[UFO Chicago] alternative ways of locating files

[Neil R. Ormos]

Brian Sobolak wrote:
> Jordan Bettis wrote:

>   <snip>

>> The latter, (DMSes) came from corporate 'shared
>> drives.' The idea is that people in businesses
>> tend to produce a lot of files to which others
>> need access. Moreover, the kind of 'hierarchy
>> under group management' model of shared drives
>> always ended up pretty chaotic. So what was
>> really needed was a 'shared drive' that had
>> better was of organizing and finding the files,
>> including tagging, in document search,
>> etc. That's what a DMS is.

> (nice write-up)

> One company I am familiar with recently
> announced its intention to eliminate "shared
> drives" and just utilize Sharepoint.  I was sort
> of shocked as the good ol' file server seems
> like such a bedrock concept in corporate
> computing.

Really? I don't know why you would be shocked by
this.

As I'm sure you're aware, Sharepoint and its ilk
(which generally include more functionality than
the a simple integration of conventional DMS and
CMS tools) are sold to management as business
collaboration platforms, which supposedly solve a
number of problems including without limitation
access control and security, regulatory compliance
and retention, etc.  With all of those advantages,
what reason could there possibly be to locate
shared content on a conventionally-accessible
file-structured storage?

A further advantage of most collaboration
platforms is that they make it almost impossible
for average users to automate or script any aspect
of their work--perhaps in a way that a vendor, or
some IT applications architecture committee, did
not contemplate.  This, to IT managers, is a good
thing.

--Neil