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Follow UsBy Todd
Price
When content management technologies first entered the market, they primarily
consisted of separate line-of-business (LOB) applications, such as a human
resources portal or dealer extranet, rolled out in response to specific business
needs. Vendors were specialized, focusing on a niche within content management,
such as document management, Web content management or digital asset management.
As customer and vendor organizations realized the value that content
management could bring to addressing multiple business problems across numerous
departments, enterprise content management (ECM) was born, serving as a platform
for:
- Building multiple content- and process-centric applications.
- Deploying tens to hundreds or even thousands of Web sites and portals.
- Supplying content and content services to other enterprise applications,
such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship
management (CRM) systems. - Facilitating content lifecycle management.
With the maturation of the ECM industry, vendors continually added new
functionality to their product suites to address the growing variety of content
management needs found within corporations worldwide. What began as an industry
primarily focused on niche applications has expanded into a market where vendors
now offer a full spectrum of content management capabilities, from document
management and imaging, digital asset management, and records and retention
management, to Web content management and collaboration.
While ECM customers appreciate this streamlining because it enables them to
deal with only one software vendor for all of their content management
requirements, they often experience higher consulting and implementation costs
because the applications offered are not always integrated out of the box.
This scenario commonly occurs because many ECM vendors acquired various
content management applications from other companies to round out their product
portfolios. Even if ECM vendors integrate the various applications they have
acquired, incorporating these technologies into an existing content management
infrastructure can be a laborious and costly task for end user organizations.
For example, an integrated system may lack content integrity because the same
content may exist in different repositories. In addition, it may lack a
consistent graphical user interface (GUI) and application programming interface
(API), a single security and metadata infrastructure, and a single
administration toolset.
These issues can lead to higher implementation, training and customization
costs, and thus a higher total cost of ownership and maintenance. They also can
significantly hamper user adoption because multiple user interfaces and
functionality overlap impede business user training and serve as deterrents to
daily use.
Furthermore, the fact that the same content may exist in a number of
different repositories (i.e., in a public Web site repository and in a separate
records management repository) can present serious hurdles during audit and
compliance activities.
These challenges led to the concept of a "unified" ECM
architecture, which provides distinct advantages to customers which cannot be
obtained from ECM frameworks that merely integrate disparate products together.
Source: DM Review