DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT: REEMERGING OR DISAPPEARING?
by Jim Till
Today Magazine
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 2005 - Just a few years ago, enterprise document management systems were about the only solution available for organizations that wanted to get better control over how they managed and stored their documents and files. These systems provided a secure method to track important business processes and control users' rights to the documents that were associated with them. Yet, with the advent of Web publishing and later, enterprise content management or what is now known as "ECM", document management seemed to disappear. In fact, almost all of the leading document management vendors either acquired or developed Web content management technology or quickly merged with existing Web content management, (WCM) leaders. This soon produced just a handful of powerhouse ECM vendors competing to offer the most robust product suite of combined Web, document, records, portal and workflow solutions, each new offering more complex than the last.
While increased regulation and work process complexity have continued to fuel demand for the ECM applications, a new trend in document management has begun to emerge within both large and smaller sized organizations. Driven by similar needs to improve document security and support more distributed workforces a growing number of organizations is recognizing that they need an alternative to the traditional ECM suites. Some have chosen to use less costly document management solutions to complement their existing systems and address the collaborative needs of a broader portion of their employees. Others, who haven't yet adopted an organization-wide ECM standard, are choosing simpler alternatives to help them get started managing documents while assisting employees in overcoming the limitations associated with continuing to use email as a collaborating tool in today's compliance sensitive environment.
Recognizing the re-emergence of simpler document management applications, Gartner Research featured a presentation at its 2004 Fall Symposium entitled "When One Size Doesn't Fit All: The Many Flavors of Document Management," highlighting the changes they have observed in the document management market and predicting that in the next two to three years most of their clients were likely to support at least two standards for managing enterprise content: an ECM application for more complex, or highly regulated business processes and a simpler solution to meet the needs of the remaining majority of the organizations users. Gartner identified the core document management functions known as "library services" including document check in/out, version control and file-level access control as being key functions that most organizations would require just to support common collaborative processes. These "old fashioned" document management functions combined with today's Web standards for authentication and transport security would become part of most organizations technology infrastructure whether they adopted an ECM standard or not, the analysts predicted.
The new, simpler document management solutions have gained popularity by leveraging technology standards that hadn't even been thought of when the earlier electronic document management systems were first developed. Many are designed to integrate with common desktop applications or at least a browser. By not relying upon dedicated client software, they help reduce IT management costs as well as simplify user interaction. Most also rely upon common internet protocols such as HTTP, SSL and WebDAV as common methods to provide secure document exchange and expose the library services functions specified within the WebDAV standard.
This reliance upon open standards helps explain why these systems can be much easier to deploy and support. Common Web user interfaces help significantly reduce user training costs and ease adoption. Built-in desktop application support for the open protocols from leaders such as Adobe, Microsoft and others can even help make simple document management appear just like it's part of a user's standard file system. This permits them to safely open, edit and save documents from anywhere on the Web, turning virtually any employee into a Web publisher. Some of the simple document management vendors have even learned a few tricks from the more sophisticated ECM players.
Most importantly, these vendors have adopted a platform-neutral approach to technology. This has allowed them to appeal to organizations that have already standardized upon a particular server, database or storage architecture by providing document management solutions that don't rely upon any specific set of components. Both Xerox and Xythos have adopted this position with their respective Docushare and WebFile Server applications, helping both achieve early success in the market. Like Xerox and Xythos, IBM and Oracle also leverage Sun's Java architecture to ease system interoperability with their Collaboration Suite and Lotus WorkPlace offerings. However, each of these is more closely dependent upon their supplier's respective database offering, potentially reducing system flexibility and customer choice.
Oddly, Microsoft appears to becoming the least open-standards compliant of the simple document management application vendors after helping to develop the market with its Windows based client support. Instead, with the latest release of its SharePoint Portal Sever 2003 application, Microsoft appears to be shifting towards becoming more of a file-sharing portal than a simple document management system. For example, unlike competing applications, SharePoint is intended to be its own portal and is not designed to be integrated within other enterprise portal applications.
In contrast with earlier versions, SharePoint 2003 no longer includes basic workflow functions beyond document approval, nor does it include file-level access control - a requirement for simple document management applications, according to Gartner. SharePoint does provide a high level of collaborative integration between itself and the Microsoft 2003 desktop, making it attractive to organizations that have standardized upon the company's latest servers and desktop technology. Fortunately for those who have not, WebDAV helps expose the competing vendors' document management features in just about any desktop environment, even if it's not the latest version of Windows, helping organizations achieve the benefits of simple document management with having to decide when to upgrade or change their applications.
Don't be surprised either, if you don't actually see the re-emergence of document management in your own organization. Unlike systems from the past, today's solutions are meant to be integrated inside the business processes and applications that users already know and use, helping to automate basic document management functions and save employers time and money. Enterprise application developer, SAS Institute has already integrated document management technology from Xythos inside its flagship SAS 9 business intelligence platform as well as its own Drug Development and Sarbanes Oxley applications. Oracle has similar plans for its own enterprise applications.
Open, Web standards based technologies are clearly introducing document management to a much broader audience of users than in the past. Given the need for organizations to more cost- effectively respond to growing regulatory requirements, mobile and more interdependent users, it may be just in the nick of time. The document management category of applications may indeed succeed by disappearing once again, only this time within millions more desktops than ever before. With the help of technologies like WebDAV, that could be good news for enterprise users and the IT staffs that support them. Not bad for a second act.
James Till is VP of Marketing for Xythos Software Inc. He can be reached at 415-248-9009 or via e-mail at: jtill@xythos.com.