This document was revised on 18 November 2010. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com.

The term "enterprise content management" (ECM) refers both to a strategy to deal with all types of enterprise content and a set of software products for managing the entire life cycle of that content.

ECM suites and solutions combine different technologies, and their selection requires a knowledge of market trends, vendors and deployment models.

Gartner sees the market splitting into four main areas of buyer focus and vendor influence: transactional content management, social content management, online channel optimization and content management as infrastructure.

Use this Magic Quadrant to assess which ECM vendors have the functional capabilities and vision to support your business objectives and requirements, and to determine which would therefore make suitable strategic partners.

ECM initiatives need to extend content governance and best practices across the enterprise. They must link content with business processes and outcomes. However, a lack of consolidated budgets, buying centers, business expectations and project leadership is keeping ECM costs and benefits fragmented. Another problem is that, because it is difficult to prove the value and track the success of ECM suite implementations, vendors continue to use cut-rate pricing on seats and horizontal and vertical solutions to attract business for entry-level implementations.

Organizations today have more options for procuring and delivering ECM. These include software as a service (SaaS), shared services and open-source software, in addition to traditional on-premises software deployment. It is likely that organizations will employ a variety of deployment models, depending on the functionality required and the nature of the content being created and managed.

IT planners and enterprise architects need to understand how market consolidation — both past and future — will impact the strategies of leading vendors. Ultimately, many vendors will reduce their product portfolios and stop supporting some products. Migration from one product to another will likely cause disruption and increase costs for enterprises, as well as hinder user adoption and change management — areas that are frequently underestimated. Good planning can sometimes mitigate the impact of product migration. Sometimes that means investing in strategic providers — and consolidation within the ECM market has made content management part of the technology infrastructure available from most major stack vendors. However, the ECM suites that these vendors offer may not always represent the best approach to specific business challenges. Commoditization of content services by Microsoft and other providers has forced many stand-alone ECM suite vendors to move further toward horizontal and industry-specific vertical composite content application (CCA) offerings — or risk losing revenue.

Web content management (WCM) is being transformed as it aligns more with Web channel delivery and extends further into analytics, site optimization, social communities and interactivity, rich media and digital asset management (DAM), and personalization. Its focus will ultimately be the broader one of online channel optimization. This optimization will require connection to the larger content infrastructure in many enterprises, but will probably not share the same repository. Emerging hybrid content architectures separate systems of engagement that are used to create work in progress, drafts and more casual content from systems of record, in which final versions of content may be stored for business continuity, legal or regulatory purposes. The balance between the reward and risk value of content is being understood better by buyers and vendors alike as the market shifts from a "one size fits all" approach to a focus on use cases and disciplines supported by a broader range of business strategies for information governance. Understanding what not to manage closely is becoming crucial, as control over every unstructured data asset is rarely possible.

The exponential growth of social content created in systems of engagement demands new disciplines for managing its life cycle, storage and ultimate disposition. A 2009 Gartner study found that 31% of the enterprises surveyed indicated they regularly use social media tools and social networking sites, and that 52% planned to increase their budgets for social media tools and collaboration software in 2010. Like e-mail, which was originally meant to be used once for asynchronous communication and then discarded, social software applications have the potential to create masses of unmanaged content that may become relevant in a future lawsuit or regulatory investigation. Understanding its nature (whether an intermediate work product, a draft or a "place" to share ideas) and its ultimate role (to become a document, possibly even a record subject to formal governance and retention guidelines) is crucial to adopting such systems successfully.

As users become more influential in creating new forms of content, how they interact with all this content is also coming under scrutiny. Thus, the user experience is a critical focus for many vendors. Better role-based client interfaces provide two advantages that can help drive adoption: lower change management costs and higher user satisfaction. Other business benefits can accrue when users contribute, describe, protect, find, collaborate on and use information more effectively.

This Magic Quadrant represents a snapshot of the ECM market in 2010. Gartner advises readers not to compare the placement of vendors in prior years, as this market is changing — fresh acquisitions and partnerships, solutions development and the appearance of alternative delivery models are evidence of this — and our criteria for selecting and ranking vendors continue to evolve.

Our assessments take into account vendors' current offerings and overall strategies, as well as their planned initiatives and product road maps. We also consider how well vendors are driving market changes and adapting to changing market requirements.

This Magic Quadrant will help CIOs and business and IT leaders who are developing ECM strategies to assess whether vendors have the right products and enterprise platforms to support them.

