The Enterprise Content Management Blog

CMS Haters To Gather in NYC

OK, the headline's a little strong, but it did grab your attention.

While I was scanning Twitterville, I noticed CMSWire was microblogging about the upcoming "I Hate My CMS" event in New York City. I'm fairly confident (like you) I could personally sign up a few hundred folks for this one.

The promoters actually nailed it:

"While CMSes are among the most vital systems in digital businesses, they are also among the most cursed due to their limitations and idiosyncrasies."

Most of us know how important content management systems are to serving our markets, but unfortunately there's just as many of us that would rejoice if we never had to touch a CMS toolset again.

According to organizers, the panel will address CMS issues from customer and vendor viewpoints in addition to commentary from a technology analyst. The "tales from the trenches" part should alone be worth the price of admission.

Panelists include:

* Kyle McNabb, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
* Tim Peters, Managing Director, Leading Hotels of the World/LHW.com
* Albert Lee, Director of Technology, New York Magazine

The Society for Information Management (SIM)and the Internet Strategy Forum are hosting the event.

If someone Twitters the event, send along details and I'll be sure to tune in.

 

Technorati tags: content+management, internet+strategy+forum, SIM, technology+events, twitter, microblogging, CMS

First posted @ Information Week's Content Management Blog

Gilbane Group Goes Deep on CM in 2007

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know I like to stir things up at times. Nothing serious, just a little ribbing here and there. After all, if we take this stuff too seriously we'll all jump off a cliff someday. With that said, next up is Gilbane Group and a few predictions from one of their consultants.

    1.  Web 2.0 will continue to be big, but by the end of the year won't be called that anymore, and much of the hoopla will be over.

Let me get this straight. You're telling me Web 2.0 will    continue to live large but by the end of the year the party is over? ( Scratching head | Reaching for Excedrin )

     2. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (with it's unfortunate nickname MOSS) will be much more widely implemented than expected, but not always for the right reasons.

Note to self: When consulting with customers in the future, never forget to point out that software can fail because it might be installed for the wrong reasons.

   3. The era of "Customer-Centric Content Management' as introduced by The Rockley Group will start to gain significant momentum.

Since when has content management not been customer-centric? It sounds like Gilbane's drinking the IBM | FileNET "Content-Centric" juice.

Maybe I'll start a category called "The Un-Analyst." ;)

Technorati tags: gilbane+group, analysts, rockley+group, unanalyst, web+2.0, content+management, ECM, sharepoint, MOSS

Half a Billion Up for Grabs in Document Collaboration and Nobody Wants It?

I ran across this ebizQ story (nice headline) on document collaboration and wanted to throw it out to the group. It looks like ebizQ references this Butler Group report.

"Butler Group estimates the size of the global Document Collaboration segment of the ECM market to be US$586 million in 2007."

OK, big need, lots of incumbent providers. So why does document collaboration suck? Are the enterprise vendors inept at pitching collaboration? Have users given up on the big software vendors for lack of integration and usability? Has everyone just developed a personal collaboration strategy using IM, email, and web 2.0 stuff until someone gets it right?

And specifically:

• What's everyone using these days for collaboration?
  
• Do the collaborative capabilities within your ECM platform satisfy your needs?
  
• What 3rd party collaboration tools have you plugged in?
  (BaseCamp, Zoho, Groove, Google Docs|JotSpot,cyn.in)

I'm curious.

Technorati tags: document+collaboration, collaboration, ECM, ecm+vendors, butler+group, analysts, collaboration+software

Burton Group Coins Enterprise Attention Management (EAM)

Helping companies manage information is big business. Which means every consultancy, especially the big ones, is jockeying to be seen as the thought leader. And I guess with that thought leadership comes the enviable task of inventing new acronyms. Enter Enterprise Attention Management (EAM).

First thing I thought of was Enterprise Attention Deficit Disorder (EADD). Now that, I thought, would be dead-on. Between my 150 or so RSS feeds, Skype, Groove, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, and others, discerning between what's valuable and what's noise is tough.

The man behind EAM, Burton Group VP Craig Roth,explains his method to all this information madness. 

