hottopic
ARMA International’s
Solving the SharePoint Puzzle
Where it Fits in Content Management Strategy
www.arma.org
SharePoint
for Records Management? Big and Getting Bigger
I
t’s no secret that organizations are
deploying Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007
at a rapid rate. During the October
2009 sold-out SharePoint Conference, Microsoft announced that
SharePoint Server is one of the
fastest-growing products in Microsoft’s history, with more than $1.3 billion in revenue, representing more
than a 20% growth over the past year.
What may come as a surprise to
some is that organizations are now
using SharePoint extensively for
records management. Given the
importance of records management to
broader enterprise content management (ECM) and legal risk mitigation
strategies, we asked several vendorspecific questions in the Forrester
Research and ARMA International
Records Management Online Survey,
which was completed in the third
quarter of 2009. Respondents were
asked, “What software product(s)
does your organization use for records
management?” and 17% of them
reported using Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server for records management, nearly double the rate of the
next closest offering.
Brian W. Hill, Forrester Research, Inc.
Some people might presume that
SharePoint records management
users work for smaller firms. Yet surprisingly, 42% of respondents using
SharePoint records management are
employed by organizations with more
than 5,000 employees.
While Microsoft has achieved
remarkable market adoption in a relatively short time, respondents report
lower satisfaction levels with
SharePoint then they do with other
records management solutions. While
the satisfaction level for the overall
records management market isn’t
high, only 36% of SharePoint records
management users report that they are
either somewhat or very satisfied (see
Figure 1).
As records management professionals know, there is no technology
“magic bullet.” Yet key functional
gaps in SharePoint 2007 likely impact
satisfaction levels. In particular,
MOSS 2007:
• Lacks physical records management
and federated records management
support. More than 80% of records
management decision-makers use
technology for physical records
management.
• Offers no current DoD 5015.2-STD
V3 certification. Forty-two percent
of records management stakeholders say this requirement is important
to records management purchases.
• Presents challenges in declaring
records, managing file plans, and
placing legal holds. A number of
enterprises report challenges with
SharePoint in the process of declaring and managing records, file plan
capability constraints, and legal hold
limitations.
The joint survey shows that those
organizations using SharePoint records
management have a lower level of
e-discovery confidence and are less
confident in long-term retrieval capabilities than their peers.
Insufficient attention to people
and processes during deployments,
not just software, stand out for many
as a major factor impacting solution
satisfaction. That said, Microsoft
plans to incorporate significant functional enhancements to SharePoint
Server 2010, including key advances
in records management. Among other
improvements, Microsoft expects to
bolster capabilities for records declaration, litigation hold, and organizing
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Independent Vendors Offer FRM
Courtesy of Forrester Research Inc.
Figure 1: User Satisfaction with RM Solutions
content within hierarchical file plans.
Most significantly, SharePoint
2010 will offer multiple ways to manage records, including using a separate
records center (records archive); using
the same collaboration site where documents are created (in-place records);
or using a hybrid approach. In prior
versions, organizations could manage
records by creating a records center
site to serve as an archive, and then
copy documents to the archive when
they became records.
In November 2009, Microsoft
published pre-release documentation
entitled “Using a Records Archive
Versus Managing Records in Place” in
SharePoint Server 2010 (see the entire
guidance on Microsoft TechNet at
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/
library/ee424394(office.14).aspx).
While subject to change, Microsoft
provides the following documentation
for these two primary records management approaches in SharePoint
2010:
• In-place records: This approach
works best in well-established sites
(e.g., knowledge management
repositories) in which people actively use records that sit alongside nonrecords. This requires tight coordination between records managers,
IT, and content stewards.
• Records archive: This approach
uses a centralized vault to ingest
less-managed content with a traditional, easier-to-implement hierarchal file plan. It provides one centralized view and location for all
records across an enterprise.
Among organizations expecting
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to ramp up records management products in 2010, 19% plan to leverage
SharePoint for records management.
Microsoft’s anticipated new flexibility in managing records and other
advances planned for SharePoint
2010 will likely increase this projected adoption rate. Yet significant gaps
remain for more advanced user needs.
Expect partners to fill in the holes
where SharePoint doesn’t go. During
the first couple of years after Microsoft released MOSS 2007, traditional
records and content management vendors sought to position MOSS 2007 as
lightweight ECM offering suitable
mainly for departmental or basic teamlevel collaboration scenarios. While
MOSS 2007 does have shortcomings
in comparison to mature ECM offerings, SharePoint’s proven functionality and very strong adoption rates have
led many of these same vendors to
shift from competing with to complementing SharePoint functionality.
