What is Microsoft’s ECM strategy?

Depending on what you read, Microsoft’s ECM (Enterprise Content Management) strategy of cloud first, mobile first which are the tools were using to collaborate with now, will look similar but be used differently in the future. For example, opening a Word document from you’re network drive or local hard drive is being replaced with Word online and OneDrive for Business or team site document libraries.

With the constant changes that are taking place, how can your organization easily adapt and where do you find what you need?

Below is a list of things to consider as we start to embrace the cloud first mobile, first strategy:

• Collaboration – This can mean a lot of things, to a lot of people but essentially it’s our ability to interact with information. That information can be on a team site in a document library, a calendar, and e-mail or an instant message (Lync/Yammer discussion). What Microsoft, and other cloud tool makers are doing, is uniting the ways we communicate so it’s easier and natural to interact with this information.
  • If we think about all the tools that we can use to accomplish they include:
    • E-mail – Exchange Online, Outlook
    • Document libraries – SharePoint team sites
    • OneDrive for Business – Personal or shared document storage with groups (Microsoft’s latest offering to collaborate as a team)
    • Instant message – Lync, Yammer integration
    • Office – Word, Excel, PowerPoint
• Team sites – These are still the backbone of where documents and metadata get stored and how workflows get fired. The integration into the collaboration tools above is where were starting to see a difference.
  • One Drive for Business and the new Groups offering uses team sites under the hood to manage documents and security.
  • Office Web Apps (OWA) is fully integrated into team sites and libraries so the user doesn’t leave their browser to work on a document.
  • Team sites can also take the traditional form of an Office 365 company intranet and take advantage of all the integration points.
• OneDrive for Business – Some bloggers are saying that SharePoint will be renamed OneDrive for Business because of the similar attributes it shares with a document library. Let’s not forget the roots of OneDrive. It started as a my site and then with SharePoint 2013 it became a personal document library, which is what it resembles today. It seems OneDrive will begin to take a more prominent role as groups and security mature within Office 365. The notion of moving everything from a network drive to the cloud takes several forms, one of which is OneDrive.
• Groups – Not to be confused with security groups, groups (Newest Office 365 offering) leverages OneDrive and team sites so you can identify members of a team and the information they need access to. Office 365 will create the group, set permissions and notify team members so everyone can begin to collaborate on the topic the group was created for.
• Security – Using ADFS (Active Directory Federated Services) in the cloud brings security together for all users with all the Office 365 technologies mentioned so far. You have to have a strong manageable security model that can be applied to anywhere information is stored. The root of Office 365 is ADFS.

The idea of SharePoint being a standalone product that has integration points is changing rapidly with the new developments of Office 365. Integrating the tools that were used to with the information we need is really the overall strategy Microsoft is trying to achieve with Office 365. Using the success SharePoint has achieved is one component of enterprise content management but it’s now not the only one we need to consider. To find out more about this or other ways that RSM can assist you with your SharePoint needs, contact our professionals at 800.274.3978 or email us.

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