ECM technology has changed greatly in recent years, with broader suite functionality, better process control, improved ease of use and a stronger focus on records. As a result, we continue strongly to advise organizations with ECM technologies more than five years old, or with multiple products across departments and geographies, to re-evaluate their content architecture with a view to possible consolidation of functionality and vendors.

Use this Magic Quadrant to understand the ECM market and how Gartner rates vendors and their packaged products. Draw on this research to evaluate vendors based on a customized set of objective criteria. Gartner advises organizations against simply selecting vendors because they appear in the Leaders quadrant. All selections should be buyer-specific, and vendors from the Challengers, Niche Players and Visionaries quadrants may be better matches for your business goals and solution requirements.

ECM is becoming as much an essential part of an enterprise information infrastructure as it is an investment in strategies, suites and solutions. New delivery models, content as infrastructure, and process enablement can all help companies realize a worthwhile return on investment (ROI). But that's only part of the measurement of business value that buyers now expect from content investments.

The ECM market registered 4.8% growth in 2009, primarily due to global economic conditions. According to Gartner's statistics, worldwide ECM software license and maintenance revenue came to $3.5 billion in 2009. Subsets of the market continued to generate higher revenue. For example, in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), WCM revenue grew to claim almost 30% of this region's content management market.

Gartner forecasts that total software revenue in the ECM market will grow at a compound annual rate of 10.1% through 2014. The market's return to stronger growth is expected to start in 2010, with rates climbing to double digits and worldwide ECM software revenue exceeding $5.7 billion by 2014. This represents a strong market, but it is also one that is undergoing transformation.

The ECM market has seen more mergers and acquisitions in 2010. Lexmark purchased Perceptive Software and Adobe acquired Day Software. We see more vendors augmenting broader strategies in relation to information management by expanding their CCA foundations or promoting integration with Microsoft SharePoint. Underlying buyer concerns about technological dependency on vendors with multiple partners in capture, search, analytics and so on have spurred mergers and acquisitions. IBM's announced acquisition of Datacap further underscores the need to deliver a stable set of components on a single contract from a single vendor — though still rarely on a single stock-keeping unit.

The basic content management requirements of organizations have become more complex. So has the definition of what comprises "basic content" — from text, to audio, to video, to various types of social-media content.

Content management technologies have also matured. Market consolidation has enabled leading vendors to deliver a broader set of solutions with combinations of technologies, although, even when buying from a single vendor, it can still prove a challenge to get its organic and acquired components to work together seamlessly. An ECM suite, while still relevant, is not necessarily the best option for meet changing business requirements. New use cases will require new solutions and we see the market shifting toward four collections of technologies to suit them.

Changing delivery models, new value propositions, solution configurations and partner ecosystems make ECM relevant to every business. 2010 is a year in which strategies for managing everything from cleanup of legacy content to social content require further investments of time, money and resources.

Understanding the "four worlds" of ECM can help put enterprises on the path to success. Very few vendors have market-leading emphasis and ability in all four. Though many implementations span several worlds, almost all will have to relate to content management as infrastructure.

The four worlds of ECM are as follows:

1. Transactional content management solutions focus on imaging, workflow/business process management (BPM), compliance/archives, records management and e-forms. Content contained within applications in this category tends to be static, rather than dynamic, though this may change as XML representations become more common. Processes tend to be stable, long-running and have a high volume of forms or documents that demand scalability, life cycle control and human approval, primarily for exceptions. An application interface is almost guaranteed. CCAs like those for invoice automation, case management frameworks, and other horizontal and vertical market templates and solutions are key considerations in vendor selection. Examples of solutions include offerings for customer communications management, processing of loan applications and electronic patient files.

Sample vendors: EMC, Hyland Software, IBM, Open Text.

2. Social content management solutions focus on compound content object control and library services; document collaboration; workflow automation with alerts and calendaring; social content like wikis, blogs and videos; task tracking; browser or portal viewing; markup, annotation and version control. The focus is on systems of engagement — orchestrating high-value people involved in the project-based or long-running development and delivery of high-value documents, content or knowledge management, and optimizing the processes, interfaces and objectives that relate them through collaboration. Examples of these solutions include offerings for new drug discovery, new hire recruiting, on-boarding and training, and construction project management.

Sample vendors: Alfresco, IBM/Lotus, Microsoft, Open Text.