"EAM is a method for improving the effectiveness of an enterprise's information workers by providing culture, processes, and tools to gain control over the messages sent, received, and discovered by its information workers."

And it's encouraging to see someone making an argument for some of the social media (web2.0) and collaborative technologies I'm so fond of. His "attentional technologies" category is rife with Web 2.0 technologies -- RSS, Atom, social networking -- they're all there.

The other point about getting us to use the capabilities that exist within our toolsets is a good one. Admit it, how many of you actually set your IM presence indicator to busy?

You can go down the application line -- Microsoft Word, Instant Messaging, Blogs -- there's always plenty of features we haven't turned on. Look at Wordpress for instance. Do you think you could ever keep up with all the plug-ins that could make your life so much easier? If I didn't have Akismet on WOW Feed I'd go nuts trying to manage the influx of spam.

And who knows, if Roth's techno term sticks, maybe all the IT folks can add another line to their resume. I can see it now.

All that support for desktop software, PBX, and Blackberry syncing becomes: "Enterprise Attention Management support for Fortune 500 company in financial services sector".

Love it.

Technorati tags: enterprise+attention+management, information+technology, burton+group, social+media, web+2.0, analysts

9 Comments on Gartner's ECM Magic Quadrant

I noticed a couple of things recently on John Mancini's ECM Industry Watch blog. The thing you'll be interested in is Gartner's latest ECM Magic Quadrant. I never understood the "magic" part but never mind. I also noticed John added The Enterprise Content Management Blog to his blogroll. For that, thank you Mr. Mancini. Now back to the Gartner boys.

A couple of very quick observations.

1. The ECM space is more wide open than ever.
   And the comment below doesn't help one of the perceived leaders - IBM/FileNET.
   
   
   
   
2. Who is Ever (Ever Team)?
   Forgive my European ECM ignorance, but are these  guys  really the leader?
   
   
3. Who is Cimage? ( And don't let engineers build your website)
   
   
4. "More vertical apps" needs to banned from analysts' comments ( hint: we know this already)
   
   
5. Oracle/Stellent combo is obviously misplaced as the report was published pre-acquisition.
   
   
6. SAP needs to buy someone, anyone.
   
   
7. Interwoven is ahead of Vignette
   
   
8. When will everyone quit saying Open Text is in a "critical juncture".
   
   
9. MOSS 2007 will help, but Microsoft is still a ways away from a true ECM backend and vertical apps(oops I said it).

Lastly, will someone please leave a comment so we'll have an even 10? Have a great weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source : Gartner ( ECM Magic Quadrant, October 11, 2006)

Technorati tags: gartner, gartner+magic+quadrant, ECM, ECM+vendors, enterprise+blogging, enterprise+content+managem, analysts, open+text, IBM+filenet, oracle+stellent, interwoven, vignette, microsoft+ecm

Do You Really Need Soup-to-Nuts ECM?

I received a comment recently from IBM Info Evangelist Marc Andrews on the recent mini-poll I ran on the ECM blog. Thanks for your comment Marc. Ok, I admit it. The headline was meant to stir things up a bit. You're right though, the results show there's a heck of a lot of people that think the IBM / FileNET marriage bodes well for everyone.

As far as having the most comprehensive ECM capabilities?

I wouldn't argue there either. What I would ask is do we really need a soup-to-nuts ECM for everybody platform? Now I know we're not quite to web 2.0's version of ECM, but can't you sense customers' inclinations to blend hybrid services (SaaS) and software pieces together to satisfy most of their ECM requirements? I guess what concerns me is when customers get into a classic case of vendor lock-in. You know, when vendors start approaching you with the "stack" pitch. When someone says I'll give you the repository, workflow, and collaboration pieces that fit together nicely, I have to call bullshit be a little skeptical. One thing is for sure. IBM is probably one of the few companies that have the resources to pull off that stack you just bought.

Technorati tags: IBM, filenet, ecm+solutions, ecm+vendors, ecm+strategy, information+management, ECM, content+management, content+management+2.0

The Industry Spin on IBM and FileNET

Things are starting to settle down a bit after the IBM acquisition of FileNET. Last week I received the formal email announcement from FileNET Chairman Lee Roberts outlining most of what's already in the public domain. It's been interesting to see how each describe what the other brings to the table.

