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.

CMIS is Showing Promise

Standards development is slow and standards implementation is slower. Proposed standards are reviewed and revised to make a first generation standard. Even the participants in the standards process make implementation investment cautiously, if at all. Competing standards vie for prominence and succeeding generations of the standard emerge, but implementation investments remain scarce. In rare cases a version of a particular standard wins confidence across a community of stakeholders, the implementation investments begin to flow, and the investment in the standard begins to pay off. While JSR 170 and JSR 238 have failed to gain momentum, the next generation standard, CMIS shows promise of paying off.

The JSR 170 and JSR 283 standards have been in development since 2002 and 2005 respectively. They are designed to make application functionality portable across content repositories from different vendors, protect investment in content management applications, to foster an increase in commercially available content management applications, and encourage increasingly lower prices for content management repositories. JSR 170 and JSR 283 were unduly influenced by smaller players and did not protect significant investments of major stakeholders. The required support did not emerge for these standards, the investment never materialized, and there’s been no impact on the marketplace.

The experiences from JSR 170 and JSR 283 are reflected in a next generation standard, Content Management Interoperability Services Specification (CMIS). CMIS shows promise because:
- CMIS reflects the interests of the EMC, IBM, and Microsoft customer bases, and shows promise of winning support from across the community of stakeholders.
- CMIS is planned to protect existing vendor and user organization investments. CMIS will not require major product changes or significant data model changes.
- Aggressive standard approval timelines have been set with an objective of initial standard approval by OASIS in 2009.
- Even though the standard is not yet approved, expectations for product implementations are already being set. For example, IBM has identified CMIS as its plan for integrating its Lotus and enterprise content management products.

Archiving and electronic legal discovery are applications of increasing importance to Crown customers who are making investments in these areas to reduce operating costs, increase efficiency, and reduce risk. The CMIS standard is particularly suited for enabling further automation of archiving and legal discovery when the standard is leveraged using an Extract Transform and Load (ETL) utility such as Crown’s Buldoser Center. Crown is already adapting the design of Buldoser Center to take advantage of CMIS when EMC, IBM, and Microsoft implementations become available. (Some early CMIS functionality is already available and Crown is using it.) CMIS, in conjunction with Buldoser Center will make it easier to expand the sources that can be addressed with Buldoser Center and expand the advantage that Crown provides to its customers. CMIS is showing promise, and Crown is ready to leverage it.

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.

Where To Place Trust When Making a Big Bet?

Businesses take risks in order to make returns. A business retains employees with a plan that the employees will produce marketable value. A business purchases equipment or licenses intellectual property to create products or services. A business makes commitments to suppliers and business partners to combine their goods or services into something of greater value. In slang terms, a business “places a bet” in taking a risk in order to make a return.

Sometimes a business makes a “big bet”, through an unusual risk or investment. When a business makes a big bet, the potential gains are greater, but so are the potential losses. Leaders direct special attention to identify and manage component risks in order to realize the greater gains and avoid the losses of big bets. They call on the best available expertise. They enlist the most trusted partners.

A friend of mine reports that her firm has been called by the United States Treasury Department to manage portions of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). TARP is a high-visibility big bet. The invitation from the Treasury Department is based on reputation of her firm. It is a reputation built on a track-record of success with large-scale and complex financial operations.

Crown enables the success of big bets that require careful, timely content management solutions and services. When Crown is called to enable big bets, it is a reflection of the trust that clients place in Crown. That trust is based on proven expertise and commitment to success. It is trust built on innovation and in demonstrated capacity. It is also a challenge to once again prove that Crown’s world-class reputation is warranted. It is a challenge to further strengthen and extend that reputation.

When ST Microelectronics teamed with Ericsson to create the world’s strongest product offering in semiconductors and platforms for mobile applications, Crown provided the web content management solution that brought the news to the world. Crown is the company they could trust to present and enable ongoing updates to complex information delivered via high-visibility web sites.

When a major North American pharmaceutical company and its Japanese partner decided to transfer intellectual property related to their joint venture with more than US$3 billion in annual sales, they called on Crown to enable the transfer. Crown is the company that they could trust to handle the transfer efficiently and in compliance with pharmaceutical industry regulations.

When the Unites States Army needed to achieve dramatically higher recruiting goals, they called on Crown to provide the solution that would improve the efficiency and targeting of their recruiting. Crown is the company the Army could trust to leverage recruiting assets repeatedly for campaigns across the country. Crown is the company the Army could trust to focus recruiting on narrower audiences with information designed specifically for those audiences.

The rest of the Crown leadership team and I value the trust that clients place in us to enable their big bets. It’s an honor and it’s a challenge when the world’s largest corporations turn to us to provide strategic content management solutions and services. Crown accepts the role of big-bet-enabler and repeatedly proves that its world-class reputation is warranted. Enabling these big bets is the keystone objective for the hybrid organization of our firm. This is the work for which we were born and bred.

Shaping the Content Management Frontier

The choice to live on the frontier brings with it the possibility of unknown challenges and risks. It also brings the potential for great discoveries. A geographical frontier is the boundary between settled and unsettled lands. There is also a business and technology frontier that marks the boundary between commodity products and services, and products and services that can change market structure and industry rankings.

From the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries in North America, people who lived on the frontier faced the possibility of starvation and conflict in a harsh environment. Some people died on the frontier. Some people retreated to predictable life in settled areas. Some survived on the frontier. Some thrived.

