ECM Outlook 2008 - Part 1: Guess who’s coming to dinner?

By Marvin Pyles
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Published on Mar, 03 2008 in Analytics, Business Intelligence
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Over the years, enterprise content management (ECM) has grown from a small departmental purchase to a major organizational platform decision. Traction in the space has especially been interesting in the last three to four years. Ask any “informed” analyst, consultant, even vendor and they can arguably agree that 2005 was the year of compliance, and 2006 was the year of consolidation.

However, 2007 was really interesting. Some would say organizations began realizing the power of social computing and collaboration—blogs, wikis, etc… But the majority probably would point to one particular topic —Microsoft SharePoint.

The Empire Strikes Back

In just a few short years Microsoft has become an important player in the ECM industry. In 2001, Microsoft released SharePoint Portal Server--an adequate collaborative and document management solution. In the summer of 2001, Microsoft also acquired nCompass Resolution--a web content management solution. The product was quickly re-branded Microsoft Content Management Server and became Microsoft’s entry into the CMS market.

Over the next two years, Microsoft released two product updates--MS CMS Server 2002 and SharePoint Server 2003. In 2006, Microsoft announced that SharePoint Portal Server 2003, CMS Server 2002, and additional ECM functionality would result in the new Office SharePoint Server 2007 product.

Russ Stalters, Director of Information & Records Management for BP America says MOSS’ quick rise shouldn’t be a big surprise.

“MOSS will continue to dominate the ECM market and start to eclipse some of the larger big players, says Stalters. “MOSS is getting the attention of many of the customers. Customers are more interested in learning what they can do with MOSS, what’s coming in the next version and less interested in hearing about the next version of [Brand X] application.

"SharePoint is helping fuel the overall health of ECM market by making people more aware of the need to manage content based information more effectively."
Martyn Christian, VP of IBM’s Enterprise Content Management group

No matter how you felt about SharePoint in the past, with the release of SharePoint 7.0, you better keep a close watch on what’s going on in Redman, WA. Today, SharePoint 2007 is arguably the most talked about ECM application on the market. Ask any IT manager and you can bet he or she has SharePoint on the mind.

Greg Clark of C3 Associates—a ECM professional services firm says MOSS 2007 has expanded the definition of what ECM really is and has exposed ECM to a lot of new customers who would have never considered themselves candidates for one of the traditional ECM apps.

"Microsoft doesn’t do things by accident. I think they recognized where this market is going," says Clark.

Jim Nasr, CEO of Atlanta based Armedia, a business and technology consulting firm specializing in enterprise content management solutions says, “MOSS is getting in pretty much under the radar and for most companies, being bought by operations folks as an infrastructure item instead of going to an ‘ECM committee’.

"The CIO basically sees that he has the capabilities and says go ahead and use it," says Nasr.

The proof is in the pudding--SharePoint is not a flash in the pan. In July 2007, Microsoft who doesn’t normally release sales figures for individual products reported that sales of SharePoint® Server generated revenue of more than $800 million in the fiscal year 2007. This represented a growth rate of more than 35 percent over fiscal year 2006.

Currently, there are three versions of SharePoint available: Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Standard, and MOSS 2007 Premier.

WSS is included in Windows Server 2003 and requires no additional licensing. WSS has basic document management, search functionality and collaboration tools such as blogs, RSS feeds, and a wikis.

MOSS is the server on top of WSS. Along with the core WSS functions, it adds enterprise search and people search capabilities, along with an unlimited document repository, personal sites, additional Web parts, workflow, content syndication, and much more. MOSS targets organizations that will store more than 500,000 documents, which are usually larger enterprise customers.

Marvin Pyles has worked in the "trenches" of software development. He has gained considerable experience in the content and collaboration industry working for as a analyst for various companies including United Parcel Service, Sapient, Inc., Keane, Inc, and First Data Corporation. Marvin has written several in-depth articles and case studies on enterprise applications for various private firms & publications including Intelligent Enterprise and KMWorld.

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