They are both Right about Web 2.0. Now Get a Backbone in Place.

“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform”, says Tim O’Reilly. “I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means.”, says Tim Berners-Lee, “It’s dookie.” They are both right, but it doesn’t matter.

Whether you agree with O’Reilly or Berners-Lee, information technology organizations must deal with the adoption of social-networking, video-sharing, wikis, blogs, and user tagging. Because people use them and businesses demand them, the infrastructure has to control and support Web 2.0 applications.

Public Web 2.0 facilities can achieve inter-company benefits, but those public facilities don’t meet the large organization’s need for control or support in the areas of retention, access, security, availability, and cost. In those large organizations, rogue Web 2.0 islands have likely sprung up internally and increasing adoption has caused unplanned cost and risk. Public facilities and rogue islands were fine when Web 2.0 applications were an experiment, but for many companies, enterprise-caliber infrastructure is now required.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technology is a promising backbone for Web 2.0 applications. The appeal of ECM is first in the fit and maturity of the technology. ECM is designed to manage unstructured information such as addressed by Web 2.0 applications and has been proven at enterprise scale for over a decade. The appeal of ECM is also in the potential to leverage existing investments. Most large companies have existing ECM platform investments that can provide needed support and control to Web 2.0 applications.

EMC Documentum Content Server (Documentum) is playing the role of backbone for Web 2.0 applications via two different approaches. First, Documentum has traditionally played a repository role for custom-built or niche front-end applications. Documentum plays a similar back end role when used in conjunction with Web 2.0 solutions built using Crown SiteBuilder and Crown Web Gear products. In the second approach, EMC has built on it’s eRoom heritage of providing application front-ends, and EMC is now extending eRoom solidly into the Web 2.0 era with its CenterStage product.

If you have enterprise-scale Web 2.0 needs, Crown can help you evaluate your options and put the appropriate infrastructure in place. Ask us about our SiteBuilder and Web Gear products and about our experience with EMC CenterStage.

Answers on EMC CenterStage and eRoom-to-CenterStage Conversion

EMC’s CenterStage is the next chapter in the evolution of EMC’s collaboration products. CenterStage has origins dating back to the 1980s. At that time, VAX Notes was a commercial product that provided threaded discussion for Digital Equipment Corporation’s peak 130,000 employees, including me, and their customers’ employees. VAX Notes had been influenced by earlier work at University of Illinois’ Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL). VAX Notes provided the inspiration for the blockbuster Lotus Notes product, released in 1989, which enabled solutions for many of my clients. Later, key Lotus Notes employees left to start Instinctive Technologies which shipped the eRoom product in 1997. Based on the success of the product, they changed the name of the company to eRoom. eRoom is the collaboration product offered by EMC today via EMC’s acquisition of Documentum in 2003 and Documentum’s prior acquisition of eRoom in 2002. With EMC’s new CenterStage, now there is a product that combines the best of eRoom, Web 2.0 functionality, and the enterprise content management capabilities of EMC’s Content Server

We at Crown have been anticipating CenterStage since our first conversations with EMC regarding the next stage in collaboration in August 2006. As a result of these conversations, Crown has been selected by EMC to be the sole provider of eRoom to CenterStage conversion software. Crown has incorporated its proven Buldoser technology into the RedCarpet and Buldoser Center products, which convert eRooms directly to CenterStage.

Since EMC’s CenterStage product has become available in beta version in September 2008, Crown has presented at many webinars and user groups about CenterStage. Some of the questions and answers from those sessions follow in this post.

Crown’s Buldoser technology, which has been continuously accredited since 2004, and extensive Extract Transform and Load experience make Crown the ideal party to help eRoom customers convert to CenterStage. If you have a question not answered below, please contact Crown at info@crownpartners.com.

Q1: Does CenterStage have the same concepts of access control, both by membership (groups/roles) and by item or folder-level access control (restricted access, hidden items)?
A1: Yes, all the eRoom features in this area come through
Q2: Can you use the Document Storage product component of CenterStage without the other new Web 2.0 components?
A2: The CenterStage Essentials version is a "limited" release of CenterStage. It does include storing documents in folder and attachment boxes like in eRoom, plus a few other features. There is no charge for this version.
Q3: I saw the term "data tables" in CenterStage features. Is that the same as the database function in eRoom?
A3: Yes. The feature is renamed in CS as "Data Tables" (much to the delight of database purists J ).

