Jockeying for position in enterprise content
Jinfo Blog

22nd October 2009

By Tim Buckley Owen

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As software vendors continue to struggle in the downturn, enterprise content management (ECM) and applications associated with it seem set to become a lively battleground. It looks as if customers can only benefit. Organisations can save as much as 10-20% of their ECM costs by moving to a shared services model, according to a new report from Gartner, Use Shared Services to Control Enterprise Content Management Costs (summary and link at http://digbig.com/5bamgm). Enterprises have long struggled with multiple ECM deployments from too many vendors, creating information silos and necessitating multiple payments, says Gartner’s Mark Gilbert. That’s probably been good news for the vendors up to now – but Gartner’s view is that, under pressure from the economy, vendors are now willing to work with the shared services model as a way to drive business. So who might the winners be? Another report, from IT market researcher IDC, may provide at least part of the answer. Worldwide Search and Discovery Software 2009–2013 Forecast Update and 2008 Vendor Shares (purchase details at http://digbig.com/5bamgp) declares Autonomy to be the market leader in this one specific field of search and discovery. Not surprisingly Autonomy is crowing about this (http://digbig.com/5bamgq) – with some justification in view of its largest share of the market (14.4% in 2008) and 17.6% growth from 2007 to 2008. But Autonomy also presses home its advantage by saying that it can no longer be regarded as a purely search vendor, and that a true picture of its market position must encompass a whole range of other solutions, including (through its purchase earlier this year of Interwoven – http://www.vivavip.com/go/e16087) content management software. This cuts little ice with enterprise content specialist Shore Communications. ‘If a technology can't deliver editorial value very specific to an enterprise, it's just a general tool that is rapidly and easily commoditised rather than a powerful content tool,’ Shore’s Content Blogger suggests. It contrasts Autonomy’s offering with that of Recommind, which it says has focused its capabilities on supporting specific functions, such as e-discovery processes that enable an organisation to understand what documents relate to a particular legal matter in the early phases of assessing a case. Indeed it goes on to say that Recommind may even be able to start nibbling at the opportunities for subscription enterprise services such as Thomson West and LexisNexis (http://digbig.com/5bamgr). Underlying all of this jockeying for position is the economic downturn. Like Gartner with ECM, IDC also confirms that, although it remains relatively strong, the recession is finally catching up with the search and discovery market too. Clearly it’s a complicated situation. But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and now might just be the time to get to grips with it.

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