IBM joins EMC on case management bandwagon

It was just a couple of weeks ago that EMC shocked the world--well, at least those of us who follow the ECM market--when they seemed to be abandoning traditional core ECM tasks in favor of what they were calling "case management" (see "Documentum group gets new name and new direction"). So imagine my surprise when I was perusing my content management sources in Google Reader this week, and I came across a post by Forrester Analyst Rob Kopolowitz called "IBM Productizes The Information Workplace with Case Management Offering."

Did you notice those two words: "Case Management"? Well, they jumped out at me because this looks like the start of an actual trend in ECM. Maybe EMC was not alone when they recognized that companies needed something more than a dumb repository. They needed the tools to use ECM more effectively, something that seemingly has been lacking lo these many years.

One thing Kopolowitz points out is that this product is meant to solve real business problems, a similar refrain we heard from Mark Lewis at EMC World earlier this month (see "EMC's Mark Lewis takes a stand"). The IBM (NYSE: IBM) solution also attempts to provide a full-service package of tools to help business users in a particular environment such as finance or insurance--where case management works particularly well.

The goal of the case management approach appears to be to offer a menu of tools to help the business solve a given issue. On one hand, it's not a monolithic package like the ECM solutions we have been used to seeing from these larger companies, yet it still provides an avenue to sell a variety of tools over time. This might not be a bad idea.

For more information:
- see Rob Kopolowitz's Forrester blog post

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