One on One with Andy MacMillan of Oracle

Andy MacMillan is VP of Product Management at Oracle where he oversees all aspects of content management including enterprise content management, web content management, digital asset management and rights management. He recently co-wrote a soon to be released book with Bex Huff [1] called “Transforming Infoglut! [2]” The book takes a detailed look at strategy and practical approaches to help organizations gain control of content. We asked MacMillan some questions about content management issues as they relate to the Oracle approach.

FCM: Tell me about your content management solutions?

AM: Oracle provides a comprehensive and integrated set of ECM capabilities as part of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle content management software includes a unified ECM platform, email and content archiving, imaging and content process automation, federated records management and document-level information rights management. 

FCM: You cover the whole gamut of CM issues, from WCM to ECM to DAM and even IRM. Why did you choose to cover everything and how can you do all things well?

AM: Enterprise content management is inherently intertwined. An item placed in a DAM system often gets incorporated into the WCM system and may even have retention policies on it that push it into the RM system. So, customers are looking for a solution that supports this reality and the way they work. Providing all of these functions in a single application reflects this customer demand. It also significantly reduces the total cost of ownership and simplifies the roll out of ECM technology to business users. 

As for scaling this model, it is actually rather simple, as our cost of developing on a common platform is lower than it would be otherwise--just like the ownership costs are lower for our customers. We do not have to re-invent similar functionality on different systems or spend resources integrating our own suite of tools since the platform is built from the ground up as a single solution. This approach also allows us to leverage integrations into infrastructure, middleware and applications across the breadth of our capabilities. For example, we do not have to separately integrate digital asset management, document management, imaging, records management, archiving and rights management into each ERP system. We build the integration once and our comprehensive solution provides all of the necessary functionality.

FCM: You recently participated in defining the CMIS standard. Why did Oracle get involved?

AM: Oracle Fusion Middleware is built on open standards and is a large part of our “hot-pluggable” strategy. CMIS looks very promising in terms of providing a comprehensive, platform-independent standard for content management, and we are excited to sponsor the adoption of CMIS by OASIS.

FCM: A Forrester analyst Stephen Powers recently wrote a blog entry [3] that was cast some doubt on CMIS's ability to see the light of day or be widely adopted. Do you agree or disagree? Why?

AM: I think Stephen does a good job of laying out both the challenges and the possibilities for CMIS. Our goal as participants in the development of the standard, and as a vendor in the ECM space, is to overcome those challenges for our customers and make the possibilities of CMIS a reality in the market.

FCM: As the economy worsens and IT budgets inevitably tighten, what is your strategy going to be to sell big systems like content management systems in the coming year?

AM: IT organizations are looking for systems that provide a positive return on their investment and help make their businesses more efficient. Oracle content management software consistently delivers on both of those fronts. Our unified approach provides improved functionality at a significantly lower total cost of ownership than other, disparate solutions. And with our pre-built integrations into Oracle applications and middleware, customers can quickly take significant cost out of their businesses through the roll out of Oracle content management software.

As an example, a large commercial real estate company used Oracle Imaging and Process Management to reduce the cost of its invoice processing from $33 to $2.75 per invoice. Another customer in the same industry reduced its accounts payable cycle by more than 20 days and realized 100 percent ROI within months. Those efficiencies make a real difference in any business environment.

For organizations that are interested in how content management software can have a positive effect on their business, I recommend Forrester’s Total Economic Impact [4] study on Emerson Process Management’s deployment of Oracle Universal Content Management. The report details how Emerson Process Management used the software to save more than $3 million in just four years and provides valuable insight into why content management should be on every IT department’s short list.

FCM: What do you think the biggest issues will be for companies next year around content management?

AM: The consolidation of content silos into a single, strategic content management system and the integration of strategic content management systems into business processes and applications will be the two biggest issues for enterprise content management in the next 12 months. 

At Oracle we are focused on helping customers through this transition by:

• Helping them identify strategic content repositories, consolidate these systems where possible, and integrate them with traditional business applications to accelerate and improve business processes;

• providing federated ECM services to non-Oracle repositories where needed;

• and securing content wherever it exists, including on the desktop and beyond the firewall.   

Our methodology is based on best practices we’ve developed in working with thousands of customers, and it can be applied across industries.

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