ECM, a risky business

CMS Watch has found some of the biggest enterprise content management (ECM) suite vendors are experiencing the most change right now, and are carrying significant near-term risks, according to Business Wire.

The research, conducted by CMS Watch, evaluates 30 vendors from five continents. "As enterprises increasingly see ECM technology as strategic, customers naturally look to avoid risks in product selection," says Alan Pelz-Sharpe, lead analyst from the project at CMS Watch.

He says major vendors will be making large changes over the next two years, which could pose a risk to organisations when products or roadmaps change.

Salesforce.com is offering a new service and platform for basic content management needs, provisioned through the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, reports Gartner.

This follows the company's purchase of Koral, a content management (CM) vendor. Salesforce.com intends to target its recognised CRM customer base and broaden its market penetration by attracting new customers that are driven by CM requirements.

In the broader CM market, hosted content and document management systems are gaining popularity, especially among medium-sized organisations.

AIIM Europe has completed research in the UK that reveals the number of firms deploying ECM there has doubled in the last two years, reports Intelligent Enterprise.

The research shows a sharp increase in the number of organisations now trying to integrate ECM projects across departments. The research indicates enterprise content management has moved from a nice-to-have to business-critical over the past couple of years.

Research also showed that about 25% of enterprises now at least claim to run a service-oriented architecture, and that number is set to grow rapidly.