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ECM: Technology Giants Close in on AIIM's Vision, but Customers Lose
The term Enterprise Content Managment (ECM) was first coined in 2000 by AIIM.
AIIM’s vision of ECM as a single industry has been a bit overwhelming, and while most vendors that had any amount of coverage under the vast umbrella of ECM space claimed to be ECM vendors, most could usually be heard to grudgingly admit that for one vendor to excel at all things ECM just wasn’t possible.
ECM just has too many components: Capture, Imaging, Document Management, Web Content Management, Digital Rights Management, Workflow, and more. AIIM needed poster-sized pages to diagram all the inter-relationships of the ECM stack components. It’s hard to cover all the bases, but that hasn’t stopped some companies from trying.
Starting in 2003, ECM purchased Documentum for $1.7 billion. Then came deals like IBM buying FileNet, Oracle buying Stellent, and Open Text buying Ixos, Red Dot and Hummingbird. And many analysts are predicting the consolidation spree to continue and further trickle down to the middle tier companies.
Maybe this over-sized vision for what the ECM space should be has had something to do with all the consolidation that’s happening in the space. IBM, Oracle and EMC may still not have total ECM coverage, but they’re trying and getting closer.
Certainly buying everything from one vendor can simplify the process of purchasing technology, but getting the right solution for a good price should be the ultimate goal of customers. Vignette’s Simon Robinson summed up the trend when he said that, the large ECM technology giants may be becoming “a jack-of-all-trades and master of none”.