Here's one from Roberts' email.

"The integration of FileNet's content-centric business process management capabilities with IBM's industry-leading business integration provides the broadest continuum of capabilities for process automation solutions where content management is required"

Content-centric BPM seems to be what everyone's preaching about -- sounds like a fancy way to say we do ECM and BPM.
I think most of you saw how BPM was driving a lot of FileNET's P8 wins over the last year or so. It just doesn't seem like the "BPM and ECM intersecting" speak has evolved much. One thing is for certain. It's been done ad nauseam.

With so much going on with Web 2.0 (content management 2.0),open source, SaaS, and such, where's the forward thinking? I realize it's the "enterprise" and we shouldn't get too cute with all the new-fangled stuff, but if I'm a customer I'm not only thinking about interoperability,I'd also like to know about things like RSS,Wikis, portlets, and blogs.   

Formtek's Dick Weisinger intimated similar thoughts about the integration points.
"FileNet users, many probably with heavily customized implementations, are probably having serious concerns about what the IBM integration strategy will be." At least Dick was diplomatic. I'd replace "serious concerns" with scared @#*#@!-less.
In all fairness (it's easier being an industry observer) one analyst (Andi Mann) was pretty eloquent.

“You saw it [during the teleconference] with them talking up business process management, the BPM stuff. IBM had a big hole in their information management strategy around that capability of passing content from place to place to place in a structured manner to support the business process,” he explains. “IBM obviously has the middleware for delivering the information, and with DB2 Content Manager On Demand, they have a pretty good repository for storing unstructured data, but this really does complete that play for them. It gives them the ability to pass information in a structured way from person to person to person.”

Couldn't have said it better myself.

tags: ecm, ecm+vendors, filenet, ibm, content+management, documentum, emc+documentum, open+source

// Cross-posted on George Dearing's FileNET blog.

Does ECM Consolidation Help Anyone?

Matt Asay kicked off more ECM discussion this morning citing some of John Newton's comments on the recent string of ECM acquisitions. As far as ECM consolidation benefiting anyone, I think you can point to several examples. FileNET customers should be happy as the number of potential implementers just increased exponentially. And having worked for a FileNET partner, I can tell you the list of qualified companies that can actually make all the ECM moving parts work (especially FILE)  is short. As far as Big Blue, am I the only one confused when I hear them describe their "Information On Demand" strategy? I asked a few folks recently about IBM's ECM infrastructure and most just quipped back with, "they're IBM, they have software to address any ECM requirement". Not the answer I want to hear if I'm a customer. With FileNET in hand however, IBM now has more off-the-shelf ECM functionality, which should shorten the development times to get customers where they need to be.

And what about the other software sectors? I can't imagine the ECM up tick won't be a boon to the business intelligence (BI) and SOA software sectors. With all the repositories, dashboards, and BPM pieces being fit together, customers and partners alike will certainly require added levels of visibility and service-oriented integration. That should equate to more business for both the system integrators (SIs) and software companies. Customers should benefit from the increase in the number of vertical applications stemming from all the channel activity. Who else benefits? Or are my views too narrow?

Technorati Tags : ecm+vendors, ecm, hummingbird, open+text, emc+documentum, filenet, ibm, soa, alfresco

Big Blue Buys FileNET

So it wasn't HP after all. I'll have more on this later. George Dearing's Big Blue FileNet Blog? Hmmm.

Technorati Tags : ecm, filenet, ibm, ecm+vendors, content+management, open+text, emc, documentum

What Does Further Consolidation Mean For FileNet?

A CIBC analyst chimed in last week on the Open Text / Hummingbird deal saying he didn't think the two companies would compete any better against larger rivals.

"Although Hummingbird will add scale to Open Text, we believe it will not meaningfully enhance Open Text's competitive positioning versus large ECM (enterprise content management) providers such as Microsoft, IBM and EMC."

