Nuxeo's View on the Evolution of the Enterprise CMS

By David Roe (@druadh20) Oct 19, 2011

Last week, we looked at how the new functionality that came with SharePoint 2010 was enabling better use of SharePoint for enterprise content management. But it’s not just the applications that are changing — enterprise needs are changing, too. With the Nuxeo annual conference opening in Paris, we decided to take a look at its take on how those needs are evolving.

And it hasn’t been too difficult to pin down. In a paper entitled Content Management Platforms: the next generation of Enterprise Content Management (requires registration), which was published in recent months, Nuxeo points out that the answer as to how enterprise needs are changing, has a profound effect on how enterprise content management systems are conceived and built.

What Is Enterprise Content Management?

The starting point in trying to asses changing roles for enterprise CMSs is to understand what exactly they are are. Every year, AIIM produces a State of the Industry report and that definition has served well.

According to AIIM, the enterprise CMS is aimed at managing the lifecycle of information from its creation to archival and disposal. It is:

…the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's structured and unstructured information, wherever that information exists.”

According to Nuxeo, though, it also includes any operational or strategic processes that rely on content in addition to the technology and content. Traditionally capabilities include:

search
collaboration
business rules management
workflow management
document capture and scanning
version management
metadata enhancement

all of which make access, delivery and management of information more controlled, efficient and less costly.

But if enterprise content management offers organizations ways to control their content, then as content changes, that list of capabilities must change too, with greater emphasis on integration and long-term flexibility.

Nuxeo: Traditional enterprise CMS functions

However, this list of features is evolving as the enterprise CMS evolves — constantly adding new requirements and growing more demanding, with a greater emphasis on integration and long-term flexibility.

What Is Enterprise Content?

This raises the question, then, of evolving content and what exactly it is. While the above definition provides a description of what it means to manage content, it does apply itself to exactly what that content is.

By now, it is no longer just digitized versions of scanned documents, but includes anything used in the daily processes used in carrying out business. This is now as diverse as:

Structured content in relational databases
XML documents
Enterprise applications such as customer relationship management (CRM)
Supply chain management (SCM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools
Unstructured content such as text, emails, word processing and spreadsheets

And then there is the most commonly used forms such as images, video, voice mail, streaming media and newer forms of information such as geodata. Social media, Nuxeo says, may also be expanding its impact on enterprise content.