{"id":43,"date":"2006-08-15T15:50:08","date_gmt":"2006-08-15T23:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=43"},"modified":"2006-08-15T15:50:08","modified_gmt":"2006-08-15T23:50:08","slug":"consolidation-in-the-ecm-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/consolidation-in-the-ecm-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Consolidation in the ECM market"},"content":{"rendered":"

A May 2006 report by Gartner<\/a> shows that OpenText, IBM, FileNet and EMC were market leaders in the Enterprise Content Management<\/a> (ECM) marketplace.\u00a0 The report said that the\u00a0“ECM market is dynamic” and “marked by technology consolidation”.\u00a0 That consolidation is happening at a rapid pace.<\/p>\n

In 2003, EMC made its entry into the Enterprise Content Management<\/a> (ECM) marketplace by buying Documentum<\/a>.\u00a0 Then this past year EMC acquired Captiva<\/a>, buying its way to become the largest vendor in the ECM space.\u00a0 But it looks like their lead has been short-lived.\u00a0 They are about to be eclipsed by IBM.<\/p>\n

Last week IBM<\/a> announced plans to purchase FileNet<\/a> for integration into their “Information on Demand” product offering.\u00a0 This follows shortly after other recent IBM acquisition announcements\u00a0that include\u00a0Webify<\/a>\u00a0(specialized SOA<\/a> technology) and MRO<\/a>\u00a0(Asset Management Software).\u00a0<\/p>\n

And this follows up yet other announcements.\u00a0 Stellant is to acquire<\/a> SealedMedia and BitForm.\u00a0 Brocade is to acquire<\/a> McDATA.\u00a0 OpenText is to acquire<\/a> HummingBird.\u00a0 OpenText had lost in a 1999 bidding war<\/a>\u00a0to Hummingbird over the purchase of PCDocs.\u00a0 OpenText and Oracle also have had a close relationship<\/a>.\u00a0 And there have been many more announcements over the past few years.<\/p>\n

The obvious question is what does all this consolidation in the ECM market mean?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course there isn’t a single explanation to that question.\u00a0 For example, in the case of the IBM purchase of FileNet, it is more likely\u00a0that they’ve initiated the FileNet purchase\u00a0because of the customers and dominant marketshare that IBM would gain.\u00a0 But because of the significant overlap of IBM and FileNet products in the BPM<\/a> and ECM space, IBM may not really be gaining much in the way of technology with this move.<\/p>\n

There can be dangers associated with these huge acquisitions too.\u00a0 Sometimes the bumps associated with dual or multi-product integrations last only a few months, but othertimes problems can linger for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Frequently the behemoth companies created from\u00a0a merger\u00a0or acquisition will have difficulty in integrating multiple competing solutions and in\u00a0presenting a consistent product strategy.\u00a0 Sales people\u00a0may\u00a0not be sure of or have difficulty in articulating and recommending the preferred company solution, and the overall product direction can become disjointed.<\/p>\n

But one clear\u00a0over-reaching reason why consolidation is happening\u00a0now is that document management, content management\u00a0and knowledge management are capabilities that are being seen more and more as key components\u00a0in any enterprise-wide software solution. Rather than departmental solutions, it makes sense to provide access to both structured and unstructured data across the entire enterprise.<\/p>\n

Also as mentioned here in previous blogs<\/a>, compliance has been a big driver in the upping of the importance of document and content management to enterprise-wide IT solutions, especially Sarbanes-Oxley<\/a>\u00a0and HIPPA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How is Formtek<\/a> managing in this space?\u00a0 As a smaller and more nimble player in the world of ECM,\u00a0Formtek competes by providing very\u00a0focused attention to our customers, something that is often lost by the bigger players.\u00a0 Formtek\u00a0has a very consistent track record for creating\u00a0high-value high-ROI mission-critical enterprise-wide applications.<\/p>\n

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A May 2006 report by Gartner shows that OpenText, IBM, FileNet and EMC were market leaders in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) marketplace.\u00a0 The report said that the\u00a0“ECM market is dynamic” and “marked by technology consolidation”.\u00a0 That consolidation is happening…<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9,10,30,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-process-management","category-compliance","category-content-management","category-sarbanes-oxley","category-soa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12364,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/12364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}