Partners Offer
SharePoint Certifications
Certification clearly matters to
records managers. Microsoft’s DoD
5015.2-STD certification for SharePoint expired in May 2009. Recognizing a market opportunity, a handful
of Microsoft partners have pursued
certification for their respective
records management offerings
deployed in conjunction with SharePoint. As of this writing, the vendors
listed in Figure 2 held DoD 5015.2STD V3 certification for their records
management offerings paired with
SharePoint.
MOSS 2007 does not include
capabilities for federated records
management (FRM), the ability to
apply records management controls
in external repositories. Microsoft
does not plan to introduce FRM functionality in SharePoint 2010. Several
independent software vendors offer
FRM that provides the ability to manage content within SharePoint repositories. While current overall FRM
adoption is limited, 18% of records
management stakeholders expect to
ramp up these solutions in 2010.
Organizations’ need for consistent administrative frameworks and
retention policy management across
multiple applications and repositories
will drive significant FRM growth in
2010. As records management decision-makers become more familiar
with FRM, they will evaluate a number of factors in determining whether
to consolidate or to use an FRM
approach. These include considerations regarding the security and compliance capabilities of existing applications, as well as associated deployment practices, repository size, and
other elements.
ECM Vendors Boost
SharePoint Integrations
Organizations typically have
information assets dispersed through
a range of different applications and
repositories, including SharePoint.
SharePoint’s success has led many
traditional ECM vendors to develop
broader integrations beyond a pure
records management focus. In addition to pursuing legal risk mitigation
goals, these vendors emphasize their
abilities to repurpose and reuse other
business-critical data from SharePoint and a range of other systems to
capture process efficiencies. A commonly marketed scenario is for an
organization to use SharePoint on the
front end (typically delivering a more
familiar user interface) and the
traditional ECM system on the back
Courtesy of Forrester Research Inc.
Figure 2: Complementary Products with DoD 5015.2-STD Certification
end (delivering a solution with
stronger compliance and archiving
capabilities).
As one of the creators of the content management interoperability
services (CMIS) draft specification,
Microsoft recently confirmed that it
plans to support the standard for
SharePoint. Given the broad vendor
support behind CMIS and that many
enterprises struggle with integration
across multiple content management/
records management solutions, this
initiative holds significant mediumand long-term potential for buyers.
Some enterprises report however,
that for records management requirements, they anticipate needing a higher degree of control than is expected
to be available in the first release of
CMIS. As CMIS solutions come on
the market and mature, they should
ultimately become a highly effective
method enabling information sharing
across content management repositories from different vendors.
Archiving Vendors Capitalize
on SharePoint Growth
For complementary SharePoint
archiving functionality, Microsoft
partners with a number of vendors,
including AvePoint, BlueThread
Technologies, CommVault, EMC,
HP, Hitachi Data Systems, Metalogix
Software, Mimosa Systems, NetApp,
Symantec, and others. While some of
these vendors don’t provide full
records management capabilities,
many offer broader compliance and
retention management capabilities for
SharePoint. Several also support
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capabilities for archiving additional
content types and applications like
e-mail and file shares.
SharePoint Server 2010 will
become available in the first half of
this year, and records managers
should look at this product in conjunction with partner support for
records management needs. With
SharePoint 2010, Microsoft plans
significant records management
enhancements that will bolster an
already-strong adoption rate and meet
the needs of many – especially when
complemented by partner solutions
and accompanied by effective stakeholder alignment and governance.
To get ready for this new deployment, organizations should:
• Focus on legal risk mitigation as
part of your SharePoint strategy.
In addition to regulatory requirements, with the revised U.S. Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure it’s critical to
incorporate a broad range of electronically stored information into your
records management approach to stay
out of legal hot water. E-discovery
and regulatory requirements are not
just about e-mail. Organizations that
have SharePoint will need to apply
appropriate governance to mitigate
legal risk.
• Consider what Microsoft will
deliver in SharePoint 2010 for
records management.
Nearly one of five records management stakeholders plans to use
SharePoint for records management in
2010. This expected adoption outpaces
traditional competitors, yet records
managers currently using MOSS 2007
report satisfaction issues. People and
process issues account for some of this,
but the offering itself has some records
management limitations. In preparing
for SharePoint 2010, Microsoft devoted considerable effort to making
records management improvements,
including those related to records declaration, litigation hold, and organizing
content within hierarchical file plans.
