Oracle releases ECM 11g

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) announced this week it was releasing its latest version of its ECM platform, which combines  Oracle Universal Content Management 11g and Oracle Universal Records Management 11g along with Oracle Imaging and Process Management 11g and Oracle Information Rights Management 11g, which were announced in earlier this year.

The release attempts to create a soup-to-nuts solution for content management. As we've been discussing lately, the content management industry as a whole seems to be moving away from these types of all-encompassing solutions. I asked Andy MacMillan (whom we interviewed One on One in back in 2008), Oracle vice president of product management if he believed customers were still looking for this type of package.

"As more organizations and CIOS are becoming aware of enterprise content management, they are trying to connect content to existing business processes (i.e. Accounts Payable, Employee On-boarding), users (via websites, collaboration), and other systems (i.e. ERP, CRM, Portal). These customers are coming to Oracle looking for complete, open and integrated solutions."

He adds, "Some of the highest costs in content are around these integration points--and customers don't want to bear the cost of buying and integrating multiple point solutions on their own. We definitely see a shift towards CIOs taking on a shared services model for managing content and wanting a content infrastructure that can better align with the way they handle the rest of their business information."

All that being said, MacMillan does understand that not everyone will want to implement an all-Oracle solution. He says that having open integration points helps connect a variety of applications to Oracle. "We recognize that many organizations do not have an entire Oracle application and technology stack. In Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g, we've continued to expand our set of integrations and support a broad set of databases, operating systems, portals, identity management tools, 3rd party content management systems and archives."

For more information:
- see the Oracle press release

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