Stories about: Documentum

With BEA and Cognos gone, the question shifts from who's going to get bought next to which sector if ripe for consolidation? The answer is enterprise content management. Maybe.

Former EMC executive Steve Redman has joined McAfee as president for the Asia Pacific region.

Storage company EMC has agreed to buy Document Sciences, a developer of software for personalizing mailshots and other communications. The acquisition will allow EMC to extend its offering in the field of transactional content management, which it sees as the fastest-growing part of the enterprise content management market. It plans to incorporate Document Sciences into its content management and archiving division.

It was nearly 10 years ago that FedEx first decided to translate its Web content and applications for non-English-speakers throughout the world. At the time, it was ahead of the game, but today, companies in all kinds of industries realize it's crucial to speak to customers around the world in their native languages.

Local enterprises are taking advantage of a low barrier to entry into content management with the open source Alfresco ECM system for a range of new projects - from records keeping to image hosting.

It's not always practical or affordable for large enterprises to consolidate their disparate systems that store unstructured content such as documents, Web material, and digital media. Yet maintaining these siloed applications introduces different costs and risks, including lack of security and records management. ECM (enterprise content management) systems address these shortcomings while leaving your existing file servers and other repositories in place. Although ECMs typically require yet another database, users continue accessing their existing desktop files and processes, while the content manager provides centralized storage, indexing, versioning, workflow, retention, and other services.

Microsoft has made a dramatic statement about its future in enterprise search by introducing a free search server along with a licensed version, both of which align with search software already offered via SharePoint Server.

IBM is falling behind competitors EMC, Microsoft and Oracle in Web content management capabilities, analyst firm CMS Watch argues in a new report.

Google, the newly-christened US$600-per-share company, unveiled this week the fifth generation of its Google Enterprise Search Appliance.

When last surveying open source Web CMSes (content management systems) I provided some common-sense advice. For example, it's important to look for not just functionality but also frequent updates, a healthy user community, and the availability of professional support. Some points are still true today, but new offerings may get you rethinking the role of these products in your enterprise.

Over the years EMC has presented itself as 'The Storage Architects" and, later, "The Enterprise Storage Company." Its latest moniker is "Where Information Lives" as the company tries to stay ahead of a rapidly evolving data storage marketplace.