February 2010
Multiple Repositories...
What is your Best Strategy?
Multiple Repositories... What is your Best Strategy? | February 2010
Contents
Introduction
2
The Problem
3
The Strategies Available
3
Content Consolidation
4
Content Federation
4
The Vicious Cycle
5
How Do You Decide?
6
Decide with EASE
6
How Do You Decide?
7
Bringing concept to reality
8
Summary
8
HCL Technologies
9
ABOUT HCL
10
Introduction
Over the past decade, organizations have understood the importance
of ECM to improve business operations. These investments were
adhoc and made as an when required by the departments of these
organizations. Although these investments have enabled organizations
but have also created islands of content. Most organizations today
have more than 2 repositories. It is essential that organizations
are able to leverage content from all of its repositories to ensure
that it can succeed in view of the current economic challenges. An
Enterprise content consolidation and federation would not only
decreases IT costs but also would decrease organizations operating
expenditures with unified processes, stable architecture, and better
content access and informed decision making. But these benefits
come with their own costs of content migration and repository
license and maintenance costs. Therefore, making it essential for
organization to conduct a detailed analysis before deciding whether
to consolidate or migrate.
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Multiple Repositories... What is your Best Strategy? | February 2010
of organizations use over 2 repositories and
“25%79%organizations
use over 15 repositories to manage
unstructured content
”
Special points of interest
• Most organizations have siloed content repositories
• The Decision to federate or consolidate content should be aligned
with organization long term goals
• Expertise is required to create information architecture roadmap
for the organization
• 3-7% cost savings for the first year and 20-30% in 2-3 years on the
outlay of content management costs
The Problem
With 85% of the organization’s information stored in the
unstructured format, 79% of organizations use over 2 repositories
and 25% organizations use over 15 repositories to manage
unstructured content, there is an immediate need for improved
access to unstructured content to enable faster, better-informed
decisions. Due to multiple repositories being used, the most common
problem that organizations face today is that the information
required to run the organization is there, but is inaccessible.
The siloed information in various repositories throughout the
organization causes redundancy of data, applications, processes,
and infrastructure. This in-effect has negative impact because it
increases costs, decreases productivity and reduces agility of business
to adopt changes.
The Strategies Available
Content Consolidation
Content Consolidation is a concept by which the organization
combines all its content into their primary repository.
This allows the organizations better access and more control on
the information.
Benefits
• Low license costs: License costs of only a single repository
• Easy to maintain: Easy for organizations to detect and resolve
issues as there is only one repository
• Unified processes: The processes built on top of a single
repository are robust and stable. They are easy to modify
and expand
• Data integrity: High data integrity as all the content resides in a
single repository
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Multiple Repositories... What is your Best Strategy? | February 2010
Content Federation
Content is said to be federated when a user can access content from
multiple disparate repositories with the use of a single interface.
The underlying repositories are left as is and a top federation layer
is built that is capable to pull all the required information out of the
repository and present it asrequired by the user.
Benefits
• Easy access to native application: As a top federation layer is
built, native applications are not disturbed
• Quick approach: The approach is faster to implement as
compared to other approaches
Content Consolidation
Typical Issues
1. Long implementation time: The time taken for consolidation
of repositories is higher than that for federation
2.Limited features: Each set of repository has a limited set
of features
3.Long change management cycle: Users training may be required
for the consolidated repository
4.High risk: Content Migration is risky (particularly because
applications on top use many features of content and its meta
state, which are not known to technical groups), So customers
are advised that there is no fully automatic way of doing it.
Manual intervention and tweaking of trusted scripts, XMLs and
non-java based templates is very much required in order to do
the migration
Content Federation
1. Small Change management cycle: The change management
cycle is smaller as users can continue to work with their
native applications
2.Extended features available: Features and functionalities of
multiple repositories are available
Issues
1.High Costs: License costs for multiple repositories are incurred
2.Difficult to maintain: Difficult to detect and rectify issues due
to multiple repositories
3.Process unification: Accessibility to information depends on the
type and level of federation with the repository
4.Data synchronization: Most federation products do not provide
complete data synchronization between federated repositories.
So business struggle to identify which data can be depended on
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Multiple Repositories... What is your Best Strategy? | February 2010
5. Product version dependent: Most federation products federate
only certain versions of the repository. This hinders organization
from moving on to higher and better versions of core products
6.No Standards: Most federation products are not built on
industry standards and are black boxes in their way of working.
