The steady demand for enterprise content management (ECM) software in the past year has fueled acquisition fever, making buying decisions even harder for corporate customers. In response to this significant market change Forrester Research (Nasdaq: FORR) introduces its 2003 Enterprise Content Management TechRankings assessment of eight key software applications.

ECM continues to be a high-priority investment for companies. Almost one-third of senior technology decision-makers recently surveyed by Forrester are planning to purchase content management technologies in 2003. Forrester believes that ECM is an important market trend prompted by firms’ departure from homegrown content management systems in favor of an integrated approach to managing all of their disparate content — text, graphics, spreadsheets, multimedia files, source code — across their entire company.

As a result, buyers want ECM platforms that comprise tools for document and records management, Web content management, collaboration, and integrate with multiple repositories. In addition to these needs, this latest TechRankings evaluation also focuses on new areas of importance to ECM, including platform consistency, collaboration, and portal integration. Forrester invited all major vendors to participate in the ECM TechRankings scenario-based product testing and evaluation process. Eight vendors have participated as of September 2003:

  • Documentum with its 5 ECM Platform v5.2
  • FileNet with its P8
  • IBM with its DB2 Content Manager 8.2
  • Microsoft with its Content Management Server 2002
  • Open Text with its Livelink Enterprise Suite 9.1.3
  • Percussion with its Rhythmyx 5
  • Stellent with its Content Management
  • Vignette with its V7 Content Suite 7.1

Interwoven chose not to participate in this evaluation based on its product release schedule.

“What has driven the business demand in ECM? More penny-wise firms that want to reuse content and related technologies across their company,” said Nicholas Wilkoff, senior analyst at Forrester. “As IT buying becomes more centralized, purchasers are forced to re-evaluate vendor offerings and won’t have an easy time deciding which content management technologies they should keep unless they know what to focus on to accomplish their business goals.”

To view a Forrester video to learn more about choosing the right content management product, visit: Will You Choose The Right Content Management Product?

About TechRankings
Launched in October 2000, TechRankings evaluates more than 70 enterprise software products through rigorous hands-on scenario-based product testing, in-depth research, and objective analysis of global vendor offerings. Since every ECM platform implementation is unique, TechRankings lets clients use online tools to customize the research — and product evaluation rankings — to focus on the most important criteria and vendors.

Forrester invites all important vendors, based on their product fit and momentum, to participate. Forrester does not charge vendors in any way to participate in TechRankings. Forrester extensively checks and verifies results.

Forrester offers TechRankings research, analysis, and selection services in 11 software technology markets: application servers, business intelligence, business process management, commerce platforms, customer service applications, demand management, enterprise content management, eProcurement applications, integration servers, marketing automation applications, and process portal platforms. Forrester will continue to add important vendor evaluations and update the existing categories to reflect buyers’ evolving needs, in addition to adding new categories of software for evaluation. To learn more about TechRankings, visit www.forrester.com/techrankings.

The research mentioned in this press release is available to Forrester WholeView™ clients and can be found through www.forrester.com