ECM What's Next

So I've been giving some consideration as to what the next generation of ECM software will look like. Our current suite of software addresses the holes in the ECM puzzle, but more often than not as a consultant you feel like you are the little boy plugging the holes in the dam. There are so many areas that ECM needs to cover, so many components that are needed, that the consulting costs and software costs are sometimes too much for a company.   When this happens we start to talk about Risk Management for a company.  What's the least amount that they can do, and still keep themselves whole.  

However, ECM is not about the least that you can do.  It's about saving corporate assets and information. Its about not searching endlessly for a document.  Its about being able to tap into the experts within the organization and intuitively understand where information lives.  

So I ask the question.  How do we fix it all.  Spend Millions on software, consulting and years to implement?  Is there a better way?

Some of this thought process comes from the new Chrome browser from Google.  They have "redefined" the browser for the next 5 years but we are still limited by the web interfaces to find information.  

This blog will  start to breakdown the current offerings that are on the market and see what holes or niches that they fill.  Then we can look at the "what's next" from MIT and IBM to get a glimpse into the future.  We will also look at how information is organized and the benefits of using folksonomies for corporate information. Finally we will try to make some sense of what's out there and how corporations can deal with the massive amounts of information on their servers.