(Sal is one of the authors at Digital Business Strategy which is well worth checking out.)

The “overlapping functionality between ECM and other network software” comment is spot-on: from one perspective, Enterprise Content Management is really just Enterprise Data Management or Information Management. In other words, ECM is really just IT. Of course, you’ve got to squint your eyes just right to see it that way, and I’m not sure what it ultimately gets you. ;)

I think of ECM as the core repository, plus the various means for getting content (documents, but also other content types) into it and out of it. That means (federated) search, access controls (authentication and authorization), publishing mechanisms (for multiple formats, to multiple audiences), and workflow tools which control who can submit, revise, and publish bits into the repository or out of it.

Not sure if that makes for a less complicated Venn diagram or not, but basically ECM to me is the combination of a core repository plus various applications for accessing content that lives in that repository. (Those applications are sometimes highly structured, sometimes loosely structured or barely-at-all structured in terms of their workflow, of course).

In terms of Microsoft’s impact on ECM, I see the real core of their offering as being Sharepoint 2007 rather than Vista or the Office Suite. (Office applications might submit content to or get content from repositories via a workflow, but in my ideal architecture they are one client among many).

I don’t think Sharepoint is a compelling enough story to create a monoculture.

ECM, to be effective, requires deep and broad integration points – lots of open standards and cross-platform, cross-architecture interaction. Sharepoint may enable MS to play in that world but I certainly don’t think it will dominate in it.

Thanks for the post/links. I would love to get your opinion on ECM and its role within an organization. It seems to me that there is a ton of overlapping functionality between ECM and other network software functionality. Everything that the demo shows can be done using file system tools and workflow software. This makes for a very confusing Venn diagram.

In addition, Vista and the new Office suite (presumably with Groove functionality) will be released soon. Do you think that that open source ECM will stay competitive with Microsoft’s offerings? Or is this arena doomed to be a monoculture in the next few years?

Sal Darji