3. Online channel optimization solutions focus on Web channel sets of technology, including WCM, DAM, portals, electronic forms, Web and content analytics, social software, XML authoring, rich-media management, social content and collaboration, mobile device support and so on. The aim is to "idealize" them to serve as Web-delivered, context-aware engagement platforms for a variety of industry-focused solutions. Most important in delivering value will be a focus on relevancy and consequent measurable increases in the impact of the delivered experience. Examples of templates or solutions to engage customers more fully include online retail optimization, Web channel distributed claims processing, and constituency self-service in government.

Sample vendors: Autonomy, Adobe, Open Text, Oracle.

4. Content management as infrastructure solutions are increasingly being delivered by infrastructure vendors such as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, which are embedding content management capabilities into their stacks. They are also increasingly becoming infrastructure platforms for supporting multiple CCAs. For example, when Microsoft SharePoint takes hold in an organization, users naturally begin exploring its suitability for a wider range of content management applications and its potential as a replacement for existing solutions. Essential considerations for this category in 2010 and 2011 are updated, richer metadata, policies for life cycle control prior to migrations from other repositories, network drives or file servers, and business intelligence for unstructured data overall. Understanding how content relates to larger enterprise information management disciplines will also become critical. Examples of early use cases include file server content migration and integration of content with manufacturing processes.

Sample vendors: IBM, Microsoft, Oracle.

Legacy information management: Many enterprises are looking at this to address their vast information stores and support compliance and legal discovery requirements. It involves the process of proactively managing and valuing enterprise content that exists in applications, repositories and file systems to decide on its retention and storage for business and operational purposes. Gartner predicts that, by 2013, the predominant solution for archiving will be integrated content archiving. Specifically, it will be a solution that encompasses multiple types of content, such as e-mail, files, Microsoft SharePoint and other ECM content, instant messages and, optionally, other types such as images, database content and Web content.

There is already some movement in this direction. Many solutions that started out as e-mail archiving applications have added support for file and SharePoint archiving. But in nearly all cases, the full value of these solutions has yet to be realized, as features such as common policy management for retention and disposition, indexing/search, deduplication, user management and sharing of archived data across applications do not work seamlessly across all content types.

Major questions also remain about how to move content into the archive, and how to determine the criteria for doing so. Given that multiple copies of almost every digital file exist in every organization, even deduplication is a problem, especially for a large, diverse and geographically and architecturally vast organization. Still, methods do exist, and the largest hurdle remains simply making the decisions that need to be made, which requires input from IT, the business users who create and use the content, and the company's legal and compliance teams. The process is difficult, but not impossible, and Gartner recommends "good enough" solutions, as nothing like perfection exists (or ever will exist) when it comes to deciding which content to keep and which to delete.

Search and content analytics: One way to meet the challenge of legacy content is by using search and content analytics applications. These are very valuable for making unstructured data — whether "at rest" in a repository or in motion — searchable and analytically accessible, which is a challenge for companies seeking to solve a variety of business problems. The benefits of auto-classification — whether in eliminating aging, redundant or useless content, improving migration from other content containers, or determining the relationship of content to structured data, processes and user populations — are not yet fully realized. Executive managers are seldom moved by typical IT arguments about the relatively low cost of storage — they consider risk reduction and value creation to be more compelling reasons to adopt a technology.

Composite content applications and case management frameworks: Gartner uses the term "composite content application" (CCA) to describe frameworks and templates for specific business processes that are built on ECM and/or BPM platforms. The term relates to both vertical and horizontal examples of solutions where collections of content, the platforms that store and manage them, the processes that leverage them, and the context required to deliver value from them for the benefit of end users and business buyers, are optimized by technology vendors and their domain expert partners. As well as relating to modern composite application development, the term refers to the componentization of content and to the value of combining systems and information to create strengthened value propositions and business outcomes. As examples of CCAs, case management frameworks are the electronic equivalent of what has supported business for centuries: the cabinets, drawers, folders, forms and collaborative workflow processes that support important human decisions. Many ECM vendors are staking a great deal of their future revenue on defining and delivering CCAs directly and via partners.

Electronic discovery: The legal landscape around electronic information is changing rapidly, and many enterprises are making assessments, buying technology and devising plans in regard to e-discovery. E-discovery often begins as a project in its own right, but organizations quickly realize that it touches on many other areas of interest — all of which normally involve the creation and storage of so-called unstructured information.

