ECM support

Enterprise Content Management specialist, Alfresco Software and EnterpriseDB Corporation, are partnering to offer Alfresco Enterprise for use with EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus and EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server. A New PartnershipAlfresco's open source ECM, in use by the likes of FedEx, Fox and Virgin Mobile, already has a Microsoft SharePoint protocol and CMIS support, for a wider choice of operating system, database, application server and desktop environment.

S1000D® is a registered trademark of ASD.S1000D is an international specification for technical publications, utilizing a Common Source Database. Today, the S1000D standard is supported by thesuccessor to AECMA, the AeroSpace and Defence Industries of Europe (ASD) and the Aerospace Industries Association of America (AIA). Continental DataGraphics has firmly committed itself to proactively support the further development of the S1000D standard.

New York-based VAR Imaging 411 wants to be a single source of document imaging information and support for its clients, but the VAR itself seems to be in never-ending pursuit of new ECM-related knowledge that will help build its business. Used with permission from Business Solutions magazine

It should come as no surprise that CMS vendors are offshoring more development work. See, for example, this recent announcement from Interwoven about doubling its R&D work in India. Another trend, which has transpired quietly but steadily, has been to outsource first-line product support to South Asia as well. This has, predictably, led to some grumbling from customers in Europe and North America. Nevertheless, it's quite apparent that the global locus of ECM expertise is shifting eastward. CMS Watch contributing analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe says that his firm, Wipro Technologies, boasts more than 1000 experienced content management specialists, most of them working on major projects for Global 2000 companies.

ABBYY: Recognition Server™     ABBYY, a leader in document recognition, data capture and linguistics technologies, licenses its technologies to many leading capture and ECM vendors, providing the foundation for many of today's content management and capture solutions. ABBYY Recognition Server is a robust, server-based solution for automating document recognition and PDF conversion in enterprise environments. Its scalability, open API, XML ticket support and "hot folders" allow integrators and corporate IT staff to quickly integrate OCR functionality into existing knowledge or content management systems across an enterprise. With ABBYY Recognition Server, IT managers can easily set up document processing service to convert scanned images into searchable PDFs for full-text indexing and archiving.ABBYY USA Software House47221 Fremont Blvd. Fremont, CA 94538

Despite unexpected pressures from regulations and consolidation, the ECM market is strong, vibrant and paving the way for 2004 and beyond. Here's a review of recent news from the market's many "tipping points."80-20 SoftwareIntegrated document and records management vendor 80-20 Software announces support for the Oracle database as the underlying store for its core document and records management product, 80-20 Document Manager. "Oracle completes the suite, with our DM/RM product now capable of using Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 or Oracle as a centralized unstructured data store." says Mark Ross 80-20 CEO. 80-20 allows users' document folders to be preset with all the business rules necessary to ensure efficient, timely and compliant, categorization, storage retention and deletion of records and other documents.Arbortext

In a continuing series of CMS-related acquisitions, IBM has bought content integration (CI) vendor Venetica. The CI marketplace has remained stubbornly small, but nearly all the ECM suite vendors are developing packaged integration capabilities of one kind or another. In one sense, with all these acquisitions IBM is getting leg up on Oracle and Microsoft, both of which seem to be struggling right now to support managing unstructured content. On the other hand, all of IBM's content management acquisitions have been very small vendors, and Big Blue does not have a solid history of digesting little companies. There may have been two jilted parties here -- Interwoven and FileNet -- who both private-label Venetica in their own suites. Until recently, Interwoven was the subject of IBM takeover rumors as well...Read about the acquisition

Hastings Mutual Insurance Company's integration of ECM into the insuranceunderwriting, accounting, and claims processes helped the company to realize a reduction in the time necessary to process new policy applications, improved service to agents and customers, a virtual elimination of lost files, multiple user access to documents concurrently through parallel processes, and increased support of the company's regulatory initiatives. Submitted by Hyland Software

Experience and Innovation for Compliance-Driven Content Management SolutionsAs businesses continue to cope with increasingly restrictive regulations, Infodata provides content management solutions necessary for compliance and competitive advantage. Customers rely on our 30 years of experience designing, developing, deploying and supporting compliance-driven Enterprise Content Management (ECM) environments.Our robust, flexible and cost-effective solutions deliver comprehensive functionality that ensures the integrity of content as it relates to mandates such as 21 CFR, Sarbanes-Oxley and DoD 5015.2.

Content management technology vendor Stellent has announced that it will support FAST as the internal search engine within its different content management tools. The move follows similar transitions by Documentum and others away from Verity to FAST. Stellent has traditionally relied heavily on Verity technology, and as CMS Report readers know, Stellent customers have often grumbled over the tightness of that coupling. I should stress that Stellent isn't dumping Verity (now owned by Autonomy) -- just that it is offering new options. This reflects a growing decoupling of ECM systems from specific enterprise search products, which should please your architects. But as always, the devil lives in the details, and support for multiple search engines could mean more configuration effort at implementation time.