And conspicuously no mention of FileNet as one of the larger rivals. Several folks around the web are speculating what the folks in Costa Mesa might be thinking. There doesn't seem to be many viable merger candidates left for FileNet. At least none that would increase their competitive chances against the usual foes. And if you look at other software sectors, (business intelligence, security, ERP, BPM) most of the companies that would be a good FileNet fit have been snapped up. I still think the most likely scenario is HP or Oracle. With so many imaging systems in place, HP has the wherewithal to develop new applications on top of that infrastructure along with the systems integration capabilities to provide connectivity to legacy systems. Throw in the HP partner channel for icing on the cake. And why Oracle? Maybe customers and analysts would take their ECM aspirations seriously if they bought FileNet. And there's plenty of FileNet customers that have backend Oracle ERP modules that could easily be connected to imaging and content pieces from FileNet P8. What do you think?

Technorati Tags : ecm, ecm+vendors, filenet, hummingbird, open+text, emc+documentum, IBM, microsoft, ecm+strategy

 

Cross-posted on George Dearing's FileNet Blog

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OpenText and Hummingbird Marriage Makes Sense

The ECM market's heating up with the latest move again involving Hummingbird. This time the suitor is OpenText. I see Alan has already shared his thoughts and the news is starting to move across the web. This seems like a good move for OpenText on a couple of fronts. Like it or not, Hummingbird is still known to many as a mid-market play. That will certainly help as the two companies join forces with Microsoft. Add specialty ECM applications to Microsoft's business applications and you've got an opportunity to steal some market share. Additionally, the agility gained from Hummingbird's mid-market experience should help OpenText win more deals as ECM dollars continue to get squeezed by open source vendors and downstream players.

Technorati Tags : ECM, content+management, Open+Text, FileNet, Documentum, Hummingbird, ecm+vendors

 

What's the Real News in Oracle's ECM Announcement?

The byline for big software vendors that announce ECM roadmaps should be "we too are bringing content management to the masses." Granted, there was some significance to Oracle's plans announced last week, namely the ECM-ish capabilities baked into their flagship RDBMS. But do we really want or need content management for the masses? Seems like we have quite a bit of mass content management already in the form of blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other web-native applications. What we really need is content management that's usable. Why do you think all the self-publishing models caught on so fast? Because it's easy. How 'bout an announcement from Oracle on how they intend to make ECM easier to implement, configure, and integrate? Nope. Just more fodder on how much easier it'll be to use all of the Oracle stuff you know and love for other things like ECM. And if you caught some of the Oracle partner announcements, you saw the group hug between Open Text and Oracle.

I did think Connie Moore's comments were somewhat poignant.

"Eventually content management companies like FileNet and Interwoven and EMC and Vignette, etc., will have to stop selling their own proprietary file systems and use a content repository from a RDBMS vendor," Moore said in an e-mail. She went on to say customers would eventually buy their content repositories directly from RDBMS vendors and choose any content management application they want to use. "That means the content management vendors will be left with very little value add, which is why they are 1. trying to get better at business process management; 2. developing content-centric business apps; and 3. adding new capabilities like e-discovery for litigation," she added.

If you agree with Connie, the FileNets and Interwovens are in a bit of trouble. FileNet, for one, needs to figure out how to upsell their existing imaging customers on the whole ECM vision instead of just relying on BPM to drive the enterprise sale. And I've really never been sold on the long-term viability of Interwoven. I think when they compete in the larger ECM dogfights, they won't have a chance against Oracle, IBM, Documentum, and FileNet. Too many enterprise users still see their heritage in things like intranets and web content management(WCM).

Thoughts On Open Source Content Management

Is it me or is open source software (OSS) everywhere now? Question is, are the OSS vendors taking market share from traditional players? I think it's a soft yes for now, but you can bet over the next 2-3 years it'll be a resounding, harsh to the ears, YES. Why? Here's what Alan Pelz Sharpe says.

