Ecm licenses

Even though ECM on the whole is a proven category, in which big software vendors generate up to $1.3 billion in sales annually, many buyers remain disappointed with their investment. Unfortunately for customers, analysts estimate that up to 90 percent of enterprise DM licensed "seats" are not deployed. Why the gap? A closer look at the dynamics and economics of deploying DM across a large organization reveals several possible reasons. Submitted by SpringCM

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

Enterprise search vendor FAST and ECM vendor Documentum have just announced an OEM deal to license the former's search engine with the core Documentum repository. Several points to make here. First, these deals often get consummated for business reasons rather than technology reasons. Nevertheless, as content repositories get larger, we see customers looking at search more critically, with a keen eye toward higher performance. And they want content management vendors to be able to bring more search options to the table. Like many content management vendors, Documentum had previously bundled a lite version of Verity. As Enterprise Search Report readers know, FAST doesn't have all of Verity's bells and whistles, but it does offer a good performance and scalability story...

Ektron, long a purveyor of low-cost but rather durable web content management tools, has just released a DM product called "DMS400." It works off the same basic repository model and interface as the company's CMS tools. Ektron says it has tested the product and its native search engine against 100s of thousands of documents; we suspect it will work best against 10s of thousands of files. And we should note that the product is really optimized for managing files, rather than compound documents, though you can use .NET wizardry to extend the product. But at US$ 4k licensing (on top of their existing CMS), it shows one more example -- in addition to MS SharePoint, Xythos, and others -- that if you have simple needs you can find basic document management for a reasonable fee without resorting to a complex ECM product...

Enterprise content management (ECM) is an increasingly complex sector of knowledge management, with new options and issues arising steadily.SharePoint edges into enterprise useSharePoint, Microsoft’s product for storing and sharing information on a Web site, is increasingly being used for enterprise content management. Its relative ease of deployment, integration with Microsoft Office and Web 2.0 features such as wikis have made it appealing to a wide range of users. The number of licenses is approaching 100 million, and total revenues are approaching $1 billion.

Some interesting news: "A recent AMR Research survey of 271 companies using Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems shows that 46% of licensed ERP 'seats' are currently unused." Most of the excess seats apparently represent an overhang from the go-go days. Replace "ERP" with "ECM" and you could be talking about present-day content management licenses. Vendors want to lock themselves in as your standard platform for myriad use-cases. But ECM really plays out as a series of discrete business projects. My advice: disregard volume discounts and buy seats incrementally; then work with your vendor(s) to make sure that each new project is successful. You'll save money in the long run.

The latest craze in content management — open source ECM software — is a product of the Internet era. Open source software is software whose source code is available under a license or arrangement such as public domain, that permits users to study, try, modify, and improve the software. Used with permission from Integrated Solutions magazine

What’s ahead for ECM? Between the partnerships, acquisitions and rumors, there’s a lot to talk about with enterprise content management these days. So, we decided to ask vendors and analysts just what they thought the future might hold. A number of vendors thought our request was a license to submit a pure marketing message (we’re sparing you those replies), and some folks didn’t want to go on the record. But read the best of the rest. The comments we have published will surely fuel further discussion, and we invite you to submit your views, as well. E-mail us at editor@kmworld.com and make sure to include your full name and company affiliation. We’ll publish the most interesting insights.