Shared services and alternative delivery models for ECM: More companies and governments want new methods of obtaining ECM capability, including cloud-hosted, on-premises rental, managed via outsourcers and open-source software. These new methods will grow in comparison to conventional delivery, but they will not eclipse it.

Content in the cloud: Cloud computing is starting to change the ECM market landscape, based on potential cost savings and technology benefits. The influence of the three biggest cloud vendors — Google, IBM and Microsoft — on the future ECM market has yet to be determined.

ECM, defined as a strategy, can help enterprises take control of their content and, in so doing, boost productivity, encourage collaboration and make information easier to share.

ECM, defined as software, consists of a set of capabilities and/or applications for content life cycle management that interoperate, but that can also be sold and used separately.

The core components of an ECM suite and the updated weights for the Magic Quadrant scoring are described below.

Document management for check-in/check-out, version control, security and library services for business documents. Advanced capabilities such as compound document support and content replication score more highly than do basic library services.

Web content management (WCM) for controlling the content of a website through the use of specific management tools based on a core repository. This includes content creation functions, such as templating, workflow and change management, and content deployment functions that deliver prepackaged or on-demand content to Web servers. The minimum requirement is a formal partnership with a WCM provider. Native capabilities score more highly than partnerships. The relative complexities of provisioning content to users across intranet, extranet and Internet applications are also considered, as are the implications of analytics, social content and delivery models.

Several ECM vendors qualify for independent analysis of their WCM functionality.

Records management for long-term retention of content through automation and policies, ensuring legal, regulatory and industry compliance. The minimum requirement is an ability to enforce retention of critical business documents, based on a records retention schedule. Higher ratings are given for certified compliance with standards such as the Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 5015.2-STD, The National Archives (TNA), the Victorian Electronic Records Strategy (VERS) and Model Requirements for the Management of Electronic Records (MoReq2).

Several ECM vendors qualify for independent analysis of their records management functionality.

Image-processing applications for capturing, transforming and managing images of paper documents. For this component we require a vendor to offer two things: (1) document capture (scanning hardware and software, optical and intelligent character recognition technologies, and form-processing technology) performed either using native capabilities or through a formal partnership with a third-party solution provider such as KnowledgeLake, Kofax, EMC (Captiva) and IBM (Datacap); (2) the ability to store images of scanned documents in the repository as "just another" content type in a folder, and to route them through an electronic process. Extra credit is granted for vertical or horizontal solutions delivered directly or through partners.

Several ECM vendors qualify for independent analysis of their image-processing functionality.

Social content for document sharing, collaboration and knowledge management, and for supporting project teams. Blogs, wikis and support for other online interactions have been added. Social content — including video — is the fastest-growing category of new content in the enterprise. The name of this component has been changed from "document collaboration" to "social content" to reflect broader audience and content types.

Workflow/BPM for supporting business processes, routing content, assigning work tasks and states, and creating audit trails. The minimum requirement is simple document review and approval workflow. Higher scores are given to vendors with graphical process builders, and both serial and parallel routing. Many vendors are drawing on stronger process capabilities to deliver frameworks or templates as CCAs.

Several ECM vendors qualify for independent analysis of their workflow/BPM functionality.

Extended components can include one or more of the following: DAM, document composition, e-forms, search, content and Web analytics, e-mail and information archiving, e-mail management and packaged application integration.

Weighting changes from 2009 to 2010:

• Document management: 20% in 2009, 15% in 2010 = -5% change

• WCM: 15% in 2009, 10% in 2010 = -5% change

• Records management: 15% in 2009, 15% in 2010 = no change

• Image-processing applications: 15% in 2009, 15% in 2010 = no change

• Social content: 10% in 2009, 10% in 2010 = no change

• Workflow/BPM: 20% in 2009, 25% in 2010 = +5% change

• Extended components: 5% in 2009, 10% in 2010 = +5% change

This year's Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management includes revisions to the evaluation criteria, descriptions and scoring of the functional capabilities, as well as a focus on new combinations of technology, delivery models and vertical-market solutions. We will continue to use a threshold of $10 million in new software license and maintenance revenue to enable us to recognize the growth of small and midsize business, departmental and alternative delivery ECM products. Although the Leaders quadrant continues to contain very large vendors, we have seen growth in the market in several categories and have qualified several new vendors for inclusion in the Magic Quadrant during the past few years.

