EXTRANET NEWS * Week of 16 September 2003

EXTRANET NEWS * Week of 16 September 2003
Editors: Joel Orr and N'omi Orr
http://www.extranetnews.com

1. HUMMINGBIRD: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
2. THE LIST
3. LETTER FROM READER
4. TIDBITS
5. QUOTE OF THE WEEK

1. HUMMINGBIRD: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

Joel interviewed Hummingbird vp Glen Morris (http://www.hummingbird.com).

“I can impact every department in your organization,” said Morris. And after reviewing their Web site and seeing some demonstrations, I believe him. Headquartered in Toronto, the company employs over 1400 people and had 2002 revenues of more than $180 million.

Gartner Group has recognized Hummingbird as a “visionary” in the “smart enterprise suite” market, placing them in the same quadrant as IBM, SAP, Plumtree, and OpenText. Its software products cover record management, document management, knowledge management, business intelligence, portals, data integration, and connectivity. “We think of ourselves as a ‘lifecycle content management’ organization. We compete with, say, OpenText; but our products are more comprehensive,” said Morris.

The company has grown by acquiring about 18 companies in the last few years. It is a leader in several of the niches in which it participates; for example, it has 80% of the PC-mainframe-connectivity market.

“Our success has been somewhat hidden in the past,” said Morris. “We oem’d our Search Server for Knowledge Management to Documentum, FileNet, and others.” There are more than five million seats of computer users benefiting from Hummingbird products; the customers for the fully branded products number over 33,000, ranging in size from two-person law firms to 120,000 seats at Walt Disney corporation.

“Our record-management product provides strong support for complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002,” said Morris. That legislation places intense records retention and management requirements on public companies, and was enacted in the wake of the Enron scandal.

Designing a portal is a matter of point-and-click, drag-and-drop. Integration among the various modules is seamless. And the system can be accessed through Microsoft’s Office Suite.

Our take: For large and mid-size enterprises, Hummingbird offers an impressive array of modular solutions and services. For systems of this size and complexity, casual endorsements are not meaningful. If you are in the market for a system of this type, we recommend you interview users of the leading system .

2. THE LIST

Total companies: 262 (see who's on The List at http://www.extranetnews.com/).

ADDED: Hummingbird; Centra.

3. LETTER FROM READER

John Miller (jpmmail@cs.com) writes:

Hi Joel,

I read the recent Extranet News and found your editorial question very interesting. Are we really moving to PLM? Everyone talks about it. FM software has been available for 20 years with limited adoption for its total potential use. One reason is that it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to populate those databases with historical information, far more than the cost of the software.

If we really examine what is needed for PLM, we see that construction is an excellent time for data collection. However, as commonly used as Extranets are today, they don't collect a lot of construction data. Extranets do collect a lot of design and pre-construction data. I think the reality is that before construction starts, the real problem faced is one of version control and access to information. Once construction begins, we add process control and that's where Extranets have typically faltered. They are great for document management and collaboration but very weak on process.

However, it is within these processes that equipment and materials are purchased that should go into a PLM system. If they are missed at the time of purchase, then the old problem of the cost to load historical information doesn't go away and we are not closer to a PLM solution.

While I believe there is a tremendous amount of money that can be saved in PLM and facilities management, the reality is that corporate executives tend to put FM at the bottom of their list of software initiatives. Typically, the executives see a large investment with a sketchy ROI...or at least the ROI isn't as clear as that for an accounting system.

I feel that we, as an industry, still have a lot of work ahead. Our systems have to work for the entire building process...from formulation to design and through construction to project closeout. And this includes capturing subcontractor input and purchases....an area we are not yet very good at doing.

—John Miller

Nobody has done a great job of comprehending adoption timelines. But the tools are being adopted; just more slowly than we expected.

— Editor

4. TIDBITS

· Important reminder: Please go to http://rebar.ecn.purdue.edu/WPMS_survey and, if you can, fill out Frank's survey. (He’s a Purdue PhD student.) There is not much hard data about the impact of extranets, and studies like this one will contribute substantively to our knowledge base. And just to help you do the right thing, Frank is conducting a drawing for five prizes of 128 MB “pen drives”--those amazing keychain-like devices that have become so popular--among the first 250 participants. Do it now!

· Web-based Collaboration & Project Management Webinar – Speaker: Jeff Thompson, US Navy – Wednesday, September 17, noon EDT. Go http://centraevents.centra.com/event.asp?id=1_9172003_143&source

· An excellent review of PHP-Nuke, the Open Source content-management system, can be found at http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200307/ij_07_30_03a.html

· Meridian Project Systems User Conference, October 1-3, Las Vegas, NV. See: www.mps.com

· The Lean Construction Institute will host a seminar “Introduction to Lean Construction” in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 2 & 3. For details and registration, refer to http://www.leanconstruction.org/pdf/Introbrochure5.pdf or contact Greg Howell at ghowell@leanconstruction.org.

· BloggerCon will be held on the Harvard Law School campus, on October 4-5, 2003. Info: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/bloggerCon/nutshell

· PLANT SUCCESS is not just a conference at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott, October 15-16, 2003 (http://www.plantsuccess.com). It is a community. And it comes with a free newsletter, full of thoughtful commentary and fascinating links by industry veteran Carlton Howk. If you have anything to do with plant design, construction, or management, you should find out more about it.

· CONNECTING THE DOTS: UNDERSTANDING THE EMERGING DIGITAL BUILDING PROCESS - October 16-19, 2003 - Omni Hotel, San Francisco. To register, visit: http://www.aia.org/tap/conference/2003.

· Delphi Enterprise Summit (October 6-8) and Executive Retreat (October 8 half-day) – Washington, DC. The Delphi Summit is a highly targeted event that includes over 30 presentations on topics ranging from real-time collaboration, to portals and knowledge management. See http://www.delphigroup.com/a=1/b=1087/c=hkmu74605xje2. This year's executive retreat focuses on the topic of uncertainty. Included will be the observations of luminaries who we have been interviewing on the topic of uncertainty over the past few months, including Peter Drucker - Sam Skinner, CEO United Freightways and Former Sec. DOT - HP, CEO Carly Fiorina - USAF Lt. General Steve Croker - Motorola, CEO Christopher Galvin - MIT Media Lab - PeopleSoft, Exec VP Mike Gregoire. Info: http://www.delphigroup.com/a=3/b=1087/c=hkmu74605xje2

· PROJECT EXTRANETS IV: SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATIVE WORKING : MAXIMISING EXTRANETS FOR OPTIMUM RESULTS will be organized by Ross Sturley and Construction News in London, England, 3 December 2003, at the IEE Savoy Place. The one I attended a couple of years ago was outstanding. See http://www.projectextranets.co.uk/ for information.

· Good extranets article: http://www.cnplus.co.uk/proj_collaboration/?ChannelID=35

5. QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving in words evidence of the fact.”

--George Eliot

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