ECM Market at a snapshot in time

For those who hadn’t had a chance to review Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2007 from Gartner Inc., would be interested to know that IBM is positioned as the Leader for its ability to execute and completeness of vision. EMC is immediately following it and according to Mark Lewis, President, Content Management and Archiving Division at EMC, launch of Documentum 6 Platform and recent acquisition of X-Hive Corporation, supports organization’s in place vision and strategy. Unless IBM makes any major releases or strategic moves, EMC might very well be in the leading position next year. OpenText and Oracle are also positioned in the Leader’s quadrant.

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Source: Gartner (September 2007)

Here’s the definition what what it means to be a Leader in Content Management Systems:
Leaders have the highest combined scores for their ability to execute and completeness of vision. They’re currently doing well and are prepared for the future with a clearly articulated vision. In the context of content management, they have strong channel partners, a presence in multiple regions, consistent financial performance, broad platform support and good customer support. In addition, they dominate in one or more technology or vertical market. Leaders can deliver a comprehensive ECM suite by having all six core components (described below) and proven enterprise scalability. Greater emphasis was given this year to suite integration (for example, a common user interface, common code base and single repository); demonstrated enterprise deployments; integration with other business applications and content repositories; and a vertical process/solutions focus.

As far as who qualifies:

The Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2007 focuses only on commercial software developers/providers; it does not include open source software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings or hosted solutions providers, as these alternatives to on-premises software remain immature and have limited adoption. SaaS/hosted ECM currently represents only about 2% to 3% of the total software revenue of the ECM market. In addition, most SaaS or hosted content management solutions focus on departmental, rather than enterprise, deployments. To be included in this Magic Quadrant, a vendor must meet Gartner’s criteria for revenue, geographic presence, functional capabilities and referenceability. Specifically, the vendor must have at least $10 million in total content management software (licenses, updates and maintenance) revenue. It must also actively market its products in at least two major regions (for example, North America and EMEA, or Asia/Pacific and Latin America). The vendor must have the ECM software commercially available and have active references that are using the product in production scenarios.

Lastly, to be included in this Magic Quadrant the vendor must have a content management suite that addresses the following core components. The vendors should have all these capabilities and should have all the components integrated — at least four must be native; other components could be supplied through partners. To be considered for placement in the Leaders quadrant, the vendor must provide all six components natively.

• Core document library services (check-in/check-out, version control, document-level security). Advanced capabilities, such as compound document support and content replication, score higher than the minimal library services.
• Document imaging repository capabilities. Document imaging consists of two components. The document capture portion can be carried out via native capabilities or else met with a formal partnership with a third-party solution, such as Kofax, EMC Captiva or Datacap. But the vendor must also be able to handle images of scanned documents in the repository as just another file type in a folder, and it must be able to store, retrieve and route them.
• Records management — the minimal requirement is the ability to enforce retention of critical business documents based on a records retention schedule. Higher ratings are given for certified compliance with the DoD 5015.2 standard.
• Workflow — the minimal requirement is simple document review and approval workflow. Higher points are given to those with graphical process builders, and serial and parallel routing.
• Web content management (WCM) — the minimal requirement is a formal partnership with a WCM provider. Native capabilities score higher than partnerships.
• Document-centric collaboration — document sharing, project team support, and support for ad hoc, threaded discussions around documents.

Evaluation Criteria for the ability to execute:

The ability to execute measures how well a vendor sells and supports its ECM products and services on a global basis. In addition to rating products’ capabilities, we evaluated the vendors’ viability, installed base, pricing, customer support and satisfaction, and product migrations from one major release to another.

Evaluation Criteria for Completeness of Vision

Completeness of vision focuses on potential. A vendor can succeed financially in the short term without it, but the company won’t become a Leader without a clearly defined vision or strategic plan. A vendor with average vision will anticipate and respond to change by accurately perceiving market trends and exploiting technology. However, a vendor with superior vision can anticipate, direct and initiate market trends, particularly if it integrates its vision into a broad range of areas, and leverages product and service development.

Source: Gartner

For more details, here’s the URL: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/opentext/150426.html