To appear in this Magic Quadrant, a vendor must meet Gartner's criteria for revenue, geographic presence, functional capabilities and "referenceability." Specifically, a vendor must:

• Have at least $10 million in total content management software revenue (licenses, updates and maintenance). An open-source software vendor must have at least $10 million in annual customer subscriptions.

• Actively market its products in at least two major regions — for example, North America and EMEA, or Asia/Pacific and Latin America.

• Have ECM software commercially available, and active references that use its products in production scenarios.

• Have an integrated content management suite with at least four of the components listed above supplied natively; others may be supplied through partners.

Vendors that we considered for the Magic Quadrant but that do not appear in it include:

• Vertafore, which bought ImageRight several years ago but has not broken out of mid-market property and casualty insurance solutions or North America.

• Optical Image Technology (OIT), which has begun to penetrate more insurance agencies with its DocFinity suite but still lacks visibility.

• Nuxeo, which has a strong open-source platform for ECM but fell short of our revenue requirement.

• BOX.net, which is a cloud host for document services but lacks sufficient core functionality to qualify as ECM.

• ASG, which focuses more on archiving than the broader ECM suite market.

Adobe replaces Day Software, which it acquired in October 2010. Adobe also has a number of creative design, Web technology, and forms- and document-processing products and platforms.

Although Lexmark has completed its acquisition of Perceptive Software, Perceptive and its product will continue to operate independently.

We have removed HP from the Magic Quadrant because HP's stated strategy is to focus solely on records management and not the broader ECM market.

We have removed SAP because it plans to continue to promote partner technology like that of Open Text, rather than deliver ECM natively.

Day Software has been replaced by its acquirer, Adobe, as noted above.

Ability to Execute measures how well a vendor sells and supports its ECM products and services on a global basis. In addition to rating product capabilities, we evaluate each vendor's viability, installed base, pricing, customer support and satisfaction, and product migrations from one major release to another.

To be considered for the Leaders quadrant, a vendor must provide most components natively, though they may be loosely coupled as a suite.

Although not explicitly identified as a core component, information access or search technology has always been a critical component of an ECM suite, and it plays a big role in helping companies sift through structured and unstructured information. All ECM products ship with a search engine embedded as a core component, so that users can create a full-text index and search the content stored in repositories.

Some vendors have added extended components, such as DAM for handling rich media, e-forms, and document and e-mail archiving, and document composition for high-volume generation of customized documents.

Completeness of Vision focuses on potential. A vendor might succeed financially in the short term without a clearly defined vision or strategic plan, but it won't become a Leader.

A vendor with average vision anticipates change by accurately perceiving market trends and exploiting technology.

A vendor with superior vision anticipates, directs and initiates market trends, particularly if it integrates its vision for a broad range of areas, and capitalizes on product and service development.

Part of our assessment involves looking at how well each vendor understands changing requirements and market trends. We evaluate vendors on their awareness and adoption of emerging functionality, their technical architecture (for example, standards support, Web services and Web 2.0 capabilities), and their focus and abilities in federating and integrating with other content repositories and applications.

Leaders have the highest combined scores for Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. They are doing well and are prepared for the future with a clearly articulated vision. In the context of ECM, they have strong channel partners, presence in multiple regions, consistent financial performance, broad platform support and good customer support. In addition, they dominate in one or more technology or vertical market. Leaders deliver a suite that addresses market demand for direct delivery of the majority of core components, though these are not necessarily owned by them, tightly integrated, unique or best-of-breed in each area. We place more emphasis this year on demonstrated enterprise deployments; integration with other business applications and content repositories; incorporation of Web 2.0 and XML capabilities; and vertical-process and horizontal-solution focus. Leaders should drive market transformation. There are six Leaders in this year's Magic Quadrant.

Challengers offer good functionality and have a substantial number of installations, but they lack the vision of Leaders. They typically don't possess all the core ECM components. Instead, they use partnerships to round out their suites, or they ignore some markets altogether. Challengers can lack a broad ECM focus or geographic coverage, but they execute well, despite any product limitations.

Perceptive Software is the only Challenger in this year's Magic Quadrant.

Visionaries may offer all capabilities natively or partner with other vendors for several core ECM components. In some cases, Visionaries will need to integrate their acquisitions into their product suites. They typically show a strong understanding of the market and anticipate shifting drivers. They may lead efforts relating to standards, new technologies or alternative delivery models, but they have less ability to execute than the Leaders. They are building their market presence.

