ECM industry: where to now

With FileNet, Hummingbird and Stellent all being snatched up in recent months, what will be the next direction of the enterprise content management (ECM) market?

"Mulling over that question during a keynote session at November's Gilbane Conference on Content Technologies in Boston, four panelists all cited "integration with other applications" as important, but they disagreed on the right approach," according to a TechWeb report.

Panelists reportedly also cited the growing importance of managing content delivery and customer interaction. "Everybody should have figured out how to manage content by now; the challenge lies in end-user experience," said Detlef Kamps, CEO of RedDot, a division of Open Text.

Customer experience is propelling new investments for features such as blogs and wikis, even if most enterprises haven't figured out how to manage content effectively, noted David Nelson-Gal, senior VP of engineering at Interwoven.

IBM and Yahoo! have introduced new, free enterprise search software with Web search services powered by Yahoo enabling businesses of all sizes to access information stored within organisations and across the Web.

"IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is a no-cost, entry level enterprise search product developed to help eliminate financial and technology barriers to intranet and Web search," writes The Gilbane Report.

The IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition can be downloaded at http://omnifind.ibm.yahoo.com.

Adobe recently announced the release of Adobe Reader 8.0 available for download on the company web site, integrated with Adobe Acrobat Connect - an Adobe-hosted software service providing immediate online collaboration with Adobe Flash Player.

PlanetPDF quotes Adobe senior VP and chief software architect, Kevin Lynch, as saying: "As people increasingly communicate and collaborate across the Internet, Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat Connect enable an effective workflow around documents, reliably reaching people around the world."

In addition to the "Start Meeting" button available in the updated version of Reader, version 8.0 also features customisable toolbars, more expedient viewing capabilities for viewing graphic-heavy PDF files, and also offers users the ability to digitally sign documents.