For starters, more and more software is being introduced into the enterprise via end-users. How many times have you heard someone say, "Hey, I can download a widget that plugs into our _______ application and provide the same functionality." Fact is, the pervasiveness and maturity of web services and service-orientation is driving much of the OSS push. With SOA platforms in place, it's a heck of a lot easier to introduce content services into the enterprise. The leanness of the code base and deployment speed alone are luring many companies to open source infrastructure. The other concurrent effect shifting users to open source CMS are the blog platforms now being integrated into much of the enterprsie fabric. Knowledge management blogs, collaborative blogs, project blogs, you name it and it's probably been done. Blog platforms like Movable Type and Word Press are compelling enough today to justify using them to manage all of your website content. And I still believe there's an opportunity for one of the traditional ECM vendors to start slowly breaking away from the rest if they can just capitalize on some of the best of web 2.0 and its user-driven approach. Of course, some say the Oracles, Microsofts, and IBMs will just bake ECM into everything and acquire what's left. Game over. I like the romanticism of the Web 2.0 / ECM combo better.

The Microsoft Effect on ECM

Here's more evidence of Microsoft's influence on the ECM space.

"Other content management vendors (notably Open Text) also say they'll work with, rather than compete against, Microsoft's coming technology. There's room for both, they say, because Microsoft will deliver generic building blocks at a low cost, while the high-end vendors will add industry- and application-specific solutions on top of that infrastructure."

The value of Grids and SOA in Financial Services

FinanceTech has a quick piece on SOA and Grid adoption within financial services.
The scenario below paints the vision pretty well..

"Imagine being a credit risk analyst not having to log into six applications to get a single view of your client exposure. You run a risk model on your entire portfolio and get results within seconds, not minutes. As an end user, you just leveraged SOA, and grid computing helped you quickly marshal enormous computing resources. The IT group developed the application at a fraction of the cost and time it would otherwise need—that's what SOA and grid make possible."

Dissecting the ECM Marketplace

Alan Pelz-Sharpe dissects the ECM marketplace, focusing on the eternal battle between the traditional ECM vendors (FileNet,OpenText) and the platform vendors that want more ECM real estate. I agree with most of his comments, though I'm not sure it'll take 7-8 years before Big Blue, Redmond, and Ellison own the majority of unstructured data infrastructure. The area where the platform vendors beat the incumbent ECM vendors is the sheer number of applications they can tout on top of their platform. While the ECM suite vendors have the "best of breed" notion that Alan speaks of nailed, it's the broader set of off-the-shelf functionality they lack when a customer wants to build say, an HR or Accounts Payable application. But of course, that's why ECM vendors need strong partner channels, so companies like us can speed the delivery of horizontal or vertical applications.

Forrester says ECM will top software growth through 2008

According to Forrester Research, compliance and governance are pushing ECM to the front of the software purchasing line. In fact, they say over over the next two years, ECM will see a 19 percent CAGR that will eclipse other software categories.

"Rather than purchasing multiple products to address varying content and usage needs, firms are looking for enterprise content platforms that provide a common set of services."

Leaders:

• EMC Documentum is a good choice for organizations interested in making ECM an extension of their existing IT information management infrastructure. This vendor seeks to advance its ECM capabilities into a broad information life-cycle management platform.
• IBM's information management strategy and its broad ECM portfolio helped this vendor overcome average scores for its current offering and below-average suite readiness scores.

Strong Performers:

• FileNet is a good fit for organizations with high-volume production imaging needs coupled with human-centric BPM requirements.
• Hummingbird benefits from strong document management and a newly acquired WCM product from RedDot Solutions. It is best suited for organizations that need document and Web content management with a focus on end user usability.
• Interwoven offers a broad set of ECM capabilities and excels in Web content management, document management, and digital asset management. This vendor's strategy is focused on meeting organizations' content-centric needs.
• Open Text, through acquisitions, has created a broad ECM suite of capabilities and can expect improvement with a focus on content-centric applications.
• Oracle has limited ECM capability breadth but a strong foundation that appeals to IT decision makers.
• Stellent's high scores in breadth of capabilities, suite readiness, and architecture offset a limited set of extended capabilities like collaboration and business process management.
• Vignette's suite readiness is negatively influenced by lack of common administration and separate repository services for individual products, but it is very suitable for organizations in need of high-performance WCM, high-volume production imaging, and integrated document and records management requirements.