Additional flexibility with in-place
records and records archive in
SharePoint 2010 looks promising, but
as part of their planning process, organizations will need to consider trade-offs
with these two alternatives.
• Determine which partners will
help meet SharePoint legal risk
mitigation objectives.
With appropriate governance,
Microsoft SharePoint can help organizations mitigate legal risk. SharePoint, however, has some records
management shortcomings and lacks
functionality for certain stages of the
e-discovery process. Microsoft does
not position itself as an end-to-end
e-discovery provider. As organizations
continue to expand already significant
SharePoint investments, the importance of partner integrations will
increase, especially for complementary records management functionality
(e.g., physical records management),
e-discovery capabilities (e.g., review),
broader retention man-agement ability
(e.g., across a wide array of content
types and applications), and archiving
(e.g., more effective use of storage and
infrastructure).
Brian W. Hill is a senior analyst at
Forrester Research, serving information and knowledge management professionals. His expertise is on e-discovery, marchiving strategies, records
and retention management initiatives,
and enterprise content management
endeavors. Hill can be contacted at
[email protected]. To access Forrester research, including the survey
mentioned in this article in conjunction with ARMA International, visit
www.forrester.com/armasharepoint.
Governance
for Successfully Implementing SharePoint
Marcia Douglas
N
ew and improved!
Longer lasting! Tastes
great, less filling …
okay, maybe the hype
about Microsoft® SharePoint Server (MSS) 2010 is a bit
overdone. But it is inevitable. With
the beta release of MSS 2010 and
anticipation of the final General
Software Availability release only
months away, many individuals
in the enterprise content management (ECM) community are wondering what this will mean for their
organizations.
Although it is vital to understand what technical ECM and
records management (RM) capabil-
ities are offered with MSS 2010, it
is not the technology itself that
makes a successful RM program.
An effective enterprise RM program is driven by successfully
enabling records capabilities seamlessly within a broader content
management program supported by
sound governance.
Some Inadequacies Addressed
Many in the RM community
were largely disappointed with the
ability of Microsoft® Office
SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 to
provide a robust, enterprise-worthy
RM solution. It appears – at least from
the beta release of MSS 2010 and its
marketing materials – that several key
inadequacies have been rectified.
Several new capabilities will interest
records managers and should be mentioned as they do impact decisions
organizations may make as to the
enterprise readiness of MSS 2010
(and, perhaps, on whether to abandon
or replace any existent RM applications).
Most significantly for records
managers, MSS 2010 provides two
possible methods for managing
records. The records center has been
retained, yet content can also be managed “in place” – meaning within the
site collection itself, rather than being
copied to the records center. So,
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records declaration can be enabled
more flexibly.
In addition, MSS 2010 provides
folder inheritance functionality. This
facilitates associating policy at various nodes in the file plan and
enabling any content filed to child
folders to inherit the characteristics of
the parent – including metadata and
retention policy. Managed metadata
(managed terms), tagging (managed
keywords), and faceted-type navigation (term sets) allow users to participate in content identification and
administrators to layer controls on the
level of participation. Type-ahead
functionality may encourage users to
leverage standardized terms and keywords.
MSS 2010’s new content organizer provides the capability to autofile information based on the content
type and metadata. Since content
types and metadata can be defined
and shared across all site collections,
there is greater opportunity to achieve
consistency in identifying content and
applying retention policy.
Notice the wording of the last
sentence – “there is greater opportunity.” Whether an organization
chooses to leverage this opportunity
remains a governance issue, rather
than a technical one.
MSS 2010’s improved technical
capabilities will not, in and of themselves, ensure excellence in RM or
content management. As many have
discovered with MOSS 2007, having
a defined strategy and adequate governance for leveraging ANY technology is crucial. For many organizations, MOSS 2007 was introduced
without sufficient forethought about
its governance. (See sidebar for questions organizations should resolve
before deploying SharePoint.)
The Governance Dilemma
The problems with many MOSS
2007 deployments often stem back to
basic strategy and governance inadequacies. Typically, robust business
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Governance Issues to Be Resolved Before
Deploying SharePoint
To be successful with a SharePoint deployment, organizations must establish governance for it by answering the following questions:
• Who will deploy a new site?
• Who will administer sites?
• Who owns the content retained on these sites?