Niche Players typically focus on specific categories of ECM technology (such as transactional content management), midmarket buyers, or supplements to the offerings of business application or stack providers. This category may include vendors that are still ramping up their overall ECM efforts and those that have neither the vision nor the execution ability to break out of the Niche Players quadrant. Some Niche Players may be "boutiques" that serve only certain regions, industries or functional domains, not the broader market.

In October 2010, Adobe completed its acquisition of Day Software. Adobe is expected to continue to focus on engineering open-source software products and actively promoting standards such as Java Specification Request (JSR) 170, JSR 283 and Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS). The CQ5 platform and CRX repository focus on CCAs and online channel optimization.

Website: www.day.com/day/en/products.html

• Prior to its acquisition, Day led industry efforts to devise integration standards such as JSR 170 and, more recently, JSR 283 and CMIS. It was also instrumental in developing the Java Content Repository, a standards-based repository based on JSR specifications.

• The company has development tools for mobile applications and cloud hosting, and it has targeted media companies that want to deliver applications to every channel and device.

• In 2010, Day has also delivered new products and functionality, increased revenue and secured larger enterprise deals.

• Adobe's acquisition of Day may draw attention away from product enhancement and toward integration with Adobe's LiveCycle and Omniture products in order to expand Adobe's enterprise footprint and enhance the overall attractiveness of its WCM proposition. Expect pressure, though, for the CQ5 and CRX products and the customer pipeline to deliver value quickly.

• Solid research and development (R&D) investment in standards, user experience and mobile solutions support has led to improved customer references, but Adobe needs to build greater visibility in the market.

• As with several standards-based and open-source platforms, the CRX product may require deeper technical and administrative skills to implement.

Alfresco is one of a handful of vendors building and delivering an open-source ECM suite to address all the core capabilities we identify, and it is the only open-source vendor to meet our inclusion criteria this year. Founded in 2005, Alfresco focused originally on document repository services, but has expanded its suite to cover records management, WCM, DAM and BPM. It has embraced open standards, including CMIS, and is now targeting the nascent market for cloud-based content management.

Website: www.alfresco.com

• Alfresco has a growing partner channel of regional and global system integrators, as well as key OEM relationships with Quark and Ricoh, among others. These provide some assurance of viability, as does a thriving user community.

• Alfresco has a strong story to tell in relation to integration and openness through its support for standards like CMIS, Representational State Transfer (REST) and Web Services, and its integration with Drupal, Joomla, Google Docs, and IBM's Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections.

• Alfresco's ECM suite can be deployed on a single server. This can reduce hardware costs and simplify deployment and administration, which can be a significant factor when building a business case for ECM based on a positive total cost of ownership (TCO) story.

• Feedback from Gartner clients indicates that some Alfresco customers have experienced performance and scalability issues when deploying its ECM suite beyond departmental implementations. Some have also expressed concerns about inconsistent customer support.

• Alfresco provides published application programming interfaces, but does not have packaged, certified integration with ERP or CRM applications such as those of SAP and Oracle (Siebel CRM). This level of integration is typically a prerequisite for transactional content processes, and some Alfresco partners have built these for customers.

• As often with open-source software, Alfresco customers may need a higher degree of technical competency to manage implementation. Additional costs of implementation and development may offset the initial lower cost of entry.

Although Autonomy has all the ECM components within its product portfolio, it does not position itself as an ECM suite vendor. Nevertheless, enterprise buyers with a focus on information access, governance, online channel optimization or social content management will find Autonomy well suited to their needs.

Website: www.autonomy.com

• Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) platform has now been integrated across its image capture, document management, workflow, records management, archive and Web content technologies. Better access to information and better understanding of information's meaning tied to a unified platform are things that many enterprises seek but few vendors can deliver.

• Autonomy has continued to advance its concept of "Power, Protect and Promote" to help describe its clusters of technologies and related concepts about information understanding and management. Clearer and more consistent messaging will be important as Autonomy continues to have influence in a number of markets.

• With a leadership position in both e-mail archiving and records management, Autonomy is positioned to engage risk-focused enterprises with a strategic set of technologies. On the reward side of the content equation, its WCM, media management and analytics tools are also collectively quite strong.

• Autonomy continues to promote a vision of content management that enterprise buyers have difficulty understanding.

• Autonomy continues to have limited capabilities in transactional applications and CCAs, which is where differentiation in terms of scale and vertical solutions is required.

• Customer service on some accounts, particularly for older products, remains a challenge.

