Migrating to FileNet P8 4.5
I want it risk free, efficient and cheap
Audience - this discussion is oriented towards Technical Managers, Project Managers, Business Analysts, Systems Analysts, and the FileNet or ECM or EDMS system owners. It is not intended as a detailed technical explanation. RSCA (RS Computer Associates, LLC.) welcomes technical input and is well prepared to collaborate on these topics at any level. It is; however, our intent to help the overall system ownership community to make an informed decision related to an IBM P8 4.x migration.
Why history is relevant to your P8 4.5 migration. The question is not really should I migrate but when? If you are a FileNet customer today then you have been through the process of researching and selecting an ECM solution for your organization. The good and bad news is that nothing is forever. In the world of software solutions we accept and want them to change over time with the goal of becoming increasingly feature rich. This is certainly the case with FileNet. FileNet has been a leader in the document management, enterprise content management and business process management space for decades - yes, decades. FileNet began in the 1980’s delivering leading edge solutions using propriety hardware and software - in some cases down to the operating system. FileNet moved with the times and established foundational principles to be as agnostic as possible to the underlying IT infrastructure. In the 1990’s FileNet produced a full suite of products to meet customer’s needs. In the case of Image Services (IS) platform independence was achieved. Content Services on the other hand was a necessary product that remained Windows reliant. This small amount of history is relevant in that it explains very much why we are where we are today.
So the good news is that FileNet as a brand has a long history of vision. The vision for FileNet software has been more than instrumental in keeping the broader user community in front of their competition. Yes, that’s right - many organizations consider their use of FileNet to be a competitive edge within their industry. That is why many companies can be mentioned as users but remain reluctant to share details of how FileNet is specifically used to support their business.
The bad news is that some changes (by this we mean new software releases) require more planning and effort than others to deploy - especially when a migration is involved. When we talk about migration what we mean is the software can not be upgraded in a way that all of the content, security and configuration remain in place. A migration generally means that a new installation is conducted and then the configuration and content from the old system is transferred to the new system. A fresh software installation is generally concurrent with a new hardware; thus, even more effort, cost and planning. So the bad news is there is additional risk and cost associated with an upgrade that includes a migration. Our job (and goal) is to mitigate risk and contain cost.
This brings us back to the history lesson. In the 2000’s FileNet P8 was born. The vision of P8 was to be the unified platform for true enterprise business process management and content management. Moving to P8 as a new platform was a big step (and risk) for FileNet and many Content Services users were concerned. I was at the FileNet user convention (UserNet) session when the release of P8 was discussed; I would say the temperament was unsettled to be polite. FileNet assured the user community that Content Services would remain a supported platform (for the foreseeable future). Looking back now I can confidently say that I believe FileNet was right in making the jump to P8; that decision was visionary and has kept the FileNet brand as the leader when looking to a unified platform for ECM and document centric BPM. And yes, to keep this discussion concise I am purposely staying out of the whole Workflow Desktop, to Visual Workflow, to Eprocess, to BPM history also going on over the past two decades.
Next year is 2010 so we are a blink away from a new decade and the future of Content Services is certainly a question to ponder. Content Services is clearly on life support with no new features being added for some. In addition, a large percentage of the Content Services user community has converted to P8. With FileNet now being an IBM brand the future of Content Services is rumored to be under evaluation. And, should you own an IBM repository such as CM8 or Content Manager on Demand (CMOD), or FileNet Image Services there are even more questions to consider related to a P8 4.5 migration.
Migration Scenarios
As briefly mentioned above we are referring to the ‘upgrade’ to P8 4.5 as a migration in this discussion since the target audience is user communities with content repositories that will require migration. Certainly not every organization needs or warrants a migration so we will briefly define the most prevalent migration scenarios:
- CS to P8 CM - Content Services is functionally replaced by P8 CM (Content Manager). CS does not integrate OOTB (Out Of The Box) with P8. FileNet offered the ‘Accelerate to P8′ program for about two years after the introduction of P8. These programs are long gone.
- IS to P8 CM - Image Services (IS) is available as the updated IMAE (Image Manager Active Edition). IMAE allows your IS environment to integrate OOTB with P8 via CFS (Content Federated Services). Some scenarios exist where customers choose not to use IMAE and instead choose to migrate to a single P8 CM repository.