• Who manages defining content types and list values?
• What sites and content will be open to search?
• How will access to sites be controlled?
• What will happen to the site when an employee’s role changes or the
employee is terminated?
• How will sites be decommissioned and when?
• When will content be declared as a record and moved to the records
center?
• How will numerous sites and records centers be searched to locate relevant information for business decision making and/or regulatory and
litigation inquiries?
• What business problems is the organization trying to solve by introducing SharePoint? And, why are these problems not being solved through
the other ECM products already in use?
applications deployment are underpinned by having well-defined vision,
leadership support and executive
sponsorship, detailed requirements,
good IT controls, and sound architectural decision making around performance and scalability. With MOSS
2007, these tenets have not always
been in place.
The initial inexpensive price tag
for MOSS 2007 meant that the product was released into the enterprise
with little planning about how it fit
into the overall information management strategy and architecture. Often
requirements for setting up new sites
were not well-articulated. The volume of content and size of individual
content objects sometimes resulted in
slower performance – pitting users
and IT in a blame game about reliability and scalability. Also, for many
organizations, responsibility for
MOSS 2007 support and administration has been a shared one.
Organizations know how successful
sharing can be – kind of like sharing
house cleaning … someone will be
stuck with the litter box.
From the users’ perspective, one
of the key benefits of MOSS 2007
was
ownership
or
control.
Independence and flexibility were
embraced by the business (finally,
freedom from the dogged software
development lifecycle processes
demanded by the IT department). But
this resulted in site proliferation, site
abandonment, inconsistencies in content identification, and unsatisfying
search results.
As MOSS 2007 use grew within
the business, users discovered they
were unable to navigate and search
across collections or enforce consistency in access rights, retention poli-
cies, content quality, and relevancy.
Perhaps all of the traditional IT
enterprise and application architectural methodologies would not have
been so bad after all.
Establishing a governance
model that defines who has responsibility for what can assist in identifying key areas of administration risk
for the business. Understanding and
accepting risk helps drive the discussion back to the core business question: What is the business problem
that the organization wants
SharePoint to solve? Understanding
the key business problem drives the
strategy or vision, governance, and
design decisions essential for a successful implementation and longterm management of the solution.
MOSS 2007 and the next
release, MSS 2010, are not perfect or
imperfect in and of themselves. With
the introduction of MSS 2010,
organizations should spend equal
time reviewing the technical
advances available and what they
have learned from previous implementations. How organizations learn
from their mistakes and adopt new
approaches for deployment will be
essential to effective migration to or
implementation of MSS 2010.
Resistance Is Futile
For most organizations, the decision whether to implement SharePoint is long past. It is here to stay.
However, with the release of MSS
2010, there is an opportunity to
review fundamental, big-picture decisions. And, these decisions need to be
considered collaboratively by IT,
records, compliance, and business
owners in answer to these questions:
• Should the organization implement or migrate to MSS 2010? If
so, when and why?
• How does the organization
approach instituting governance
(i.e., how to close the barn door
now that the horse has left the
stall)?
… processes for preserving and protecting
that content in a way that satisfies RM
needs must be transparent and facilitated
by minimal efforts required of users …
• How does the organization ensure
the reliability and usability for
end users?
• Is MSS 2010 going to be “the”
ECM solution for the organization, or will several technologies
be used?
For RM professionals, one of the
most significant and compelling
questions to be answered, though, is
this: Are we really prepared to manage ALL content?
Records managers have often
failed to demonstrate the relevance
of RM to users faced with dealing
with live, active content, data, and
processes. Users see RM as happening way downstream – at the end of
an object’s useful life in order to
reduce storage volumes. From the
users’ point of view, “declaring” a
record means extra work that benefits records managers (and perhaps
legal and compliance personnel), not
them.
Certainly, the industry is changing. There are efforts to make enforcing RM less onerous. One example is
the trend toward big bucket classification, which attempts to remove
some of the complexity from choosing records classifications. But generally, users don’t perceive RM as
providing significant benefit to their
daily lives.
It’s All About the Content
How can this perception be
changed? It may sound heretical to
suggest it, but the concept of “record”
should be forgotten; the focus should
be on “content.” Rather than “declaring records,” users should be “manag-
ing content” with the processes and
tools the organization has provided
for creating, sharing, searching, and
retrieving that content.
