Here are my ECM and Records Management Predictions for 2011. You're encouraged to hum along the 12 Days of Christmas as you go through this list.
Legal and records and IT types will seek to reassert old control paradigms on social and consumer technologies and will largely fail. Smart organizations will rethink what control and governance mean in this new era and only seek to control what must be controlled.
Politicians and regulators will pass new information management regulations and legislation that will be State of the Art, circa 2005. As Gartner might say, this will be with a 100% probability.
The “business” will demand cuts in legacy system spending to fund new initiatives centered on customer engagement and operating flexibility. Smart IT people will position themselves against the revenue side of the equation. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be hell to pay when there are security breaches.
Social “neighborhoods” will spring up in organizations. Social ghettoes and abandoned properties and strip malls will too.
Some company will get in big e-discovery trouble for stuff that occurs on a public social network. Oh, and probably somebody on a private network too. Ubiquitous access to social and corporate information through portable devices will present new security challenges of a complexity once faced only by governments.
SharePoint will continue its rampage, especially as frustrated MOSS implementers realize how much better 2010 is. On the flip side, though, lots of mid-sized organizations will realize it's all just too complicated and opt for simpler, "virtual file cabinet" and SaaS solutions.
Many organizations will see SharePoint as the answer to content chaos. However, with IT in control, content chaos will often be replicated inside of SharePoint.
It will be the golden, post chasm age for VARs and SIs with rich domain expertise. On the other hand, some previously easy business with previously channel-friendly vendors will become tough as these vendors go direct to boost revenues. Capture will continue to be hot as users realize that those scanners can be used for something in addition to just sticking electronic paper into an electronic file cabinet -- like for driving processes.
Despite dreams of quadrants and waves, many users in the mid-sized market will wake up from a deep winter sleep and realize that there is no "right" ECM solution. There are only solutions that are appropriate to THEIR business problems -- and there are LOTS of them "beyond the wave."
Many forecasters will issue market-sizing reports on some aspects of the content and record space and charge a lot of money for them. These reports will contain estimates and growth rates five years out. These forecasts will always be done with at least one or two decimal point precision, and yet no one will laugh.
Content analytics will be cool because it addresses this tension...The explosion of information drives these user design points: (1) Don't make me think, and (2) Don't make me read. ERM drives these design points: (1) Please read everything carefully and (2) Please think and then classify. Content analytics fills in the gap.
Advanced case management will be a big break through application for content management, especially as it extends its reach into social content. However, everyone will still wish that they had thought of a better name for this market space than "case management."
Thanks to everyone who has been involved in AIIM activities this year. We appreciate it and value your involvement.