In effect federation engines try to control critical operations,
with minimum controls built-in to maintain themselves!
For Business Agility it is required that organizations
“either
federate or Consolidate content
”
Business
Cost
Mandatory
Costs
Content Federation
Content Consolidation
• Low initial costs of
adding the federation
layer
• High initial of
consolidation
• Increase effort to
maintain and retrieve
information. Complete
access to information
may not be available
High costs of licenses
and maintenance
•Decrease business
cost with unified
processes and reduced
time and effort to
access information
Low costs of licenses
and maintenance
The Vicious Cycle
Organization
objectives and goals
Grow
Addition of new
repositories
(License Cost of new
repositories)
Content Federation
(Cost of Federation Products)
Manage
Optimize
Content Consolidation
(Cost of Consolidate)
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Multiple Repositories... What is your Best Strategy? | February 2010
Very few mature Organizations are able to realize that selection of
content federation and content consolidation approaches come in a
cycles (similar to mergers and splits in an organization), as per the
organization needs.
Most organizations goals push them to add new repositories to fulfill
those goals. Soon these repositories become difficult to manage and
organizations choose to federate as it is a direct and quick approach.
But federation adds to costs. These costs soon become unbearable
to the organization and they move to content consolidation
for decreasing their costs. Then a new need arises and a new
repository is added to meet this need. This is unavoidable cycle for
organizations as the changing business environment like mergers
or acquisitions push organizations to work with new repositories.
Every step of this cycle adds to costs. Therefore, before a decision
is taken by organizations to either federate the new repository or
consolidate content it is essential for them to asses the current state
and then select an approach that will yield the maximum Return on
Investment and is long term solution for the organization.
How Do You Decide?
To make such a decision organization should then be able to
correctly assess the current state of information architecture.
To correctly assess the current state and to be able to derive to a
fruitful solution from that assessment it is important for
organizations to follow a comprehensive approach. The approach
should be able to cover repositories, processes, infrastructure, and
applications and lead the organization towards a solution that would
give maximum Rols.
Decide with EASE
The EASE methodology, i.e., Explore, analyze, strategize and
execute is for the organizations seeking to better manage their
ECM applications. The scope of this includes ECM repositories,
Processes, Applications and infrastructure.
This approach creates the roadmap and implements it for content
federation and consolidation in the organization. Using this
approach in just 2-4 weeks the organizations would have a roadmap
for content consolidation for improved content access for better
informed decisions.
In this methodology begins with understanding current state of
ECM repositories in the organization and mapping it to the goals
and visions. The gaps identified in this process are then identified
and reduced by optimizing, process and content design.
This approach does not end at providing the roadmap and
architecture to the customer but goes a step further to Execute this
plan and federate and consolidate content.
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Multiple Repositories... What is your Best Strategy? | February 2010
Deliverables
Explore
Analyze
Due Diligence
Implementation
Strategize
Execute
Identify
Opportunities
Define Future
Architecture
State
Implement
Proposed
Solution
Current State
Assessment
Evaluate
Technology
Optimize
Content &
Process Design
Migrate/
Consolidate
Understand
Vision and
Goals
Establish
Needs Priority
Define
Implementation
Plan
Manage
Change
As-Is-Mapping
Gap
Assessment &
Prioritization
Integrated IT Operations
The
EASE
Methodology
Kickoff & Project Instruction
Consulting
To-Be Content
Landscape and
Architecture
2 to 4 Weeks
How Do You Decide?
The EASE methodology is supported by a Model that details the
criteria against which each repository is to be measured. This Model
is used to gain a clear understanding of the current information
architecture against 3 factors:
1.Cost: This involves cost of licenses, maintenance and
support, inclusive of cost to retain and train resources on
these technologies
2.Ease of Implementation: This relates to the ease of
consolidating. This includes the time and effort it would take to
migrate the content from the repository, the level of integration
required, number of applications running on top and workflows
integrated with the repository
3.Utilization: This is one of the most significant metric. With
this, we asses the functionalities of the repository that are used
by the organization and also whether those functionalities are
available in other repositories or not
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Multiple Repositories... What is your Best Strategy? | February 2010
The combination of these 3 factors places each repository in a
different section of the model. Each section of the 3D model allows
us to associate a unique strategy to the repository. Once all the
repositories are evaluated using this model the As-Is state and the
next steps are clear for the organization to gain maximum benefits
from the repository.
