ECM State Of The Market
The Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market is a hot thing, considering e.g. the market growth levels and heated debates in the blog spheres.
Below are some brief notes on the general state of the market covering both the customer and the provider perspective.
Customer perspective:
- Most enterprises have multiple content management products from functional domains such as document management, web content management, records management etc
- Most enterprises want to consolidate into content services and components from fewer vendors
- Most enterprises lack an ECM strategy that directs shared investments and initiatives
- Most enterprises do not have an ECM governance in place that manage requirements form different business units and user groups
- Most enterprises do not have an architectural vision or framework that guides ECM design and deployment
- Most enterprises do not employ a shared service or competence centre that efficiently utilize shared ECM resources
Provider perspective:
- Most provider suites continue to grow, delivering both more advanced services and additional services such as support for collaborative Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise Information Management
- Most traditional ECM providers are under pressure from Basic Content Management providers such as Microsoft and Enterprise Resource Management providers such as SAP.
- Most of the mergers and acquisitions among providers create burdensome integration projects and insecurity among customers
- Most providers try to offer pre-packaged solutions for common industry problems and processes. Often compliance driven.
Consolidation of applications seems to be one of the main drivers on both the customer and the provider side. Consolidation initiatives tend to initially focus on hardware and software. When is the market ready for consolidation of content and processes?