For Most Enterprises: "An ECM Solution From a Single Vendor is a Myth!"

I made this declaration while speaking at the AIIM’s Document Management Service Providers Executive Forum last month in Austin, TX. None of the 150 executives in the audience disagreed with me.

Why do I make this claim?

Well, in some instances small to midsize organizations will be able to deploy an ECM solution on one vendors’ technology. But in reality, most larger organizations have many different document management, web content management, records management, etc. technologies deployed.

Typically this happens because of mergers and acquisitions where each organization deployed different technologies over time. Or it happens because technologies were chosen at different time periods over the last 10-15 years. A good example of this phenomenon happens when an organization implemented web content management many years ago and then chose an ECM solution several years later. The ECM solution may not be from the same web content management chosen. Now most ECM vendors provide a complete set of functionality. Most have done this through acquisition of the different capabilities, but 10 years ago the most ECM leaders (EMC Documentum, IBM (FileNet), Oracle, Microsoft, and Open Text) did not have web content management.

My organization uses both Documentum and SharePoint. We also have a some Open Text, Interwoven, and Vingette deployed.

So what can you do? Pick one vendors’ technology and throw out the others over time? In some cases this strategy is not realistic.

In the next series of posts I will talk about moving to what I call a “Common Information Infrastructure”.

Technorati Tags: AIIM,ECM,FileNet,Microsoft,SharePoint,MOSS 2007,Documentum,Records Management

Say Goodbye to Open Text?

I saw this announcement earlier this week and started to think about the Open Text acquisition rumors I’d heard about and wrote about last year.

I did not really feel the need to opine further until I caught the following post from C3 Associates today entitled “SAP Agreement to Resell Livelink the First Step in the Acquisition Tango?” and it made me think about the notion of Open Text being acquired by SAP more deeply.

Well, the more I think about it the more it makes complete sense. After IBM snapped up FileNet and Oracle bought Stellent who else could SAP turn to. SAP has established sound footing powering mission critical business processes in many Global 5000 customers but has never fielded a credible ECM solution to marry to the transactional ERP solutions built on top of SAP.

By buying Open Text, SAP can own and control the unstructured content management side of the enterprise information management equation with a credible solution that can be even more tightly integrated with SAP. It just makes sense. Especially since SAP is competing with Oracle and IBM for the remaining ERP business out there.

So, what do YOU think? Will Open Text be the next redwood to be taken down in the ECM forest?

Oh, by the way, I really like the Blog over at C3 Associates and recommend that you add it to your list of feeds.

Technorati tags: Open+Text, ECM, SAP

Buzzing About The EMC Announcement About An Emmbedable ECM Platform

EMC announced the launch of an embeddable enterprise content management (ECM) platform – EMC Documentum® OEM Edition today and my long (over 250) list of feeds I watch is popping with hits about this announcement.

Here is a short list of the posts: EMC Launches “Embeddable” Documentum Platform for OEMs from Gilbane News (Just repeating the EMC press release – no analysis); Documentum|EMC to offer embedded ECM from my friend Alan Pelz-Sharpe over at CMS Watch (at least some speculation about the motivation); and EMC to offer embedded version of Documentum from InfoWorld (a little more in-depth and some quotes from Lubor Ptacek who was on my panel, the Future of ECM at AIIM).

So, the big question: Is this a big deal?

I am not so sure. The cynic in me says that EMC is trying a “Me too” approach to say they provide similar capabilities to Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM for infrastructure repository services. I don’t buy it. EMC (Documentum) is not part of the infrastructure. Documentum relies on infrastructure for their functionality and capabilities and does not replace it.

I would have been much more impressed if they had replaced their repository with Oracle Content DB or with the SharePoint repository and added a set of shared repository services on top (adding additional value) of the underlying repository.

I will reserve final judgement on the significance of this announcement until I actually get to see how an implementation built on top of the OEM platform. But for now, I am still skeptical.

Technorati tags: EMC, Documentum, Oracle

Oracle Buys Stellent: I Was Wrong – They Didn’t Buy Open Text

Hat tip to John Mancini over at ECM Industry Watch. Oracle announced after the market close that they are acquiring Stellent for a cash tender offer for $13.50 a share. Add that up and you get $440 million.

Oracle said the acquisition will complement and extend its existing content management solution portfolio, and is expected to close by the end of the year or early 2007.

Well, what will this mean for Stellent customers? Not sure. Oracle is hosting a media conference call on Monday, November 13, 2006, to outline its enterprise content management strategy. I will try and listen in.

What does this mean for Oracle? Well, they don’t have worry about taking Records Database to the JITC for DoD 5015.2 certification since Stellent has been certified against this standard. Oracle conspicuously fell off the testing schedule this past year and rumors were that there was some missing DoD core functionality. They can now leverage the sound Stellent records management product for compliance with DoD 5015.2.

What is really unclear is what the repository model will look like. Will Oracle replace the Stellent repository with Content Database and Records Database?

Technorati tags: Oracle, Stellent, ECM, reocrds+management, DoD5015

Alfresco Launches Enterprise Class Open Source Web Content Management

Alfresco announce the availability of the Alfresco Web Content Management Preview release. Hat tip to MarketWire. Here is the PRESS RELEASE Alfresco Launches Enterprise Class Open Source Web Content Management.

Some highlights:

The Alfresco Web Content Management Preview release is an advanced WCM platform that includes features such as:

• Virtualization Server
• Multi-Site Transactional Publishing
• Web Content Compliance Server
• 100% Standards Based
• High-Availability
• Highly Scalable Platform   

End user features include:

• Standards-Based Forms to Create Pages – Chiba XForms
• Simple Multi-Channel XML Publishing
• Email-Based Production Workflow
• In-Context Review
• Integrated Support for Content Managers, Contributors, Reviewers, Web Designers and Application Developers in one repository
• Parallel Branching and Merging
• Dependency Management
• Pre-Built Templates and Website Components

The Alfresco folks have been really busy over the last few months. The fact that they are releasing this many products, this fast, is very impressive. I will try to carve out some time over the next two weeks to take a look at both the WCM and 1.4 preview releases.

I think Alfresco will become viewed as a credible alternative to the traditional ECM solutions like IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and the few remaining players.

Tags: alfresco ECM ibm microsoft, WCM web+content+management