Enterprise Content Management in 2008 and beyond...

It's been an interesting few years for ECM vendors around the globe, with numerous acquisitions and mergers taking place. We are seeing a great deal of consolidation in the market and this is surely only providing benefits to our customers - or is it?

The requirement for an organisation to store and manage structured (DB), unstructured (docs etc.) and semi-structured (xml) increases on a daily basis. Current estimates state that around 84% of information lives outside of the database - and this drives interest within an organisation like Oracle to get their ECM pitch right (which, incidentally, we have done).

John Batelle once wrote that "every day, we create and store more information (in the digital format) than has been stored for most of human history on paper". John was quoted in his book "the Search, How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Our Culture" - it is an interesting fact that electronic information is having such an impact on our lives and the IT industry as a whole. Historically, IT was more interested in providing the applications for the end-users - NOW, IT is more interested in working out how to store and manage all the information coming from these applications, and from a wide-diversity of other sources.

I presented a road-show around APAC during the middle-latter part of 2007 during which I spoke about changes I had experienced in my career. The topic that generated the most interest concerned the cost models of storing information in the mid-80's to today. Historically, storing paper in a warehouse was cheap whilst storing information digitally was expensive. I worked for the biggest consumer of on-line storage outside of government and IBM in the UK and we had the grand total of 128Mb of online available storage - held on drives that resembled a top-loading washing machine. I have more storage and computing power on my Blackberry in 2008!

Today, of course, on-line storage is dirt-cheap (one reason why EMC, IBM, HDS etc. are looking to add value through software acquisition and development) whilst warehousing paper is incredibly expensive and frowned upon by the tree-huggers. The costs involved in managing paper (retention, disposition etc.) are staggering and with the rise in demand for storage - only going to get higher and higher.

An interesting statistic, driven out of a published report sponsored by EMC is that by 2010, the demand for storage will outstrip availability/manufacturing at today's levels. This means that unless information management is addressed through intelligent systems such as ECM - manufacturing is going to have to step-up meaning a further drain on the world's resources. Storing information more intelligently means a reducing in duplication of information, appropriate retention and disposition based upon the information's lifecycle, virtualisation resulting in fewer physical servers using less air-con and power etc. etc. etc. We are a brighter, greener Oracle nowadays - the latest database requires less disk-space, half the power, half the cost and it runs faster with much more capability than ever before.

So what are Paul's predictions for the future.

Well, firstly I believe that ECM as a strategy within a customer's environment will move towards an implementation as a part of the data-centre infrastructure. Customers are looking for a unified content management (UCM) platform that truly allows any content from any source to be stored, protected and leveraged by the larger community. Realistically, as of February 2008, there are only 3 vendors in the marketplace that can truly provide this and Oracle is unique in its approach and software-focussed strategy. Our customers are not getting the hardware (storage and server) pitches that our two main competitors will drive - shifting physical boxes being their primary business.

Secondly, I think that we will see more acquisitions and/or mergers happening during 2008-2009. There are a number of tier-2 players in the ECM space that are ripe for acquisition and there are a number of hardware vendors that might look to expand their footprint within their own customer base through new initiatives around ECM and the intelligence these products bring to the storage or server environments. Tower, Vignette, Interwoven et al. fit firmly into this arena - potential suitors may include HP, Dell or Sun.

Thirdly, Open-Source ECM vendors like Alfresco are starting to gain significant presence in the marketplace. I had the pleasure of working with John Newton and the Alfresco team whilst I was based in the UK with Documentum and the guys really are the nicest people in the world with great vision and execution. This is demonstrated if you ever get the chance to meet the team and/or see the software in action. Organisations remain wary of open-source initiatives but I believe that the next 2 years will tell for product like Alfresco. With all of the consolidation happening in the industry, we here at Oracle welcome new and upcoming competition - particulary when driven by industry legends such as John and his team.

Finally, everybody has to consider the big M. Microsoft are making inroads into the ECM space through Sharepoint and other similar products in their line-up. It's interesting to still hear customers talk about Sharepoint enthusiastically - only to bow out of conversations when you raise ECM functionality outside of document collaboration. I am sure that M is working hard on developing their products to become truly competitive, tier-2 and 3 ECM vendors will suffer first and we may see some disappear. I am pretty sure that M will join us as a tier-1 vendor in the next couple of years - assuming their developers and product managers don't get moved onto the next big thing before then (what ever happened to Microsoft's HRMS, ERP and CRM initiatives anyhow?)

Roll-on 2010

Paul

3 weeks in and .........

It's been a grand total of 3 weeks since I joined Oracle from EMC - and already it feels like I've been here forever (in a good way of course!).

Oracle is a very interesting place to work, prior to EMC I worked for Documentum in the UK and there are so many similarities between Documentum and Oracle and so many differences between Oracle and EMC. Documentum, like Oracle, was a west-coast based software company that was an incredible amount of fun to work for. Annual kick-off events were always a showcase for our innovation as well as excellent opportunities to meet and network with colleagues from around the world. Software was the clear focus for the organisation and we had a flexible approach to sales and marketing that meant that we would adapt to rapidly changing market drivers. EMC is an east-coast storage giant, that happens to have moved into the software market through acquisitions of companies like Documentum and Legato amongst others. The first 18 months following acquisition were ok, but things changed and the changes made were drivers for my decision to look at the industry and see what I wanted to do next. I would guess that my story from EMC is similar in context to a lot of the Oracle employees who have joined this organisation through acquisition. The big difference here between EMC and Oracle is that we are a top-to-bottom software organisation that is well versed in acquiring organisations and assimilating technology. My advise, be patient and things will work themselves out.

Anyway, I was approached by Oracle with an offer to join and assume a new role within the GTMi (Go to market initiatives) team working for Carl Terrantroy. I joined on the 1st February 2008 and the last 3 weeks have been nothing short of enjoyable and interesting. I've met so may people who have had so many good things to say about the organisation. The products we develop and sell are second-to-none, my specialty is Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and we are certainly one of the leaders in the space from a number of perspectives - backing up the research undertaken by Gartner, Forrester et al.

My focus is content which encompasses Enterprise Content Management and Collaboration to name but a few initiatives. I will be driving campaigns within the ANZ region around these areas, working with marketing, channels, partners as well as the ECM team themselves.

You can find me on level 6 at North Ryde, stop by and say hello.

Paul