How Peter Met Mary Jane: The Mythology of Enterprise Content Management

And so the "monolithic vs. interoperable" debate is on: Siderean's Anderson says, "Our customers want to use the silos of information they have in an interoperable way. They don't want to replace systems; some of them can't be replaced, and some of them are outside the organization. Remember: the definition of enterprise content includes the spanning of enterprises. In government, agencies need to share information, but they have no control over what systems are used in the other agencies."

Oracle's Buchheim acknowledges the realities of the siloed organization, but points out a crucial missing element: "In an insurance company, the claims processing application is managed by a single group, so it is departmental. But the fact is, those claims need to be made available to virtually everyone in the organization at some point or another," he says. "Even though there's not always a lot of crossover, being able to manage your HR records in the same environment as your financial content turns out to be a way to leverage technology. It touches everyone who needs it...they are able to leverage the technology that might not be specifically related to the business application. The cost advantage, and the compliance and risk management advantages, of using the same technology are great."

Xerox DocuShare's Murphy has yet another perspective: "The drivers for ECM are the legal issues that arise from having a heterogeneous mix of applications that have been implemented at the department level in the past. The demand for enterprise content management has escalated up to the CIO/CEO level because of the legacy of multiple applications running that are not connected or under any corporate governance. It has more to do with risk than the need to standardize on any particular tool," Murphy insists.

Why ECM Works...or Does It?
It may, at this point, sound self-serving for these vendor dudes to be talking about the marvels of ECM. But they make the case: "Enterprise data drives enterprise processes," declares Siderean's Anderson. "Navigating internal and external data gives organizations the ability to execute business in a more rapid and efficient manner." He argues that combining internal business data with external information from all over the place, presented in a clear "visualized" format, can discover previously unrecognized relationships.

Here's a lurid example: A bank's customer is a high-net-worth individual who happens to work in the entertainment industry. An RSS feed from the Web reports that she's announcing her divorce. The blogosphere is abuzz with rumors that her low-life golddigger husband has been cheating on her. Armed with that much juicy information, the bank can make better business decisions. Creepy example, but you get the idea.

Yet, as has already been pointed out, what is a good idea may not be the norm in the marketplace...yet. Stellent's Page describes a typical scenario: "Within the top 100 of IT organizations, there is a subset that has figured out that ECM is a strategy they need to have enterprisewide. They base their evaluations NOT on ‘who has the best records management?' or ‘who has the best Web publishing?' but instead on ‘who has the capabilities across many aspects of content management?' But when it comes time to buy a license, they only sign up for the initial solution that's first off the block," he says. They're looking for proof, I say. "Yes, you need to successfully deploy before they'll expand the license to other departments. Evaluations are based on enterprise requirements; buying trends are still more directly focused," says Page.

HP's Holling puts it this way: "The ‘talk' is to deploy enterprisewide, but I haven't actually seen anyone do it yet. In the excellent companies, there is no IT/business divide anymore. IT departments are no longer in the habit of saying ‘no, you can't do that.' Now, they're saying ‘You can do whatever you like—just remember there's a cost involved.' The department's decision is balanced against IT's budget, and they are told ‘you can't afford that. But if you'll settle for 80% of the functionality, you can have it tomorrow.'"

Interwoven's Seawick insists that "CIOs are not buying infrastructure. They definitely want to standardize on platforms that are leveragable across business units, but the trend in ECM is coming from the lines of business who are trying to solve their problems, which in turn migrate from business unit to business unit through the CIO." Seawick continues: "This trend of using unstructured data to solve business problems is a new frontier. Structured applications have hit the wall; automating the structured data from supply chain, HR, financials and CRM has gone as far as it can."

The "who owns it?" question struck a chord with several of the interview subjects, but Richard Holling from HP might have put it best: "IT is not a standalone operation anymore. If the CIO is not on the corporate board, he or she is very close to the board. There's been considerable work to put in place structures for the IT department to work closely with the business leaders—they either have business liaison managers in the IT department, or IT liaisons in the various business departments. It's their jobs to make sure business requirements are translated to the IT department.

"Of course," he adds, "in smaller organizations, there are still those who see IT as a pain in the neck—something they have to do."

Is ECM something you have to do? Read on and decide for yourself.