Is IBF for you?
One of the most commonly asked questions I have heard in regards to Information Bridge Framework so far is “Who is this (targeted) for?” That’s a really fair question even though most people I know who have seen the demos agree that it could be utilized in many interesting scenarios that could help any organization.
So I think the answer is a fairly short one being “Anyone who uses Office and could benefit from tighter integration with other systems.”
But of course it goes a little deeper. You do have to start with the baseline prerequisite of a client-install base of Microsoft Office 2003 Professional. That doesn’t mean you need to have 2003 Pro already out on client machines already (I hope IBF is seen as a realistic value driver to compel upgrades) but you have to realize that it is going to be the “price of admission” to IBF solutions – orgs that can’t make that happened have already answered the question that it is not for them. This limitation is too bad but (thankfully) it is a technical issue and not a ‘positioning’ one made by the IBF team (the dependencies stem from needing the Xml and smart document loader features from 2k3 Pro).
But beyond the Office Version/SKU, IBF could be for just about any organization. “Do you use Outlook email and have other data? Want to see them together? IBF’s for you.”
Size of an organization doesn’t matter either. I have heard some folks say IBF is just for large enterprises. True that it is more realistic since they have the demand and the resources (technical & capital), but I have already heard of many small orgs that are going to implement IBF as well. One sector really jumping on the IBF bandwagon is Legal. Law firms range in all sizes but essentially have the same needs. IBF will work well in that vertical.
Technical complexity is a factor – IBF is not Office development of versions past – IBF it more of an enterprise-type solution than you would typically expect out of the desktop world. Therefore experience, skill and commitment requirements may rule out some orgs that simply can’t extend to scale up to IBF. Web services are another factor that may cause hesitation because the adoption rate is still fairly low. But do note that IBF is designed around the use of Web services but their use is not a required for IBF solutions.
So is IBF for you and your org? I am sure if you look at it, you can come up with a ton of ways to include IBF… I will leave the “How” for another post…