EMC competes in several categories of ECM, with a range of products. The newly named Information Intelligence Group has made changes since 2009's Magic Quadrant, including building momentum for the Documentum xCelerated Composition Platform (xCP), bolstering SourceOne with the Kazeon e-discovery acquisition, partnering with SAP for solutions delivery, uncoupling its WCM platform and partnering with FatWire Software. EMC's transactional and content infrastructure offerings are designed for midsize to very large enterprises.

Website: www.emc.com/products/category/enterprise-content-management.htm

• EMC's content stack remains a strong set of complementary products, able to manage the whole content life cycle better than most of its competitors. Among its stronger assets are capture, core repository, process management, archive and records management, and document composition capabilities — all of which are essential for case management.

• For risk management, EMC has a very strong set of resources for enterprises that want to move from a traditional archiving approach to a larger, more comprehensive and more holistic information governance strategy that addresses archiving, compliance and e-discovery needs.

• EMC is well placed to capitalize on the demand for better "on-ramps" (image capture, computer output to laserdisc/enterprise report management [COLD/ERM], electronic forms, XML authoring, integration interfaces) and "off-ramps" (customer communications management, electronic forms, WCM/mobility, archives), given its acquisitions of Captiva, Document Sciences and X-Hive during the past few years.

• Recent product introductions and a revamped business strategy have not yet yielded gains in ECM overall, though traction for xCP is an exception. EMC has yet to execute well in creating corresponding sales synergies with its hardware or services teams.

• EMC has seen some erosion of business across the Documentum family. This is partly due to perceived costs and complexities, compared with Microsoft SharePoint, and partly because its ecosystem of system integrator and independent software vendor partners has not delivered a catalog of solutions for all products — apart from xCP — compelling enough to stem losses.

• Documentum should have been promoted more strongly as the ideal complement to SharePoint in a hybrid content architecture — providing the transactional information management tools to supplement SharePoint's infrastructure and social content capabilities.

France's Ever Team focuses on ERP-based CCAs for Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP via a growing partner channel, primarily in EMEA. Ever Team has begun an aggressive expansion program in product development, partner delivery and geographical presence.

Website: www.ever-team.com/en

• Ever Team has introduced EverSuite Document Enabling solutions — packaged CCAs for ERP and particularly Microsoft Dynamics NAV — for its growing list of channel partners to sell, along with additional services and licenses relating to Microsoft SharePoint.

• The strategic expansion program should bring Ever Team to North America in 2011.

• Ever Team extends horizontal business applications by providing simple support for common paper-based processes such as sales ordering, invoicing and documenting human resources processes.

• Ever Team is rarely a shortlist candidate for ERP packages, except to supplement Microsoft's, even though it integrates with several others.

• Ever Team's range of enabling solutions for Microsoft is not being promoted effectively enough in global markets.

• Although it has invested in product enhancements, Ever Team may not have enough developer resources to match the process, analytics and user interface updates of its competitors.

Fabasoft delivers both on-premises and cloud-hosted ECM and search technologies. The traditional focus of its Folio products on compliance and governance is being broadened to include collaboration and CCAs. Along with building a solutions-focused partner program, Fabasoft is selling to four vertical markets: government, financial services, energy and retail.

Website: www.fabasoftfolio.com

• Fabasoft's records management module was the first — and remains the only — offering to be certified for the MoReq2 standard, which was released in February 2008. Fabasoft is of particular interest to European government agencies trying to capitalize on Microsoft SharePoint but requiring the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM).

• Fabasoft is focused on improving user experiences to ensure that investments in ECM deliver more measurable ROI by improving user performance.

• Fabasoft grew its applications through organic development, rather than acquisitions. Recent additions include support for CMIS, mobile application development and alternative delivery options.

• Fabasoft, an Austrian company, must continue to expand its coverage in North America and grow its partner channel.

• Some buyers complain that Folio's system administration and interfaces are less intuitive than its competitors', though this may partly be due to the influence of comparisons with Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

• Third-party developers of CCAs are moving toward SharePoint — and even mobile devices like the Apple iPad — because this enables them to monetize their domain expertise faster than with more complex platforms based on open-source or open standards, despite their attractions. Thus, Fabasoft will have to sell Folio through partners that have good technical skills.

Hyland Software has long been a successful ECM vendor focused on the mid-market. In 2010, its consistent and focused vision, double-digit growth rate and growing installed base — partly fueled by its SaaS offering and several acquisitions — have helped it achieve a leadership position in the Magic Quadrant.

