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This surprising acquisition not only positions Adobe against Microsoft in the race for rich clients but also makes Adobe more competitive in the enterprise by offering a Web application development platform. Adding Macromedia to its portfolio turns Adobe from a dark horse in the race for content-centric apps and the information workplace into a major player that IT infrastructure vendors will either partner with or contend against. Or both.
XML and PDF-A will be the dominant document archiving formats by 2008. Today's prevalent archiving standards, TIFF and PDF, are too limiting to support compliance and electronic discovery. The need for electronic document fidelity to paper, which TIFF and PDF provide, will be less critical as the volume of digital documents skyrockets and enterprises address long-term records management needs.
Data warehouses have grown in size to such an extent that IT departments despair about completing the backup in the available time. However, designing and implementing data warehousing backup is beyond a best practice ¿ it is a fundamental business requirement. If the database is damaged for any reason and no backup is available for executing a recovery operation, then lost revenues, angry (and lost) customers, and costly rework are certain. In the worst case, the company is out of business.
Now that more than a year has passed since Microsoft Exchange Server 2003's initial release, it has been proven to offer enterprise-class scalability and performance. When rolling Exchange out, however, IT should confront known issues in areas like calendaring and administration. Exchange shops must devote extra time to planning and creating a culture of good communication among the hardware, Active Directory, domain name server (DNS), and Exchange Server teams.
The explosion of electronic information is a massive challenge to organizations faced with a legal discovery process. Electronic information is more complex to manage and can contain higher-risk data than paper documents. Enterprises that do not address discovery challenges quickly risk being unprepared when faced with litigation opponents and encountering labor-intensive, time-consuming interactions with government regulatory agencies.
The pure-play enterprise suite vendors Forrester evaluated continue to build on market experience, while SAP, IBM, and Oracle play catch-up. The enterprise suite pure plays stay in the lead for now, based on product capabilities like competencies management and testing components, easy-to-use navigational interfaces, and reliable and scalable solutions.
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Dear subscriber,
Many of you have asked for a more specific focus on Information Delivery coverage, so I'm pleased to introduce a quarterly First Look dedicated to this team's work.
The team is working on exciting new developments in the Information Workplace and the vendor community is innovating and combining technologies at a furious pace. You'll want to keep up with all this action, and this will be the best place to do it. If you haven't already signed up for the Information Delivery First Look on Forrester.com, I urge you to subscribe and keep up with these developments. Connie Moore, the research director for the team, will edit this newsletter. She's one of our most experienced analysts and manages a team of visionary, well-connected folks with great ideas that you will be able to leverage as this fundamental transformation changes the way we all work.
If you would like to continue receiving this newsletter on a quarterly basis,
you must either reply to this email using "Subscribe" as your subject line or visit our Email Subscriptions page. As always, First Look is free of charge, and you can opt not to receive it at any time.
Merv Adrian
Senior Vice President
Forrester Research
BI Vendors Are Sleeping Through RFID's Arrival
RFID will soon impact the supply chain in a big way, but don't look yet for business intelligence (BI) solutions that exploit the mountains of data that will be generated by this emerging technology. Today, no BI vendor has a legitimate road map for leveraging RFID data for BI, and neither do the enterprise app vendors. Until BI solutions emerge in 2007, product-driven enterprises should capture RFID data and model it for analysis themselves.
Pursuing these goals today will mean building a solution yourself once RFID systems go online. But before starting, consider these challenges:
- What's in it for me? Many suppliers, distributors, and retailers see RFID looming, but don't necessarily see an ROI. Develop a value assessment such as the Forrester Total Economic Impact¿ model to clearly define and measure the impact that adding a BI app will have.
- BI costs shrink the margin even more. BI costs would be even more than the estimated $9 million first-year cost for an RFID system. Leverage existing BI analytic and enterprise reporting solutions and build proof-of-concept BI apps before investing in specialty RFID BI solutions.
- Standards are still emerging for the data generated or captured. Each instance of RFID means a unique approach to capturing different data, making it difficult to predefine what analysis can be done, what data models will represent, and how the users can benefit from this data. Don't wait for externally defined data modeling standards or approaches before developing BI apps using RFID data. Create new data models that represent first the RFID data available, and look for ways to redesign existing data warehouses.
- Best practices for RFID and BI are almost nonexistent. RFID can help supply chain visibility with deeper data granularity and more timely updates. To achieve this, develop best practices for integrating this information into BI systems where business users can benefit from it.
The fact that BI offerings are slim does not mean you should delay. The value BI can deliver will be predicated on what data is generated and captured, how your business is modeled, and which specific processes the data will directly impact.
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The Forrester Wave: Web Content Management, Q1 2005
Demand for Web content management (WCM) is on the rise, driven by the Web's role as a primary means of interaction with customers, partners, and employees, and a renewed corporate interest in eBusiness investments to fuel growth initiatives. A successful WCM implementation depends greatly on how well a product matches the needs of content owners, contributors, site managers, and IT. Forrester's analysis of nine WCM vendors underscores that what works for a customer self-service or eBusiness site may not fit the needs of corporate or departmental intranets, so organizations must choose carefully.
Data Management, Content Management, Collaboration, Portals And eLearning In The Spotlight At GigaWorld
As the clock ticks down to GigaWorld, to be held May 2-5 in Dallas, Forrester analysts specializing in information management and collaboration technologies are looking forward to meeting many of our clients we have interacted with throughout the year and renewing old acquaintances from GigaWorlds past. We have planned a rich and diverse set of information delivery-related topics to be explored in interactive discussions and lively presentations. You can click here to book one-on-one meetings and we hope to see you there soon.
Connie Moore
Vice President and Research Director
Just a few of the many sessions planned include:
"The Future Of The Information Workplace"
"Keeping IT Sane In A Crazy BI World Of Excel"
"Moving Enterprise Portals Ahead In Life Sciences"
"Leveraging Knowledge From A Retiring Workforce"
"Data Integration Embraces Services ¿ Finally"
"Developing An Enterprise Collaboration Strategy"
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