Contenders:

• Microsoft has a powerful vision but is late to the game with very limited current capabilities. However, it still has the potential to become a stronger performer in the next few years.
• Mobius works best for organizations with deep archiving and report management requirements, which it complements with basic ECM functionality.

Study says ECM is a Priority for Insurance Executives

According to Celent's initial results of their CIO/CTO Priorities Study, meeting"market demands" is the top driver of IT initiatives in insurance. And not suprisingly, document and content management took one of the top spots when execs rated their project priorities.

"High-priority projects are those focused on document/content management, business intelligence/reporting, data warehouses, network security and transactional agent portals."

Intelligent Enterprise comments on EMC / Captiva Deal

Here's the story.

"From another perspective, however, Captiva's base of 5,000 customers (reportedly including half of the Global 2,000) will provide a rich source of leads for EMC, potentially driving sales of Documentum ECM systems, Documentum Application Xtender (a departmental content management system formerly sold by Legato) and EMC storage products including Centera systems. There's also the fact that FileNet, for one, reportedly gains as much as 20 percent of its revenue from sales of its own capture software. And FileNet recently released an upgrade to its capture software, claiming tighter integration with records retention functionality."

Is Web Content Management Making a Comeback?

Many agree web content management (WCM) may be making a comeback. Whether you agree or not, I think it's fair to say an ECM vendor will invariably be approached about its WCM capabilities. After all, the benefit of ECM has always been purported as having the capability to extend your content across the enterprise. And that means websites, intranets, extranets, whatever web properties exist. Insert WCM here.

And as Tony Byrne reflects below, the stronger the WCM message, the better chance a vendor has to become "strategic".

WCM lost favor among several ECM players "in part because the seat license numbers (and recurring maintenance revenue) are smaller than in document management and compliance deals," says Tony Byrne, founder and principle analyst at CMSWatch. "Now I think there is a growing recognition that an ECM vendor that wants to be a strategic partner to a major customer--hopefully 'the' strategic partner--needs to have a good WCM story."

Byrne says EMC Documentum, FileNet, Open Text and Hummingbird "didn't come to the party with strong WCM modules, but all four of those companies are working fairly hard now to make up ground."

Companies Want BPM Templates

Starter-kit approaches to BPM continue to be popular with users. This time the notion is backed up by Delphi Group's survey of more than 100 companies.

"Among all 111 users surveyed, about a third said they would "definitely" be more likely to purchase a solution accompanied by a template than a purely horizontal solution lacking any vertical or domain orientation. This camp jumps to over two thirds when adding those who said they would "sometimes" be more likely to opt for a solution with templates."

Which Process Templates Would Be of Most Interest to Your Company?
13%	Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance
12%	General A/P (billing disputes)
12%	New customer or service provisioning
11%	Procure-to-Pay (supplier)
10%	New hire/employee provisioning
10%	Software development
9%	Expense reimbursement
9%	Order-to-cash (customer)
9%	Underwriting or claims processing
5%	Other

ECM Strategies in Financial Services

FinanceTech asked industry experts to comment on ECM solutions in Financial Services.

Reduce Compliance Costs with ECM

You can put the compliance content below into the "this is perfect for ECM" category. Two things here. The first is the added business benefit you get by documenting processes. Pretty obvious, but more importantly, it's how the processes are improved after heightened analysis.The second is how technology can automate some of the key elements in the compliance lifecycle. AMR Research says you can reduce SOX compliance by 25% with the right mix of technology. The right mix includes the usual suspects -- capture, imaging, records management -- all core components within ECM suites.

From the story :

"The area where companies may be a bit more vulnerable this year — because auditors may focus more intently on this issue — is on the ability of their IT systems to support controlled processes.""The ROI from documenting the processes is discovering ways to improve processes," said Robert D. Kugel CFA, vice president and research director at Ventana Research.

