Document Mgt Roll-up: Google Backs LibreOffice, SharePoint's Records Management Traction

By David Roe (@druadh20) Jun 21, 2011

This week, with some of the dust beginning to settle on Oracle’s OpenOffice decision, Google is backing LibreOffice with advice and funding, SharePoint seems to be gaining ground in records management, Nuance closes the Equitrac deal, we took a look at document management on-premise or as an SaaS and Office 365 may be on the way.

Google Backs LibreOffice

Whatever the impact Oracle’s decision to hand OpenOffice.org (OOo) to the Apache Foundation, as opposed to the Document Foundation (TDF ), which is developing the other side of that fork in the shape of LibreOffice (news, site), it seems that LibreOffice will not be short of some very heavyweight supporters.

During the week, TDF announced the first members of its Advisory Board, which includes Google, SUSE and Red Hat among others, all of whom will serve for an initial period of a year.

The body represents TDF's sponsors, with each sponsor having the right to one representative. They will provide the future Board of Directors with advice, guidance and proposals, and will consult regularly on the further development of the Foundation and its associated projects.

Seems everyone’s happy to be there. Jeremy Allison, co-founder of Samba and member of Google’s Open Source Programs Office, described the creation of the Document Foundation’s Advisory board as a great step and said Google would provide funding and advice to advance TDF’s work. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

Records Management Traction in SharePoint?

Recently, Colligo (news, site) held a webinar about the use of SharePoint for records management, which was interesting in itself. Following the webinar, it released some of the information about who and what attended, which holds an interest in itself as it seems to suggest that SharePoint is really beginning to gain traction in this space.

Nearly 3,000 SharePoint professionals participated in the event entitled Unleashing SharePoint 2010 for Records Management, Governance and Compliance, the largest number for any SharePoint webinar to date, Colligo says.

A survey of webinar participants revealed:

Using SharePoint 2010 for records management shows significant traction in large enterprises, with nearly half of all webinar participants representing organizations of over 1,000 employees.
Records management is the primary business driver for enterprises over 1,000 employees that deploy SharePoint, followed by document management and collaboration.
Nearly half of all participants held IT/Technical positions, suggesting that records management in SharePoint is still driven by an organization’s IT department.
The top industry represented in the webinar was government, followed closely by computer services and computer software.

It’s hard to draw conclusions from a survey of people at a webinar, but Colligo’s findings here support anecdotal evidence in many quarters, suggesting the improvements to records management with SharePoint 2010 has been a success. If you care to, have a listen here.