Q4: Is there a move from EMC to focus more heavily on new technologies (such as web 2.0) and move away from the more recognized features that eRoom has now?
A4: No. CenterStage has been built to leverage all the great features that eRoomers love in it today. Virtually all eRoom items (like Polls, Databases, etc.) will be made available in CenterStage within the current product roadmap. It also strives to "marry" the current eRoom features with newer Web 2.0 technologies that are now flourishing (Blogs, RSS, Wikis, etc.).

Q5: Can eRoom be converted (upgraded) to CenterStage Essentials (CSE)?
A5: Yes, if you are using eRoom today and want to replace it with CSE, you can convert your data accordingly. But not all eRoom features are available in CSE, so you would lose them. If you are using eRoom primarily for document storage, then you may be fine.

Q6: Is it possible to use eRoom and CenterStage Essentials (CSE) at the same time?
A6: Yes. An organization could have both applications running in their environment, but there would be no direct connection between them (like eRoom enterprise with Content Server).

Q7: Will the updates to the RedCarpet utility for migration go hand in hand with CenterStage changes?
A7: Yes. RedCarpet and Buldoser Center are "in synch" with CenterStage. Just note that with each new release of CenterStage, there could be delay of several weeks of the RedCarpet and Buldoser Center releases to ensure that it has been fully tested with the very latest release of CS.

Q8: In an eroom to content server migration using Buldoser Center, how are eRoom databases dealt with (things like field names, drop-down lists etc)?
A8: It is the intention with every feature in eRoom to have it move into CenterStage with the same data. So an eRoom database will convert to a "data table" in CenterStage, including all fields, records, access control, discussion areas, change logs, attachments, etc. If there is anything that cannot be converted it will be clearly documented.

Q9: How will it be addressed if certain objects throw an error when converting? Will there be developer support available to support such incidents?
A9: A report is generated after every data conversion pass from eRoom to CenterStage. It shows what has been copied successfully and what has not. There is then an opportunity to address the specific objects which failed the conversion. Then, with RedCarpet, you re-run the entire data conversion batch. With Buldoser Center, you only need to select the "exceptions" or "failed objects" and re-run those. Yes, blocks of Developer Support hours may be purchased and used to troubleshoot errors.

Q10: How will eRoom indexes be migrated? Do we have to re-index all content post migration?
A10: You will need to re-run those indexes in CenterStage.

Q11: Does RedCarpet or Buldoser Center also work with Documentum Content Server (not just CenterStage)?
A11: Yes, Buldoser Center was built in large part for migrations to Documentum Content Server.

Q12: In the case of eRoom approval databases, will RedCarpet be able to handle the different stages of approval--in other words, will it bring over all approval steps, even those that are "in progress"?
A12: Yes, RedCarpet is planned to process the different types of eRoom databases, including Issues(approval process) data bases. As long as CenterStage has a corresponding, consistent location or feature where the data can be moved, even details such as approval steps will convert as needed.

Q13: Do you support the migration of a Community Member List? Does CenterStage have an equivalent "community"?
A13: Yes, there is the concept of "local members" in CenterStage (in addition to the LDAP directory), and members from eRoom will be imported accordingly. Group and community member lists will be transferred. “External” eRoom users will be transferred into Documentum as “inline” Documentum users.

Going from Good to Great on the Fifth Anniversary of Buldoser Accreditation

Crown’s Buldoser product is celebrating its fifth anniversary of accreditation awarded by Documentum and EMC. Having been in commercial use as a Crown project utility since 2001 and licensed as a supported software product since 2003, Buldoser was first accredited as Designed for Documentum in 2004. It has been continuously accredited during the five intervening years.