Technology to automate key parts of the process of repeatability, sustainability, and cost effectiveness can reduce the cost of SOX compliance upwards of 25 percent, according to John Hagerty, vice president of research, at AMR Research. In a January, 2005 report, he wrote that without new technology most companies will overspend on internal employees and external consultants while their manual processes will lead to higher external audit costs.

"To automate SOX compliance, you will need to spend between $100,000 and $1 million."

Establish Your Records Management Strategy Now

BPM Today is pitching the value of interlinked paper processes and electronic systems, using Enterprise Records Management (ERM) as the glue. They also validate what you already know. Technology is a small piece of the solution. What's required is to create a plan for how your company will use Records Management (RM) by establishing guidlelines, business rules, executive sponsorship, etc.

"While the technology is essential, it accounts for only about one-third of what is required to implement and maintain a records management program."

"In a study conducted by Xerox and research firm IDC, fewer than 40% of organizations surveyed have digitized the workflow in their document-dependent business process.

As much as organizations would like to eliminate paper, a document strategy that ignores the complementary relationship of paper and digital information will be ineffective.

Documents and the information contained within them are at the core of all I.T. strategies, and have risen to the forefront as a key enabler of efficient business processes. From back-end scanning to archival to business continuity, a successful ERM solution helps businesses respond to regulatory mandates, minimize corporate risk and improve access to critical information enterprise wide."

Related Link

Electronic Documents, Eliminating paper is key in Insurance

Watchfire released (through GomezPro) their Insurance ScoreCard last week, highlighting the major carriers' online efforts. The excerpt below underscores why ECM is eclipsing the rest of the software market.

"As they roll out paperless billing, integrate online purchase and registration processes, introduce electronic documents and signatures initiatives, and encourage online sign-up for paper suppression and automatic-debit plans, online channel managers across the industry are demonstrating a focus on investments for which they can make an ROI case to company executives."

More Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Success Stories

Steven Marlin of Information Week writes about how the City of Newark, Thirfty Car Rental , and Corporate Express used ECM to increase revenue and bolster compliance.

The article also mentions Ovum's ECM market projections and what's driving ECM strategies.

"Ovum Research pegs the market for content-management software at $1.6 billion globally, with projected annual growth of nearly 4% for the next five years. "What's driving demand is the explosion of unstructured data and what happens when companies realize that content management is a core business issue," Ovum senior analyst Sarah Kittmer says. "Compliance issues and more-stringent requirements around information retention are requiring companies to do something about unstructured data."

Forrester Research ~ "ECM is Requisite Technology"

Continuing on the "ECM is for real thread", below is an excerpt from a recent Forrester report on how ECM is outpacing the rest of the software market.

And on a related note, Big Blue touted their ECM expertise this morning pointing to a Gartner report stating they led all ECM vendors in total software license revenue.

"The market for enterprise content management (ECM) license software will exceed $3.9 billion in 2008, outpacing the overall software market with a forecasted 19% compound annual growth rate. Fueling this growth is recognition by $1 billion-plus companies that ECM is requisite technology for addressing their compliance, governance, and process efficiency needs. As larger infrastructure vendors such as Oracle and Microsoft provide ECM capabilities, the expansion of the ECM market to currently underserved geographies and vertical markets will also drive growth."

You can buy the report here.

The Many Paths to ECM

Line56 highlights the ongoing attention ECM is gaining from the big application vendors.
Not much news there, but there was some newsworthiness in webMethods release today, one that Martin LaMonica talks about over on CNet's Enterprise Software blog. You can map webMethod's strategy directly to some of the larger ECM vendors trying to expand the applications built on their content and business process platforms. I think what everyone's saying is that it's just a matter of time before the Oracles and SAPs start eating away at the ECM budgets of the pure-play vendors. But don't start the death march yet. There's a lot of activity (ECM Strategies) happening on top of the large-scale Imaging and content repositories from the likes of FileNet, EMC/documentum, OpenText and others.

Customers need better information on ECM

At a recent User Conference, John Mancini,president of trade association AIIM International, talked about the ugly side of ECM. While 91 percent of those in the know about ECM say it has clear business benefits, only 20 percent of those respondents agree that other people in their organizations would even know what ECM means.

