Are we witnessing the end of ECM as we've known it?

"It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine."
~REM, It's the end of the world

It's been a wacky couple of weeks in the ECM world, hasn't it? Even those who follow the industry as closely as I do, had to be surprised by the confluence of recent events. Consider these recent blog posts, comments and announcements:

• Jon Marks asked in his Jon on Tech blog if the "E" (for enterprise) made sense any more in ECM.
• Lee Dallas wondered in his Big Men on Content blog if the "E" mattered and if "C" was the new "E" (I think we may have to get Elmo in here to referee).
• SharePoint 2010 had a huge coming out party in New York City.
• Nuxeo CMO Cheryl McKinnon wrote on Facebook on the day SharePoint was released: "The #ECM world needs to write down today's date as an important turning point. Most won't get it for 2 yrs, but that's not my problem."
• At EMC World last week, it seemed that EMC was abandoning its core roots in content management and going for a broader play. In fact, EMC dropped the name "content management" from the Documentum group, opting instead for the name Intelligent Information Group (IIG).

Holy enterprise content, Batman. What the heck is happening here? Let's take a deep breath and think about three factors that have come together to get us to this point: SharePoint, the cloud and open source.

The SharePoint factor

McKinnon for one sees SharePoint taking over many of the functions that traditional ECM vendors, such as Documentum and her old company, Open Text, have previously dominated. In her view, and also EMC IIG president Mark Lewis' view, the world of ECM--partly because of SharePoint and partly because of cloud plays like Box.net--will become increasingly commoditized in the coming years.

When you also factor in that each vendor will be able to access one another's repositories through CMIS, and that this is probably only going to broaden as the CMIS standard matures, suddenly ECM as a pure content repository looks like a losing proposition to companies like EMC, who are used to making a lot of money on the deal.

I'm not sure I'm quite as confident about SharePoint's position as McKinnon, but clearly it has had a massive influence on ECM, even if it doesn't really do "E" or "M" all that well (but allows end users to create plenty of "C").

The cloud factor

The other big factor hanging over ECM these days (yes, the pun was intended), is cloud computing. EMC is first and foremost a hardware company. They bought Documentum so they could sell more hardware. That's what they do. As such, the public cloud doesn't really work for them.

Even though Rick Devenuti, who is COO for the EMC IIG, gave the cloud lip service in his keynote at EMC World, it didn't really factor into the new vision he laid out. One person who didn't miss this, was Laurence Hart of Washington Consulting Group who was put off (to say the least) by the current direction of the company. Hart wrote in a post on his Word of Pie blog that even when he attended EMC's Cloud Computing Roundtable, he wasn't terribly impressed by the cloud story he heard:

"It is obvious from the 'vision' that is presented, that Documentum isn’t in the cloud and that it isn’t a priority," Hart wrote.

Yet companies like SpringCM are already there offering modularized solutions that meet the needs of customers. Another company knocking at the door, but not quite there yet is Box.net. These companies are not selling huge monolithic packages. They do not require massive investments in hardware. They do not have installation cycles measured in months and years. These solutions are ready to use. The vendor deals with the hardware. You pay for what you use, and upgrades are incremental (unlike SharePoint which comes along every few years and wreaks havoc on the installed base, even when there are improvements).

The open-source factor

And finally we have the open-source factor. That's where companies like McKinnon's Nuxeo come into play, along with John Newton's (the man who helped develop Documentum, by the way) Alfresco. These companies have the audacity to give the software away, an approach that Lewis scoffs at. He will be the first to tell you, he's in business to make money, but he can't compete with free. That's why he changed the name of his division, and developed a new information-driven strategy because he desperately wants to show customers his company provides real value beyond the pure act of managing content in a repository. 

There's probably still plenty of money to be made at the lower end of the market, which could account for why McKinnon feels so giddy about the developing state of affairs. It could also account for Lewis' angst. He sees the writing on the wall. He sees the commoditization and the lower margins coming for ECM, and maybe that's why we have luminaries like Marks, Dallas and Hart arguing over the validity and accuracy of the name we have given this industry these last 10 years. It appears, dear readers, that the industry is transforming before our eyes. It seems to have happened over night, but it's probably been coming for a long time.

The Real Story Group recently changed its name from CMS Watch because it didn't feel it accurately reflected what it covered anymore. Maybe that name change was a more general harbinger of the direction of the entire industry. Maybe it is the end of the world as we know it. It certainly feels that way, doesn't it? - Ron