- P8 CM to P8 CM - some customers inherited multiple P8 systems and wish to consolidate. There was also a major platform change with the release of P8 4.x to standardize the P8 suite on a J2EE platform. Some aspects of these configurations constitute a migration since a fresh installation is required.
- Combinations - organizations with multiple repositories (primarily IS and CS) are considering consolidation to a single P8 solution. Factors involved in this analysis include business needs, support requirements, and total cost of ownership.
Image Services users enjoy many features including high volume capacity and a highly secure archive solution. Many communities need the feature set of IS; however, there are also many cases where P8 alone meets all the needs and offers additional features. In these cases a migration to P8 Content Manager with a migration of content from IS to P8 makes sense.
Content Services is the Panagon content management solution that is functionally replaced by P8 Content Manager. Custom built applications, satisfaction with the current solution, and cost are all good reasons that customers have delayed moving from CS to P8 Content Manager. IBM now essentially has Content Services on life support with no major enhancements planned. The expanded features of P8 (including but not limited to records, email, and business process management) are simply not available without a migration. Add to this that many Content Services customizations were developed using visual basic which is now unsupported by Microsoft.
P8 Content Manager has now been out for about seven years (originally released in 2002 as BrightSpire). The current situation is that many customers are working with a very stable and productive 3.5.x platform and skipped the P8 4.0.x upgrade. The primary reason for the delay is that P8 4.0 included the rewrite of the remaining components so that P8 is now a homogeneous J2EE architecture. Due to the architecture changes 4.x upgrades essentially became a reinstall with a migration of configuration files and content. This ‘heavy lifting’ combined with the risk of moving quickly to the new architecture caused many organizations to stay with their existing FileNet solutions. With P8 4.5 the 4.x architecture is mature and all organizations with FileNet version from P8 3.5.2 and early should be seriously considering an upgrade.
Finally we come to organizations with multiple of repositories. Many customers own Image Services and Content Services or in some cases Image Services and a separate P8 Content Manager system. There are many good reasons to use IS side by side with a content management solution. We will not cover the details of the evaluation here but suffice it to say that there are a number of organizations can consolidate to a single P8 Content Manager solution. P8 is a highly secure and scalable platform that meets the need of many organizations for image capture, archive, and content management.
Legacy IBM ECM solutions may also be part of this equation. The IBM ECM family of products also includes CM8 and CMoD. If your organization owns multiple IBM ECM solutions (CS, IS, P8, CM8, and CMoD) then you should consider a consolidation or perhaps methods to leverage the benefits of each system through a single user interface. The point is that multiple repositories may be costing your organization money either in direct cost or indirectly through lost staff productivity. Either way it is worth the investigation because a consolidation project either for the back end repositories, front end user applications or both often reaps more in savings than the cost of the project.
P8 4.5 Stimulus Program
RSCA recognizes that businesses in general are working very hard to contain costs. In an effort to assist, RSCA offers our own stimulus packages to IBM ECM users. The current offering related to P8 4.5 upgrades is simple:
If RSCA conducts your content migration
we will install and configure your
P8 4.5 system for FREE
RSCA has been conducting content migrations and system implementations for 15 years. We have tools specifically designed to facilitate the export, mapping, and import process. In addition our project processes include the analysis techniques to evaluate you migration and establish a fixed timeline. Contact us to learn more about how we will reduce project risk while containing cost.
Contact us for a free consulting engagement to determine if a migration to P8 4.5 is advantageous to your organization
About RSCA - RS Computer Associates, LLC. (RSCA) is long term ECM and BPM solution provider specialized in IBM ECM technology. In our 17 years of experience we have delivered thousands of solutions saving our customers millions of dollars. RSCA has leveraged our past experiences to build turn key solutions that are rapidly deployed and tailored to the user needs using advanced tools. RSCA is a ValueNet partner, Value Added Reseller as well as installation and first level support certified IBM FileNet business partner.
Disclaimer - This article is written based on actual experiences gathered over 17 years of industry experience supplemented by research. Any errors are unintentional. Many details are excluded to support concise discussion. Please contact info@rscompass.com to provide input or pursue personal discussion.