Installed e-Business Applications Causing Content Management Crisis; Organizations Turn to Enterprise Content Management -ECM- Solutions, Reports AIIM International

Business Wire, March 12, 2001

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

SILVER SPRING, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 12, 2001

As Content Management Crisis Escalates, ECM Solutions

Rapidly Becoming Top Priority in 2001 - Leading

Vendors See Enormous Demand, Sales Growth

AIIM International, the Enterprise Content Management industry association connecting users and suppliers of e-business technologies and services, today announced that the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market is gaining momentum behind vendors pressured by customer demand to solve rising enterprise-wide content management issues.

Many well known and newer, up-and-coming vendors, are classifying themselves within the ECM space, including: Eastman Kodak Company, FileNET, IBM, Interwoven, Open Text, SER, and Unisys.

Defined as the creation, capture, delivery, customization, and management of content across an enterprise, ECM is the "glue" between front- and back-end applications.

Organizations are faced with a content "crisis" as vast amounts of unstructured and often unmanaged information enter and leave organizations in a variety of formats, including: text, Web HTML/XML pages, graphics, e-mail, video, and audio clips. ECM Technologies include:

-- Web Content Management

-- Document /Image Management

-- Forms Processing & Recognition Business Process Management

-- eProcess Management

-- Enterprise Portals

-- Knowledge Management -Business Intelligence

-- Data Warehousing/Data Mining

-- Content on Mobile Appliances

-- Preservation

-- Storage

"Propelled by productivity and efficiency considerations, ECM is touching every facet of business today," said Candy Obourn, president, Document Imaging division, Eastman Kodak Company. "This is helping to drive market demand for our capture and digital preservation product lines, which are critical enablers for the front and back ends of any strategic ECM system."

"A successful eBusiness strategy must begin with a solid eProcess and Content management platform that enables large organizations to update and distribute information globally and immediately to all members of their commerce chain," said Martyn Christian, senior vice president, worldwide applications and corporate marketing, FileNET. "In the past two years, we've seen more enterprises worldwide selecting solutions such as FileNET's Panagon eProcess Services and Web Content Management platform to externalize their business processes. Companies are increasingly viewing these systems as a key investment in their future success."

"Simply put, Enterprise Content Management is viewed as the heart of e-business," said Marcel van Hulle, Director, Worldwide Content Management Sales, IBM. "Why? Because you want your customers and employees to have seamless access to your company, and this requires managing all types of content and delivering it in a personalized way. IBM accomplishes this with tight integration between IBM Content Manager and the WebSphere ebusiness platform with partners' Web authoring tools. With an IBM infrastructure, the same content in CRM or ERP business applications can be delivered to websites for the most up-to-date accurate information, without the need for multiple copies. This is enterprise content management for successful e-business deployment."

"Content management software is a top IT spending priority for 2001 because companies realize improving productivity within the global enterprise, helps companies save time and resources," said Joe Ruck, senior vice president, marketing, Interwoven. "ECM is the recognition that timely and relevant content, whether it be graphics, video or any other form, is why people come to a Web site and why they return. The Web is now much more than documents on a site and deploying a content management system is a strategic priority."

"Collaboration and management of content across organizational supply chains are essential components of developing effective e-business strategies. Open Text is well-positioned to provide robust ECM solutions that will further extend the development and growth of an organization," said Andrew Pery, Vice President of Global Marketing, Open Text. "By leveraging the ubiquity of the Internet, Livelink(R) enables enterprises to manage interactions with their partner and component manufacturers, directly from their browsers, desktops and wireless devices, thereby fully leveraging their intellectual assets for competitive advantage."

"When you consider that, today, more than 90 percent of the world's data is in unstructured formats, it is understandable that enterprises are under intense pressure to organize and convert this information into human-usable knowledge," said Steve Pendleton, SER Solutions senior vice president, sales and marketing. "True automation of this labor-intensive process requires the creation of "smart" ECM technology that emulates human intuition. SER Solutions' SERdistiller - an information extraction solution that utilizes neutral networking technology to truly automate the classification of unstructured data for improved productivity and customer service - is leading the "smart" technology revolution."