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| The Flow of Content: "Always On" |
A Q&A Blog with Cengiz Satir,
Program Director, IBM ECM, and Ian Story, Senior Product Manager, IBM ECM talking about the importance of
businesses having a seamless user experience for content management regardless
of how, when and where content is accessed, managed and collaborated on.
Ian:
Q: In the “always on” world
that we live in, it should be no surprise that businesses are looking to
incorporate mobile content access and management as part of their broader
enterprise content management strategy. What do you think are some of the
key obstacles most organizations have encountered to date?
Cengiz:
A. Security is certainly one
of the first things that comes up, but what we hear more often from customers
these days is that the user experience has to be simple and consistent with how
their users access and manage content from office applications and from the
web. Without that consistency, people from both IT and the business know they
will have an uphill battle with training and the adoption of any mobile content
application they may decide to deploy. It is for that reason, that IBM
wanted to provide an out of the box UI for mobile that mirrors the office and
web content experience. The beauty here is that with IBM, there is
nothing else to buy or install when the customer is utilizing the content
products offered by IBM ECM.
Businesses can no longer afford to
separately purchase a set of capabilities that differ across the desktop,
web and mobile. At IBM we get that, and we think our approach is one that
businesses have been waiting for, for a long time.
Cengiz:
Q: How is IBM addressing the needs
of today’s mobile content platform? (e.g. iOS, Android, Windows Phone,
BlackBerry, Symbian, etc.)
Ian:
A: In addition to having a native
iOS application, at IBM, we have the benefit of having an amazing HTML5 user
interface - IBM Content Navigator. And because we took this “open” approach to
accessing content management, many of our customers can and do enjoy managing
content via their smart device of choice. Further, IBM Content Navigator is not
just a user interface, it is also a development platform, and we provide
examples of how to build your own mobile applications, regardless of platform,
using IBM Content Navigator, for instance in the Redbook for the product.
For those of you who don’t know, an IBM Redbook is an easy to read
“how-to”publication that provides guidance regarding
installation/implementation and often includes sample code.
Cengiz:
Q. Is there a mobile content
management strategy that can deliver both rapid adoption of content
applications and extensibility for business specific application needs?
Ian:
A. Again, the key here is that IBM
Content Navigator is an HTML5 UI with reusable components. This enables
our customers and partners to leverage out of the box functionality, as well as
to quickly build apps for any platform. As mentioned above, our Redbook for
Content Navigator walks you through how to reuse these components to build
mobile apps for other platforms. Beyond that, we also have IBM Worklight,
which is a fantastic cross platform development suite, and business partners,
customers, and of course IBM ourselves, are using this to solve problems and
build customized apps that can be deployed to a number of platforms.
Cengiz:
Q. Ian, I understand that not
long ago you were a customer of IBM’s. Coming from the customer angle can you
comment on the importance of this seamless, smart and secure approach that IBM
is taking with Mobile ECM?
Ian:
A. Absolutely, for over
a decade, I was an ECM customer, not just of IBM, but using competing ECM
products as well, in industries as diverse as manufacturing and financial
services. From a customer’s point of view, whether I’m scanning supporting
documents with a mobile device at a branch, or looking up an equipment
maintenance manual on the shop floor, I want consistency in the experience – I
don’t want to have to build out different configurations for web, office and
mobile. I don’t want to manage different apps, different permissions,
train my users on different interfaces, setup different servers, etc.
This applies to all my ECM systems, not just IBM, and it is this seamless,
smart and secure approach to managing content that IBM delivers that saves me
all these headaches as a customer, even if that content happens to be in a
legacy, non-IBM, repository.
Cengiz:
Q. What are some of the other ways customers
can extend a mobile content platform of this nature?
Ian:
A: In addition to what I just
mention above, at IBM we have mobile-ready APIs, including REST APIs for
content, process and capture, that allow you to build any app for any device or
platform you want, even if you don’t use our toolkit, user interface, or
development tools. We provide these tools to make your life easier, but
we also insist on following industry standards, from REST APIs to HTML5,
JavaScript and CSS3 for our UI – so even if you don’t use what we provide out
of the box, you don’t have to learn some proprietary technology to do what you
need to do with your content.
Ian:
Q. And Cengiz, just to close out
the conversation on mobile ECM – do you feel there is a natural synergy in and
around how content is being consumed today, e.g. social elements such as likes,
tags, comments, following, etc.?
Cengiz
A. Today’s modern business world is
highly competitive, and because of that, we are always looking for new ways to
maximize our investments, while delivering innovative new products and
solutions to our customers. The balancing act of addressing business and
IT challenges while staying competitive is something all companies struggle
with. At IBM we think we have a visionary approach that is the key to
helping organizations overcome those challenges and turning them into
opportunities.
At the end of the day, success comes down to an
organization’s ability to consume, produce and manage content in the context
of the work they do - regardless of how, when and where they are in the world.
And being able to deliver trusted content to business users in a
contextual, social manner is directly related to an organization’s ability stay
relevant and competitive. At IBM we have taken our visionary
approach to content to a whole new level by embedding social constructs into
the repository.
The ability to intuitively deliver new and
previously unrealized insights into the activities, projects and content that
we work on daily is a tremendous advantage for organizations and
businesses. By “intuitively deliver” I mean the ability to bring trusted
content to you wherever you are through social tagging and following – the
ability to instantly see updates to content from people that have the right
expertise. And the ability to see who has commented, liked and downloaded
provides another degree of insight to business content that is not only
innovative, but a necessity for businesses going forward. The delivery of
contextual feedback provides instant access to accurate and relevant
information, knowledge, and expertise on the work you are doing right now– your
business critical content. Long story short, tightly integrated social
elements in concert with a consistent user experience across mobile, web and
the desktop is just what everyone has been waiting for and we are happy to be
the first to accomplish this.
Knowing that you can access content
securely is no longer good enough. Organizations want trusted content
access from smart devices, but more importantly they are demanding consistency
across mobile, web and desktop. If you want to hear more on this topic, please
attend this webinar hosted by AIIM’s President, John
Manacini and co-presented by Cengiz Satir, Program Director for IBM ECM and Ian
Story, Senior Product Manager for IBM ECM.
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