Bringing concept to reality
To use this model successfully, organization engage with
consultants that have in-depth understanding and knowledge on
content repositories, their implementation best practices, industry
best practices, and end to end implementation experience so that
concepts can be turned into reality.
Summary
The organizations would always be in the dilemma to choose
strategy for its content because of its every changing nature. The
two most common strategies that organizations use to make its
information architecture more manageable is content federation
and content consolidation. In most cases it would not be possible
for the organizations to adopt a single strategy, due to difference
in the usage of content repositories in terms of functionality and
integration points with other systems. A detailed assessment by an
expert can help organizations decide the correct approach for each
content repository within the organization. One such methodology
is EASE that is based on the ECU Model. This assess the current
architecture and helps organizations to reach a more steady approach
like consolidating a few low utilized repositories and then federate a
new onsolidated repository and other strategic repositories.
With HCLs experience, a content consolidation exercise can save
an organization up to 7% of content management costs in first year
itself of implementation.
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Multiple Repositories... What is your Best Strategy? | February 2010
HCL Technologies
ECMP Consulting Practice Vision
“To Provide Value driven consulting ensuring our customers
remain ahead of the curve”
With this vision, HCL ECM consulting practice is well poised to
meet all customer needs and provide value driven consulting. We
have required product partnerships that ensure that we have indepth knowledge of ECM repositories, Customers benefit from not
only our 18 years of content management experience in ECM Space
but also from our Product Labs that they gain access to understand
new ECM Repositories and our association with industry analysts
that ensure that each solution provided is measured against industry
standards. HCL possess the skills and more required to conduct the
study for your organization’s unique needs.
ECM Consulting Services
Partnerships
ECM Functional Areas
Verticals
IBM (FileNet, iLog, Lotus
Notes), EMC Documentum,
Microsoft (SharePoint, FAST),
Oracle, Onbase, TIS, Day,
Kofax, Interwoven, Sedore,
Thunderhead
Document Management,
Business Process Management,
Records Management,
Imaging, Web Content
Management, Knowledge
Management, Collaboration,
Enterprise Search, Enterprise
Communications, Portals
Banking, Financial Services,
Insurance, Government, Media
Publishing and Entertainment,
Healthcare and Lifesciences,
HiTech and Manufacturing,
Retail, Energy and Utilities,
BPO, Real Estate
17+ years of Enterprise Content Management Experience
Waste
Elimination
Product Labs for R&D and Support
Alignment
with
Business
Cost
Reduction
Our Goals
Extensive knowledge of industry standards and frameworks
Global presence with operations in 23 countries
Association with industry analysts like Forrester, Gartner and AIIM
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10
Multiple Repositories... What is your Best Strategy? | February 2010
ABOUT HCL
HCL Technologies
HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company, working
with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their
businesses. Since its inception into the global landscape after its IPO
in 1999, HCL focuses on ‘transformational outsourcing’, underlined
by innovation and value creation, and offers integrated portfolio of
services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure
management, engineering and R&D services and BPO. HCL
leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network of
offices in 26 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in
key industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing,
Consumer Services, Public Services and Healthcare. HCL takes
pride in its philosophy of ‘Employee First’ which empowers our
55,688 transformers to create a real value for the customers. HCL
Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated revenues
of US$ 2.5 billion (Rs. 11,833 crores), as on 31st December 2009 (on
LTM basis). For more information, please visit www.hcltech.com
About HCL Enterprise
HCL is a $5 billion leading global Technology and IT Enterprise
that comprises two companies listed in India - HCL Technologies
& HCL Infosystems. Founded in 1976, HCL is one of India’s
original IT garage start-ups, a pioneer of modern computing, and
a global transformational enterprise today. Its range of offerings
spans Product Engineering, Custom & Package Applications,
BPO, IT Infrastructure Services, IT Hardware, Systems
Integration, and distribution of ICT products across a wide range
of focused industry verticals. The HCL team comprises over
62,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate from
26 countries including over 500 points of presence in India. HCL
has global partnerships with several leading Fortune 1000 firms,
including leading IT and Technology firms. For more information,
please visit www.hcl.in
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