One of the nice things about having a blog is the complete freedom it provides me. I can comment on anything I like without fear of being misquoted or taken out of context. It also affords me the opportunity to make corrections when I am misquoted by someone else. That’s what I’d like to do here.
AIIM recently published their annual ECM Buyer’s Guide and it included an article on SharePoint based Records Management for which I was interviewed. If you haven’t read the Buyer’s Guide and you are an AIIM member, you can get an electronic copy here. I’m quoted in the last article in Chapter 3, ‘Match Game – SharePoint for Records & Information Management ‘. 
When I was interviewed for this article back in July, I didn’t realize that it wouldn’t be published for another eight months. Obviously, a lot can change in eight months. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was never given an advance copy of the article, so I never got an opportunity to verify any of the comments that were attributed to me.
There are two statements I’d like to clarify. First, according to the article, I said:
“Microsoft suggests that you have one records center per server farm, and to me, that is not practical. You can’t have an enterprise program with multiple records centers because of the huge volumes.”
Now, if you’ve read this blog at all, you would know that the first sentence is correct; I do not believe one Records Center per server farm is practical. It is the second sentence where I am misquoted. Not only did I not say it, it doesn’t even make sense. In fact, I believe I was saying just the opposite which is, (as I’ve said here before), the huge volume of records produced by an enterprise requires more than one Records Center.
Later in the article I was also quoted as saying:
“If you implement SharePoint, from the very beginning you have to have a records manager involved, providing a taxonomy and policy. Otherwise, it will be chaos.”
This is an issue with context. I probably said something close to this because I believe it is true. The difference is I believe it is true for any ECM solution. If an organization is implementing a new ECM solution, a qualified records manager must be involved from the first day of the project or the organization will never fully manage their content properly. This is true for SharePoint just as it is true for Documentum, OpenText or any other ECM solution available today.
AIIM is a good organization and the annual Buyer’s Guide can be a very useful resource if an organization is planning to implement an ECM solution. I just wish they would be more careful vetting some of the articles they publish.
