Enterprise Content Management Systems (CMS) News & Articles

Each year, e-Discovery thought leaders and vendors offer up their predictions for the coming year. Already we’ve seen e-Discovery 2012 according to Daegis. Since then, we’ve talked with a few more in an effort to round out the themes that companies will be facing in the new year.

Even with the Thanksgiving weekend, there’s been a few notable releases in the document management space. KnowledgeTree announces the release of the Private Cloud edition of document tools, harmon.ie offers SharePoint functionality in LotusNotes, while iNimated offers access to PC documents via iPad. Iron Mountain has also been busy.

The 2011 OpenTalk Theater provided the soapbox for twenty speakers to discuss enterprise content management related topics such as "Content Management for the Jetson’s," to AIIM President John Mancini sharing "True Confessions of a Social CEO," to OpenText’s head of R&D, Nicholas Oddson, on “The Gamification of Work, Life, Everything!" to Stephen Ludlow’s predictions for the "The Future of Records Management," to name a few. The OpenTalk Theater is an ECM mind-meld where industry experts converge to share their opinions, perspectives and/or predictions — within ten to twenty minutes. There’s only one guideline for OpenTalkers: no shameless product endorsements, technical geek speak or corporate gobbledygook.

While everyone had been expecting speedy action following the Autonomy acquisition, HP’s release today (Tuesday, November 29) of a new platform to process unstructured information based on IDOL has to be a record.

When we think about the rise of the cloud and its impact on the world of information management, we typically think about alternative storage platforms or perhaps software-as-a-service products.

But there is one angle that deserves more attention: the rise of the enterprise CMS marketplace. Cloud services for storage and application distribution, coupled with a growing comfort of enterprises to consume business software via downloads and plug-ins, means that we are seeing an innovation that could change the face of Enterprise CMS procurement in years to come.

Thanksgiving weekend, and if you haven’t got enough to worry you, here are some of the noteworthy compliance and risk stories of this week, including the “Dirty Dozen” list of unprotected smartphones, and a OpenText Content Server crawler form DocsCorp to help you find documents. Also this week LiveOffice archives your cloud documents, while the Schwab Corp. has bought Compliance 11.

Here in Chicago, our Lite Rock radio station has completed its annual transformation into The Holiday Lite, playing Christmas music round the clock, so it’s definitely not too soon to begin the annual litany of analyst prediction posts…

Even with Thanksgiving, there are still some interesting developments in document management. IDC is predicting a massive growth in sophisticated peripherals, iOS 5 has new, added document syncing, Perceptive releases ModusOne, DataMotion’s SecureMail technology goes mobile and IIS partners with OPEX.

If investors and observers were looking for clarity from HP’s quarterly figures, then last night’s conference call by newbie CEO Meg Whitman won’t have disappointed. There were a lot of issues cleared up, even if some of the news was not what investors might have hoped for.

Content Management in the Cloud seems to be very straightforward. It is supposed to be agile, simple, and cost effective. In my opinion, it is going to completely change the practice of Content Management. These statements make the following truth that much more bizarre. Users don’t care where their Content is managed; they just want their Content when they need it.

Last year, multifunction printer giant Lexmark bought enterprise CMS vendor Perceptive for US$ 280 million. The idea was to move into the RCM space and expand the market for its MFPs. Perceptive has now announced the release of ModusOne, a document output management product.

OpenText announced it has set up a separate business unit for its BPM acquisitions, and the release of a document-sharing product. Mindjet has released a SharePoint connector, Quadrant has announced a partnership and Kofax Capture picks up a document management award. Meanwhile, DocuLex gets health certification for document management.

After announcing the creation of its Business Process Solutions group last week, OpenText is back this week with the release of Tempo that promises to make document sharing quicker and mobile, while synchronizing data across computers and devices.

While the original patents pre-date the California Gold Rush (1849), the humble fax machine is still relevant today and getting a 21st century update with a new eFax app for Android. The new app targets businesses with mobile capabilities that help manage and move important documents anytime, anywhere, "keeping productivity on the fast track".

The company also announced eVoice, a "radically better phone number" with the availability of its latest mobile application for Apple devices. Now, iOS users can make and receive VoIP phone calls over multiple networks including WiFi connection, 3G/4G. This includes offering iPad users phone capabilities, even with no wireless carrier chip.

CMSWire recently published a disturbing article, one that equates SharePoint to crack cocaine. The crux of the author's argument is that enterprises, which now use SharePoint, are destined to fall victim to the same problems suffered by heavy users of Microsoft Access and Lotus Notes, namely that what “started out as the next generation of sharing and collaboration technology turned into a loathsome mess that has stuck around in large enterprises without enough commitment to sunset it, despite the earnest pleas of a tortured workforce”.

While the author does make a couple of compelling arguments, he completely misses the point. The point he misses is that no tool, no matter how compelling or feature rich, will fix a broken process. If any organization decides to install Chatter, some fictional future Google Enterprise Suite, or Facebook’s never-going-to-happen SaaS platform without giving thought to the problems of information management, they are doomed to repeat the same exact pattern with ever-evolving user interfaces.

Running in tandem with the release of SharePoint 2010, there are two other elements that, along with SharePoint, point to a more efficient and agile future for management of content. Those two elements are the proliferation of cloud computing possibilities and, combining these two other elements, the development of hybrid online/on premise computing environments.

When I saw the headline of the Forrester article proclaiming the death of the enterprise CMS suite, I couldn't help but both be pleased with myself, and feel a little sorry for the analysts. After all, I scooped them and proclaimed the exact same thing a little more than three weeks before.

The last time we talked about ZL Technologies’ Unified Archive was when it released version 7.0. So it’s only appropriate that today we talk about its latest release — version 7.0.4 of Unified Archive.

It’s been a busy year for OpenText in the business process management space with the acquisition of Metastorm in February followed by Global 360 in July. To close the year, OpenText has announced the creation of a new BPM unit and what looks like the development of a new BPM strategy.

If you haven’t got your Christmas shopping done yet, there’s a pile of new document management software that’s worth a look. SAP and OpenText have upgraded NetWeaver, Microsoft and Nokia have new apps for Symbian, Version One goes to R2.2, KnowledgeTree releases ExplorerCP and SmartVault has a new service update.