For Enterprise Collaboration, Focus On Information Workplace Platforms, Not ECM Specialists

Software infrastructure vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle have been busy assembling Information Workplace (IW) platforms. Each offers a platform that combines core IW building blocks including collaboration, enterprise content management (ECM), portal, office productivity services, management dashboards, and contextual learning. Their actions have forced other collaboration and ECM vendors into specialist positions, and the specialists have ceded some collaboration capabilities to the IW platform vendors — most notably Microsoft. Many ECM vendors now work instead to provide a nimble and focused set of capabilities that leverage the software services IW platforms deliver. Information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals should deploy the collaboration functionality in IW platforms wherever possible, using the ECM specialists' collaboration tools only for process-specific collaboration needs ? like drug approval, loan origination, insurance claim processing.