Jarrod Gringas has posted his Content Technology Predictions on the Real Story Blog site. It makes for interesting reading.
While I applaud Jarrod for making these predictions, I feel that some of them are too early, and won’t be happening in 2011, while a couple of his predictions are, to the best of my knowledge, nothing new.
Here is an overview of Jarrod’s predictions:
- “Bring Your Own Device” policies will push HTML5 adoption for mobile access to enterprise applications
- Content-rich customers will rebel against Web CMS marketing spins
- Microsoft will turn to partners to fix SharePoint shortcomings
- The top end of the Web CMS market will be redefined
- Intranet community managers will adopt public social functionality
- SaaS vendors will try to separate from “The Cloud”
- Buyers will have a greater acceptance of newer standards
- Case Management will become the leading application from high-end ECM vendors
- Digital Asset Management vendors will greatly expand video management capabilities
- E-mail will remain the world’s de-facto enterprise document repository and workflow system
- Portal software will increasingly produce services for other portals
- Specialized talent around managing content will begin to migrate out of large corporations
For the full text, click here to read the original. Once you are finished, you can read my responses below, and see if you agree with me or not.
Microsoft will turn to partners to fix SharePoint’s shortcomings
Jarrod’s prediction that Microsoft will turn to partners to fix SharePoint’s shortcomings is something that I don’t think is a prediction. Especially for 2011. I believe that Microsoft has been doing this for years now.
In fact, as I understand it, Microsoft have designed SharePoint (pick your favorite version) so that it meets the requirements of 80% of customers. At the same time, the Microsoft bods have sat down and looked at their partners to determine which ones are capable of, and most likely to, develop a solution for a particular “need”.
Then, depending on the success, and demand the “extra feature” it gets included in the next major version.
The top end of the Web CMS market will be redefined
Jarrod expands on prediction 4, ‘The top end of the Web CMS market will be redefined“, by stating that the large ECM vendors will move down- and out.
I agree that there has been a lot of activity lately with the smaller ECM vendors, but I think that it is too early to predict the “demise” (for want of a better word), of the big ECM companies. The big companies are not stupid and are aware of the change that is taking place at the moment. They are working to meet these changes.
While the smaller companies are nimble, and will play an increasing role, I don’t predict that the big ECMs will be affected dramatically in 2011.
Intranet community managers will adopt public social functionality
Here Jarrod mentions the adoption of public social media community features, including badges, etc.
To be honest, I don’t think that this will take off in a big way. While I do see a certain excitement that such “rewards” bring, I am not too sure that it is ready for the workplace. Is there any real value, in a business sense, in these things?
While I do agree that there is a growing need to encourage user adoption of more and more web-based tools, I think that this adoption will be more related to “perceived ease of use” and “perceived usefulness”.
Buyers will have a greater acceptance of newer standards
I have mixed feelings with regards Jarrod’s prediction #7 “Buyers will have a greater acceptance of newer standards”.
While there is a growing awareness of newer standards, I don’t think that the push for these will come from the user – at least not in the beginning.
As with something like CMIS, it needs a vendor to come forward with an application that uses the new standard and demonstrates real benefits (that can be translated into value for the business). Once this happens, there will be a push from the users resulting in action from other vendors. I’m not sure what Jarrod’s statement that “DoD 5015 and MoReq will become increasingly irrelevant” is based on. I am going to look into this more.
Case Management will become the leading application from high-end ECM vendors
I know that EMC are busy with their new case management platform, xCP (Xcelerated Composition Platform). This looks promising. (In fact, half of the last Momentum user conference was taken up with xCP sessions).
E-mail will remain the world’s de-facto enterprise document repository and workflow system
Prediction #10 (E-mail will remain the world’s de-facto enterprise document repository and workflow system) is an interesting one. I think Jarrod might be on the ball here.
Indeed e-mail is not going away, and vendors need to do something smart to enable email systems to smoothly integrate with document management and workflow systems. Whether that is going to happen in 2011 is still to be seen.
Portal software will increasingly produce services for other portals
Prediction #11 (Portal software will increasingly produce services for other portals) makes sense. I’m just not sure whether there will be anything big happening in 2011.
Specialized talent around managing content will begin to migrate out of large corporations
And that leaves us with Prediction #12 (Specialized talent around managing content will begin to migrate out of large corporations).
My question is…is this any different than what happens every year? Often once a person has built up enough skills in a particular area, they want to work for the vendor, or an integrator company. And this is good, because they will have built up good “real-world” skills from the “other-side of the fence”. (I have worked on the vendor side, as well as the customer side, and each side has its own challenges, and frustrations).
However, coming back to the prediction, what is going to be different this year?
So there you have it. Feel free to discuss if you feel I am off the mark.
I know that Jarrod’s predictions are not the only ones out at the moment, but there seem to only be a handful that deal with Content Management Systems.
Other 2011 Predictions
- Top 10 ECM Pet Peeve Predictions for 2011 – Craig Reinhardt gives a slightly irreverent Top 10 for 2011.
- Joe Shepley on Enterprise CMS Trends for 2011: A Business-Centric View – Jo takes a more business-centric view
- Analyst technology predictions 2011 – Jonny Bentword has summarised some of the 2011 technology predictions out at the moment.
