The Content Services Landscape
One of the main reasons that many enterprises need a strategic approach to enterprise content management is because of the diversity and proliferation of content services. Today it is relevant to talk about a landscape of content services that needs to be governed by the enterprise.
What is included in such a landscape? A high-level representation may consist of:
- Interaction services: Creation, delivery and access services and also business specific content solutions
- Collaboration services: Includes ad-hoc teaming to structured workflow and process orchestration
- Management services: Core services for managing webs, documents, records, digital assets, e-mail etc
- Integration services: Support for different back-end applications, repositories, archives etc
A high-level picture of the landscape and its services can be used as a communication tool to:
- Clarify the purpose of the services and their relationships
- Present service management responsibilities
- Portray the flow and processing of content
- Illustrate how the services support business processes
- Highlight strategic choices and the evolution of the landscape
- Position providers and platforms
- Etc etc
The landscape as described above does not claim to be the final view of enterprise content management services but has in many cases proven to be a good starting point. It should always be adjusted and detailed to suit different needs and situations.