Free Software Linux

After releasing the industry’s first CMIS specification draft implementation in its Alfresco Labs 3 in September, Alfresco pours more effort into Content Management Interoperability Services promotion and support. This time -- by releasing Alfresco CMIS Developer Toolbox.

Are you tired of hearing of this draft CMIS thing yet? Content management software companies aren't. No rest until everyone comes up with something CMIS-compliant. Most recently, EMC released an updated CMIS-compliant version of its Documentum ECM platform. CMIS is still in the draft, pre-born stage, but everyone wants a piece of it. Reminds us of the SharePoint saga, only MOSS is already bearing lotsa $$$ behind it. In CMIS case, it's all about interoperability and inter-CMS-ial, inter-repositorial camaraderie.

It has been a little less than two months since the news of a proposed new enterprise content management standard hit the streets. The Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) spec, created jointly by Microsoft, IBM, EMC and a few other Enterprise CMS providers, was the talk of the town -- for better or for worse. But it's been relatively quiet these days and we find that strange considering the importance of a standard like this to the industry. Maybe it's not so important. Maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be. Maybe it's simply a done deal and no one needs to say more...

It doesn't come as a surprise that three of the major Enterprise Content Management (ECM) providers -- EMC, IBM and Microsoft -- have been secretly developing a technical Enterprise CMS specification. Their super secret project is called the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) spec. A fancy new acronym it is, but beyond this is it really the beginning of a brave new world for content management interoperability?

There is an announcement just posted about OASIS opening a new discussion list for members and nonmembers to discuss a proposal to form a new technical committee to help out with "ODF Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance". Yes, interoperability is the key.