Web Content Management - High-Performance Web Databases: Design, Development, and Deployment - page 94

One result of this perception is that most IT organizations do not find the
managing of documents and content an attractive area in which to build
their competencies. Most IT organizations find much more success in
focusing their efforts only on managing information stored as structured
data. Most IT methodologies and tools, such as structured analysis and
design, and data modeling, were specifically created to handle only struc-
tured data. The applicability and utility of these structured methodologies
and tools in the content world are questionable. As a result, IT skills and
methodologies that were developed to address the complexities of manag-
ing information stored as documents or content are often perceived as
arcane and not within the realm of mainstream IT.
The collective end result is that currently, most IT professionals with
standard IT backgrounds and skills often do not possess the additional skill
sets to work effectively with unstructured data. In particular, they lack the
in-depth understanding required to be able to effectively explain in busi-
ness terms, the complexities around unstructured data to both colleagues
and non-IT business professionals. More importantly, they lack the ability
to recognize opportunities and to create effective business cases for
addressing such IT endeavors.
HOW DID THE LACK OF AUTOMATION IN CONTENT AND DOCUMENT
MANAGEMENT CONTRIBUTE TO TODAY'S BUSINESS DILEMMA?
Without IT support and the benefits of automation, most business peo-
ple dealing with documents and content have been left to their own
devices. They attempted many different non-IT solutions to minimize the
inefficiencies that were left as a result of a nineteenth century approach to
unstructured data in the office. Some examples of the attempts at a solu-
tion were:
• optimizing antiquated local filing systems
• retaining large numbers of administrative staff
• engraining the old processes in the culture and the organization struc-
ture in the name of efficiency
• expending considerable explicit and implicit effort into training peo-
ple in the use of these antiquated filing systems
• retaining otherwise unproductive individuals who were the old-time
gurus of these processes and filing systems
• optimizing paper processing, storage, and distribution
• implementing departmental imaging applications
• utilizing ever-increasing volumes of office space to enable the local
presence of teams that needed to collaborate and access local files
• more creating huge LAN server farms with complex directory struc-
tures and folder hierarchies where people could store and sometimes
find their unstructured information