Digital Transformation in the Enterprise

EMC's Innovation Conference

There's no shortage of innovation within EMC. I've previously suggested it to be one of the key elements that keeps me so engaged here.

Our annual Innovation Conference is being held in Franklin, MA. this week... While innovation is part of the very fabric of EMC culture, this two-day event helps celebrate by bringing together a group of global employees to discuss, debate and consider new areas of investment and focus.

Leading up to the event, teams of employees collaborate on new ideas for consideration, and submit for review. Last year, there were 300 such submissions. This year - 984 (see - EMC'ers really like this stuff). Ideas are voted on by the community, and ultimately 30 or so are selected as finalists. These finalists make up the very core of this event - and much of day two is spent reviewing their submissions.

Last year, there were 300 attendees. This year, over a thousand. In fact, to help scale the event and in the interest of being responsible global citizens, the team has added an interactive broadcast component. Having tuned in to the early introductions, I see over 15 broadcast points spread across the globe, enabling remote employees to get together and participate without jumping on a plane. Of course, ample opportunities to interact with a video broadcast and live Q&A mechanism.

I'll share some of the highlights where appropriate over the next two days. I also spotted Barry B and Mark T in the audience and would suspect they'll be sharing perspective during the week.

Oh right - and did I mention EMC ONE was at the very center of this event? Yeah... that makes me feel pretty good   ;)

Some pictures of the early on...

   

Jeff Nick, EMC SVP and CTO, opens the day

Last years winners, and who's that in the crowd?

Update - The team is using EMC ONE as the voting mechanism for the 30 finalists... Nice little surprise for me as I didn't know this was in plan.

Also, interesting to note that Yammer has become a rather important back channel for the event... Enabling the invaluable hallways conversations often missed by virtual attendance.

Web 2.0 and ECM

Yesterday EMC announced Documetum ECM 6.5... Despite the 6.5 label, this is much more than a point release. From my POV, it represents a fundamental shift in the ECM space.

While there's no shortage of cool new tools under the hood of 6.5, it's the marriage of Web 2.0 with the more traditional ECM capabilities that I believe to be most exciting. As noted in a previous post, my world consists of two very different landscapes... There's the world of structured data - object models, content policies, versioning, etc;. In this world, things are easy to find - Everything is organized and categorized - It's a nice place to be. In fact, one might consider a relaxing little vacation here. Think a nice week in Hawaii.

Just down the road is a world of unorganized and unstructured information... Content comes from all over the place. No rhyme or reason - virtually anything goes. Anyone can contribute what they want, when they want, and they make up their own rules as they go. The information here is invaluable... Some of the best knowledge you'd want to get your hands on. But, it can be difficult to find what you need. Likely, there's a few of these little places all disconnected from each another. While it's invaluable info, the masses may have have difficulty consuming the information. Don't get me wrong... It's a really cool place too - it's just different. Think New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

Screenshots from CenterStage

The new Documentum helps bring these worlds together - leveraging the strengths of each. CenterStage enables easier contribution and collaboration among teams (There's a beta sign up here). Federated search and mobile connectivity are among the new offerings. "My Documentum" enables knowledge workers to access and work on their information in offline mode. Media WorkSpace was designed to help global teams collaborate on rich media assets. This is but a sample of what's new in 6.5.

As someone responsible for the overall online ecosystem at a large global company, this is big. It's going to change the ways companies create, collaborate on and consume information.

As you can imagine, there's much buzz around the launch. Some relevant links -

Perspective from Mark Lewis. President of EMC's CMA Division
EMC Software Architect Craig Randall's POV
The Knowledge Worker Blog on EMC Developers Network
Peter Hagopian of InformationWeek

A 2.0 Launch Around a 2.0 Product

As a general rule, I don't deep dive into new EMC products. There are others better equipped for down and detailed product chat.

However, today EMC launched a product that I'm personally quite excited about - Documentum ECM 6.5. To be candid - I've been a fan of Documentum for some time. Long before the acquisition of Documentum in 2003, we selected the Documentum product family to meet our ECM needs after months and months of extensive research. Today, Documentum manages hundreds of thousands of assets - in over 52 locales - across our web properties.

But, the point of this post isn't to talk about the product and what it means. I have a 6.5 debrief on the calendar later in the day and hope to post some product specific thoughts this afternoon.

Rather, I wanted to point out the 2.0 nature of today's announcement... While the individual pieces aren't necessarily ground-breaking, it's the sum of the parts, and the overall emerging trend in the enterprise space, that I find exciting.

First off, the core press release is different. It was Sean O'Driscoll some months back who asked me when the last time I'd read a press release issued by someone other than my employer. Truth is - I very rarely do. There are simply more effective ways of getting your message out in this day and age.

That's not to suggest you can simply do away with them completely. You'll note the 6.5 release isn't the traditional one way push of info. Rather, it's interactive. It helps users syndicate the message. It's chock full of rich media... Whitney Tidmarsh, VP of Global CMA Marketing, provides a great overview of what 6.5 is all about - why the convergence of ECM and 2.0 is so important in the enterprise. Lance Shaw gives a down-to-earth description of how ECM meets Web 2.0 in the new offering. Of course, these videos and more are available on YouTube for ease of syndication.

You'll note the traditional offerings to help spread the word - Delicous, DIGG, etc;. The EMCCorp Twitter account continues to gain momentum... And lastly - and IMO, something very interesting to watch, a Facebook page for Documentum. Such pages have proven successful in the consumer space. I'm quite interested to watch and see how valuable they are as you move up market.

The bottom line - The product launch is all about the convergence of ECM and Web 2.0...  A topic I couldn't be more passionate about. More to come on what this means from my POV this afternoon. In the meantime, wanted to point out the evolution of the traditional press release.