Those who thrived acquired skills and character forged by the demands of the frontier. They developed frontier work ethic, self-reliance, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and opportunism. At first they were shaped by the frontier, but later the frontier was shaped by them.

Frontiersmen learned to survive on their own, but also became adept at banding together. They developed and shared practices, communication techniques, and protocols relating to trapping, hunting, clearing, building, and farming. The more they organized and worked together, the more effective they became at shaping the frontier to reduce risks and seize opportunities.

The geographic frontier of North America is largely gone, but the spirit of the frontier lives on among entrepreneurs. The frontiersmen are people and businesses that face unknown challenges and risks for the possibility of great discoveries. They work together to shape the frontier. Much as frontiersmen from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries became respected leaders, these entrepreneurs gain the respect across that business community.

In the information technology industry, there is a frontier in the content management market. Platform technology providers and their products represent the settled areas. EMC, Oracle, and Microsoft provide platform technologies that instill confidence for common content management needs. But content management solutions that change market structure and industry rankings represent the frontier. By living on this frontier of content management, the toughness required to thrive has become instinctive. Frontiersmen have the skills and character to provide the content management solutions that favorably disrupt industries to the benefit of their clients.

Crown is committed to thriving on the content management frontier. Crown has made a practice of blazing its own trail since founding in 2001. It’s a trail blazed with investment in products, expertise, and high standards. Crown is also banding together with others who share the commitment to the content management frontier. Together they are working to shape the frontier to bring favorably disruptive solutions to their clients. To learn more about life on the content management frontier, visit www.crownpartners.com, and to learn about the companies banding together to shape the frontier, visit http://www.crownpartners.com/corporate/corporate_ourpartners.jsp.

Content Management Solutions Hit Three Investment Justifications

Most investment justifications fall into one or more of three categories. Justifications for investing in managing unstructured information, also known as “content”, are no exception. The categories for justifications are:

• Productivity Enhancers – Investments that will allow more work to be done with the same personnel, financial, or other resources.
  
• Risk Reducers – Investments that reduce the likelihood of undesirable scenarios, especially undesirable scenarios involving legal or regulatory costs.
  
• Market Reachers – Investments that increase engagement with existing customers or investments that initiate engagement with new customers

Traditional data is structured information, such as name, address, phone number, price, quantity, stock keeping unit, etc. Content is unstructured information such as descriptions, instructions, contracts, correspondence, images, web pages, audio, etc. Investments in content management have objectives such as increasing the speed or capacity of content creation, improving the quality of content, expanding or controlling access to content, or making content more usable.

Crown has combined its software and professional services capabilities to provide content management solutions that fulfill each of the three justifications. Crown solutions for speeding the delivery of new information to web sites, reducing cycle time in reviewing a loan application, and streamlining insurance claims processing are examples of productivity enhancers. Crown solutions for ensuring the accuracy and consistency of content and enabling the efficient archiving of e-mails are examples of risk reducers. Crown’s delivery of interactive web sites and integration of customized e-mails into the customer experience are examples of market reachers.

Knowing the technology for providing content management solutions is important. Knowing how to use the technology to fulfill justifications for investment in content management is more important. Knowing both is a fundamental part of Crown’s way of delivering exceptional value of a hybrid software and professional services company.

The Hybrid Advantage

Today’s hybrid vehicles use both an electric motor and an internal combustion engine. Use of two power sources achieves best results versus energy consumption, environmental, and performance objectives. An emerging type of information systems company, called a Hybrid Solutions Company, also takes a hybrid approach. A Hybrid Solutions Company has two power sources. It combines elements of professional services and software firms. As with vehicles, a Hybrid Solutions Company has advantages in achieving results.

Hybrid Solutions Companies use practices of professional services firms to understand customer needs, advise customers, and deliver unique solutions. Developing and articulating strategy, managing solution requirements, and overseeing delivery of a unique solution are professional services competencies that are incorporated into a Hybrid Solutions Company.

Hybrid Solutions Companies use practices of software firms to increase the speed of solution delivery, increase quality, and reduce the cost of solutions. Anticipating feature requirements, formalized software engineering, and managing lifecycle maintenance are competencies of a software firm that are incorporated into a Hybrid Solutions Company.

The advantage of a hybrid vehicle is not just having two power sources, it’s having two that work together for one purpose. Careful design is required to achieve the benefits of a hybrid model while addressing its challenges. At a minimum, the power sources in a hybrid vehicle must be coordinated so that each contributes only when it is most efficient and contributes in a way that does not interfere with the other. For example, the internal combustion engine turns off while a hybrid vehicle idles, but both power sources work together when acceleration is required. Beyond coordination, the two power sources and other systems in the vehicle can reinforce each other or share components. For example, the internal combustion engine and breaking systems drive a common generator to charge batteries for the electric motor.

Like the hybrid vehicle, the advantage of the Hybrid Solutions Company is not just having two power sources. The Hybrid Solution Company unifies the professional services and software competencies for one purpose. Coordination of the two requires an understanding of when the professional services or software competencies should be used, and when they can effectively act together. For example, solution features that will be employed at many customers are addressed via software competency while unique elements are addressed via professional services competency. Beyond coordination, common requirements management and post-sale support functions can strengthen both competencies and reinforce the firm’s overall ability to fulfill one purpose.

Crown has offered professional services since 2001 and licensed software products since 2003. Since 2003, Crown has invested in the Hybrid Solution Company model. Just as improvements continue to be made in hybrid vehicles, Crown is committed to increasing the value provided to customers by operating as a Hybrid Solution Company.