Mancini likened the packaging of ECM technologies and suites to the overly complex and overlapping menus he has encountered at a well-known fast-food chain. Instead of ordering a bucket of chicken, today's customer is confronted with an overwhelming array of combo packages, side dishes, value menus and styles of chicken. In much the same way, would-be ECM buyers are often confronted with a confusing array of modules and technologies and all too little information on purchase, deployment and maintenance costs.

Compliance IT To Sport Double-Digit Growth Through 2009

This story ran a few weeks back and points to a recent study about Compliance-related spending.

The global market for compliance information management will grow at a 22 percent compound annual growth rate through the 2005 to 2009 period, and pass the $20 billion mark for the first time in 2009, said IDC.

"There is an increased onus on IT departments to audit, monitor, and report on all systems. This increased need will drive organizations to invest in technologies and services that help to ensure sustainability of compliance-related processes and mitigate risk."

Web Content Management (WCM) vendor analysis

Web Content Management (WCM) vendors were recently evaluated by Forrester Research. And in a related survey, the results showed that 84 percent of enterprises plan to increase their WCM deployments to consolidate rogue sites and departmental intranets.

FatWire, Tridion, and Vignette demonstrated clear product strength, offering strong dynamic content delivery and site and content personalization support.

Enterprise content management (ECM) suite vendors, Interwoven and Stellent, provided breadth through comprehensive WCM products that not only address the management and publishing of content but also help deliver dynamic, personalized user experiences.

EMC/documentum, Microsoft, Percussion, and RedDot offered products that support an organization's external site initiatives, but lacked breadth and/or depth in areas that impact their external site support.

"We are experiencing renewed interest in WCM as organizations look to consolidate Web sites and support new, Web-based growth initiatives," said Kyle McNabb, senior analyst at Forrester. "WCM is not new, and a successful implementation depends greatly on how well any product matches the diverse needs of content owners, contributors, site managers, and IT in support of the organization's external and internal site initiatives."

Does anyone care about Web Content Management (WCM)?

The Web Content Management (WCM) market continues to be the stepchild within the ECM ranks. Doug Henschen talks about the vendor strategies for WCM, and includes a few telling quotes from the vendors themselves.

"We have a services layer that allows us to expose API function calls to any third-party WCM engine. RedDot remains our partner in the small- and medium-sized enterprise space, and we find that many of our larger customers have already deployed WCM products." ~ Hummingbird

The services layer is the common theme these days with the ECM vendors...Web services and SOA has done wonders for how third-party services are accessed. It's opened up new partnerships, features, and functionality that in the past would have required re-writes, heavy integration work, and just too much time. 

Forrester analyzes Sarbox vendors

If you're sensing a Compliance trend here on the ECM blog, you'd be correct. You really can't discuss ECM without a Compliance thread surfacing. And although many infrastructure vendors are pitching their Compliance wares, you really need to look outside of just the technology. Often, that's where a consultancy like Imagine comes in. We always start with the business issues, not the technology. When we understand a company's operating environment, we can better apply the technology pieces that address a client's overall compliance needs. Lastly, is it just me or is anyone else amazed that SOX has spawned a whole new category of service providers?

From the Line56 story ~

"Forrester divides the vendors into three boxes, enterprise applications (SAP and Oracle), ECM and infrastructure (IBM and Stellent), and specialists (HandySoft, Open Pages, Stellent, and Certus) and offers the following category evaluations:

Enterprise applications vendors: Strengths:"...very strong offering for initial software releases, with tight integration with ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems for documenting controls and risks and very good reporting and monitoring tools." Weaknesses: "...late to market, so the products had less time to mature. This group also has poorer integration with existing document and records management systems."

ECM and infrastructure vendors: Strengths:"...provide both SOX and compliance frameworks for building additional compliance applications. Integration... includes collaboration, document management, and records management." Weaknesses: "...a tendency to have lighter support for the COSO framework -- a major component of SOX applications."

Specialist vendors: Strengths:"...extensive track record of implementations and deep subject matter expertise...more mature products..." Weaknesses: "Integration with existing IT systems such as collaboration, document management, ERP, and records management varies widely."