The Content Integration Challenge

The understanding that an organization’s content is a critical competitive asset is universally accepted. However, the scope of what comprises that content has expanded dramatically. Content is created and resides in a wide variety of sources, including email, transaction records, images, photographs, audio and video files and Web pages. Content also consists of spreadsheets, word processing documents and presentations generated by individuals at their desktops. For most organizations, statements, bills, checks, invoices and high-volume reports generated by business applications are critical content. While this content is growing by as much as 200% a year, the risks of not managing it effectively are growing even faster.

The cost of not managing or federating content is demonstrated by court rulings against organizations that cannot produce content in response to discovery requests—including large fines and jail time for top executives. Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have also provided further impetus for organizations to more closely manage, retain and dispose of content. These threats compel executives to pay attention to what is kept, for how long, where it is kept and who has access. Ensuring the integrity, reliability and long-term availability of corporate records and content—including email—is no longer optional.

But where is all of this content that is so critical to an organization? The rising tide of enterprise content is scattered across the globe in disparate repositories, on different platforms and in many different formats. In a recent survey, 43% of companies had more than five repositories and 25% had more than 15. This situation is a result of mergers and acquisitions, the deployment of departmental solutions, and the development of home-grown applications.

Driven by the need to reduce costs and by increasingly demanding requirements for regulatory and legal compliance, the enterprise content management (ECM) landscape is changing, with many organizations seeking integrated solutions for all content, including email and traditional corporate records. Integrating all content in a single system can significantly reduce IT infrastructure costs by consolidating servers and eliminating software licensed and maintained by the enterprise. It can also simplify the environment for consumers of this content.

But converting content from legacy content management systems may be time-consuming and/or impractical, placing the ultimate objective of consolidated content beyond reach. The alternative is a solution that provides a federated view of content from multiple, disparate repositories, utilizing an open architecture based on standard Web services to ensure interoperability across applications and computing platforms. This approach improves productivity by placing all content at users’ fingertips and reducing the costs of desktop software by eliminating the need for multiple and/or proprietary viewers to different content repositories. A robust content federation solution seamlessly and efficiently makes content available to users and delivers content to business applications across an organization. The resulting benefits are striking: reduced IT integration and maintenance costs; enhanced customer service; and accelerated decision making, time to market and revenue growth.

Content Integration to the Rescue
There are two fundamental ways to integrate content. The first approach utilizes a single, integrated content repository. The second provides a federated and consolidated view of content from multiple, disparate repositories. The best method for a given organization depends on the number of repositories currently in use, the willingness to undertake conversions and the importance of speed in solution deployment.

An integrated repository: An integrated repository must be scalable, secure and searchable. Most importantly, it must address a wide variety of content types, including:

• Mission- and operations-critical documents produced by enterprise applications (e.g., accounting and billing systems, inventory and materials management applications, etc.). These utilize many formats, including text, XML, HTML, Postscript, PCL, IBM AFP, Xerox DJDE/Metacode and PDF;
• Corporate records in any form, both electronic and physical;
• Business-critical documents produced using desktop software;
• Images of scanned documents (e.g., checks, photos and other images captured as part of business processes or workflow applications); and
• Rich media (e.g., digital audio and video); and high-volume transactional data.

Implementing a single system for all content and records management reduces IT and business unit costs, reduces training requirements and improves customer service and operational efficiency. But it may not be feasible for every organization. The alternative is a solution that integrates repositories.

Federating multiple repositories: This method provides fast, easy and secure access to all content stored anywhere in an organization. It gives authorized users a single, consistent interface and delivers content to business-critical applications.

In selecting a solution, there are several key attributes that maximize value and ensure rapid, cost-effective implementation:

• An open architecture based on standard Web services ensures interoperability across applications and computing platforms and makes content available to customers, partners and other applications outside the firewall;
• Out-of-the-box adapters to various content management systems and other sources will eliminate the need for custom coding. These adapters understand how the repositories are structured and translate the user’s search criteria for each one;
• A software development kit (SDK) to build new adapters to special or custom content sources and repositories for which adapters are not provided out-of-the-box; and
• An easy-to-use mapping facility to resolve indexes and formats across disparate repositories and content sources. It is crucial to normalize the names of data items.