Much has changed during Buldoser’s life, and much has stayed the same. Crown’s Buldoser initially became popular as an alternative to “Dump and Load” and home-grown approaches for moving content. In the early days, Buldoser moved content among Documentum repositories, file systems, and ODBC-compliant information stores. The changes in Buldoser’s life have occurred via four major releases and supporting minor releases. Now Buldoser has broadened into a family of extract, transform, and load (ETL) products. The family includes Buldoser, Buldoser Center, and RedCarpet. These products each have a distinct and complementary purpose. As a family, they address a wide range of use cases such as migration, archiving, synchronization, and others. Beyond the traditional Buldoser source environments, additional source environments have been added, including FileNet, Lotus Notes, SharePoint, ApplicationXtender, and eRoom. (For a more detailed review of the current evolved state of the products, reference “The Critical Role of Extract Transform and Load Solutions for Enterprise Content Management” in the Crown resource library at http://www.crownpartners.com/home/login.jsp)

Crown’s consistent investment in ETL products is based on the flywheel concept presented in Jim Collins’ “Good to Great”. Using the concept, Crown’s ETL products have gained maturity and momentum through steady, sustained investment over a period of years. Crown has made the investments in much the way one would apply consistent force to accelerate the spin of a heavy flywheel. Like the optimal force applied to a flywheel Crown’s investments have been a steady vector, always aligned toward a single direction, always continuing to accelerate the fly wheel.

Most important in the life of Crown’s ETL products have been the experience and loyalty of Crown customers. The passion they share for Crown products and their collaborative engagement with Crown has brought the ETL products to the milestone of the five year anniversary of Buldoser’s accreditation. The partnership around the ETL products continues, and as more a more customers join in that partnership, the flywheel of these products accelerates from good to great and beyond.

Enabling Product and Installed Base Consolidation

Organizations consolidate diverging and rogue infrastructures to reduce cost and improve efficiency. Infrastructure consolidation is increasingly popular among users of software, and Crown enables those consolidations (see “Enabling Consolidation with Universal ETL”). Software vendors also need to undertake consolidations. They need to consolidate products and the installed bases of customers for those products.

An example of vendor consolidation from the automotive industry is Ford’s acquisition of Jaguar. When Ford acquired Jaguar, it maintained the Jaguar brand and distribution channel, but supplied Jaguar manufacturing with many of the same components that were used across other Ford models, especially Taurus. The idea was to keep serving the same customers, but reduce costs by consolidating the manufacturing.

Like the Ford-Jaguar example, software vendors also need to consolidate products. When Oracle acquired Stellent, it planned to consolidate the Stellent product with its own Oracle Content Data Base. When Open Text acquired Ixos and Humingbird, it planned to consolidate those products into its own Livelink product. FatWire acquired OpenMarket product from Divine with the plan to consolidate with its own products.

In the case of software product consolidations, one product of the two consolidated products is typically considered the strategic product. Customers using the non-strategic product will be required to undergo a conversion to adapt their information to fit the design of the strategic product. To keep customer loyalty and sustain maintenance revenues, vendors need to make that conversion as easy as possible.

Crown’s Buldoser technology is commonly used to enable conversions, and can be adapted to perform conversions on a mass scale to convert an installed base of customers. Most recently, Crown has adapted its Buldoser technology to converting the world-wide installed base of EMC’s eRoom customers to EMC’s strategic product, CenterStage. Crown’s technology is the only technology endorsed by EMC for the eRoom to CenterStage conversion. To make the conversion from eRoom to CenterStage as easy as possible, Crown has not only adapted the Buldoser technology, but has also created specialized branding, marketing, product support, professional services and distribution capabilities.

Crown’s hybrid software and professional services capabilities are well suited for migration, archiving, and upgrade of individual businesses. The same hybrid software and professional services capabilities wrapped into an integrated program, are well suited to conversion of a large installed base of customers. While Crown possesses unique capabilities for migration, archiving, upgrade, and installed base conversion, Crown is not resting on its laurels. Crown continues to make investments in software technology, professional services, marketing, and support capabilities to allow fluid consolidations on individual-business or installed-base scales. On behalf of the Crown leadership team, we are eager to assist with your conversion needs, large or small.