.com) have reach an agreement whereby Ixos and its storage hardware partners will resell Convera RetrievalWare search technology through an integration with Ixos' e-mail management and regulatory...