If content management is to be
integral to an end user’s daily activities, then creating, sharing, and
searching for content must be easier
and more intuitive. And the processes
for preserving and protecting that
content in a way that satisfies RM
needs must be transparent and facilitated by minimal efforts required of
users to create and share content. In
short – tastes great, less filling.
Users want to create content
using standard office applications and
simply save them. The system should
seamlessly store the content to a controlled repository. Users don’t like
document profile screens popping up
and demanding completion of numerous indexing fields. So, they should
be offered the option to tag content
with keywords they find useful, and
they should be able to tag the content
anytime, not just upon creation and
record declaration.
If users choose not to tag content
when they save it, content should be
auto-filed based on the established,
managed metadata associated with
the existent corpus of content. Upon
filing, retention policy can be transparently assigned based on metadata
and content type. Users should be
able to search for content (whether it
is a record or not) by any term
or combination of terms (faceted
classification).
To sum up, users need to feel they
can depend on the system to manage
their content by asking: Can the sys-
©2010 ARMA International, www.arma.or g
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tem be used knowing the results will
be the same each time? If an ECM
solution facilitates reliable, userfriendly interaction with content, or if
an ECM system enables users to work
more easily with content, then users
may perceive enough benefit to adopt
the solution. And, when that solution
seamlessly enables RM policy, everyone wins.
One Is a Lonely Number
So, if organizations can implement MSS 2010 with the right governance to be a reliable, useable content
management system, should they
adopt it as their single ECM product?
an organization chooses to leverage a
separate records repository or retain
records in place does not have to be a
black or white decision. Flexibility
and heterogeneity is possible when
governance is sound.
This leads back to the issue of
governance, and from governance,
back to the quintessential question:
What business problem is the organization trying to solve? With a firm
understanding of the business problem, organizations can determine
what processes need to be supported
and what information needs to be
available to facilitate those processes.
With a solid understanding of these
Records managers need to be part of the
IT strategy development process and
should play an integral role in the
governance model.
There is no right answer.
For many business functions,
MSS 2010 provides sufficient good
stuff, including collaboration, sharing,
and search capabilities, that will satisfy the business problem at hand. As a
general repository for sharing content,
MSS 2010’s capabilities may be sufficient.
For other business processes,
applications may already exist that
facilitate the creation, processing,
storage, and long-term management
of content. Replacing these applications may be impractical. To simplify
the end-user experience, enabling
access through a common user interface could be a more compelling
proposition than replacement.
MSS 2010 may provide good
flexibility and capability for content
managed by it – but organizations
may still need other RM solutions for
content managed outside of MSS
2010. In short, a polytheistic approach
may be required. Similarly, whether
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elements, an organization can determine if SharePoint has the technical
capabilities to adequately address its
business problem.
If an organization believes this is
the right technical solution, then it
must create an environment that supports the right business implementation. What needs to be done to create
that environment? At a minimum, an
organization should:
• Ensure that a sound governance
model is established and responsibilities are clearly defined
• Elicit the support from senior leadership to actively promote the solution
• Engage participation from all areas
of the organization
• Complement the technical deployment with sufficient change management, including ongoing training and communications
• Obtain consensus around the success criteria and how success will
be measured
• Develop and apply continuous
improvement for the long-term
health of the solution
Software Is Only a Tool
MSS 2010, like MOSS 2007, is
just a tool. And it may be one of many
tools. To be a business solution, it
needs to be leveraged in context of the
overall IT strategy and adequately
managed through a sound and effective governance structure. Records
managers need to be part of the IT
strategy development process and
should play an integral role in the governance model.
Understanding the business problems that MSS 2010 is to resolve will
ensure the records managers’ role is
not relegated to just providing insight
into retention policy. To drive the RM
agenda, records managers need to
drive the broader ECM agenda and be
actively engaged in ensuring that all
content is captured, secured, classified, managed, and retained to meet
business goals.
Marcia Douglas has more than 20
years of experience in information
management, with a focus on enterprise content management, and currently serves as associate partner with
Deloitte. She previously worked at
PricewaterhouseCoopers, Bearingpoint, IBM, and LGS Group. Her
range of experience also includes
designing and implementing document management, web content management, records management, e-discovery, e-mail management, and business process management solutions
using a variety of industry-leading
products and integrating these solutions within existing legacy environments. With specialized skills in taxonomy, classification, and retention
management, Douglas has developed
ECM strategies for both public and
private sector companies, including
development of business cases and
roadmaps. Douglas can be contacted
at [email protected].