Website: www.hyland.com

• Strong management, a clear strategy, happy customers and a vertical-market focus make Hyland a shortlist candidate for many companies, especially in the mid-market, which is frequently neglected by the larger players.

• Hyland has had considerable success delivering both on-premises solutions and a SaaS-based offering, OnBase OnLine. The firm is expanding its international data centers to accommodate increasing demand in EMEA and Asia/Pacific for SaaS solutions.

• Hyland's ERP integration shortens its time to deployment for CCA solutions like invoice automation, while its integrations with Epic and other clinical applications enable adoption for patient records and other healthcare solutions. Healthcare is now Hyland's leading vertical market.

• To remain relevant in the face of increasing competition from Microsoft SharePoint and its document capture and workflow partners, Hyland must continue building a vertical-solutions partner ecosystem with strong domain expertise in a variety of business processes.

• Although Hyland is financially strong and growing rapidly, it remains a midsize organization with a more limited international footprint than the ECM infrastructure vendors. As such, it may not be suitable for the most demanding scalability requirements of some Global 2000 enterprises and federal government agencies of comparable size (those, for example, with geographically distributed deployments managing billions of documents).

• Hyland's functional capabilities focus primarily on transactional content management. Clients with a focus on social content management or online channel optimization will need to supplement OnBase with partner offerings.

IBM has the breadth of portfolio, depth of services and global reach to address the needs of organizations across a wide range of content types and to promote the use of content management infrastructure to support the broader discipline of enterprise information management. Yet IBM's strengths also pose challenges. IBM has multiple products that qualify as ECM, but they come from different software brands and have some overlapping capabilities. Also, although IBM has made progress in outlining a strategic vision to couple cross-portfolio products more tightly, both existing and prospective customers have expressed confusion over which products are most appropriate for their needs, and which products are strategic to IBM. IBM's ECM focus and strengths lie in the worlds of transactional content management and social content management.

Website: www-01.ibm.com/software/data/content-management

• IBM's worldwide footprint, direct sales force and channel partners have helped it retain its position as the largest global ECM vendor, with a 20% market share in terms of total software revenue.

• IBM's long-standing strengths in production imaging and document-centric workflow, particularly with the FileNet Content Manager and Business Process Manager platform, give it the foundation to support its vision and strategy for advanced case management. Its recent acquisition of Datacap should further strengthen its capabilities to support CCAs, such as those for case management.

• IBM's Smart Archive strategy takes a unified approach to archiving and brings together a broad range of products from its software (ECM, information management and Tivoli), hardware and solutions groups. IBM also has value-added capabilities to support an enterprise information archiving platform, including data discovery, e-discovery, classification, records management and analytics. Furthermore, with the acquisition of PSS Systems, IBM can now provide a comprehensive enterprise solution for legal and information life cycle governance.

• IBM has made progress integrating its ECM offering with other IBM products in fields such as collaboration, WCM, electronic forms (Lotus), portals/mashups, business rules (Ilog), analytics (Cognos), application archiving (Optim), master data management (InfoSphere) and appliances. However, feedback from Gartner clients indicates that customers remain frustrated with IBM's complex product portfolio, the need for services resources to get products up and running, and the quality and consistency of technical support.

• IBM's size and complexity as a global software and hardware company prevent it from reacting as nimbly as its competitors to the increased demand for better support for role-based clients, casual content creation/consumption, shorter deployment cycles and less complexity. It has begun losing ground to lower-cost transactional content management alternatives such as those of Hyland and Perceptive, and to Microsoft SharePoint for simple document management, collaboration and forms-based process automation.

• IBM faces a challenge to scale down its current offerings to meet the needs of midsize and smaller enterprises. These enterprises are increasingly considering alternative delivery models, such as open-source and cloud provisioning, for their content management initiatives. Although IBM has an emerging vision, strategy and product family in LotusLive to address the growing demand for cloud-based computing, it may be missing a big opportunity by not offering richer content management and content-centric process capabilities in a cloud-based model.

With over 23 years' market experience, Laserfiche has proven its ability to compete for larger implementations. Its Laserfiche Rio (ECM) and Laserfiche Avante (BPM) offerings focus on helping enterprises move from paper-based processes to more efficient electronic ones. Laserfiche generates transactional content management revenue via its reseller channel, which is focused on North America but has growing presence elsewhere.

Website: www.laserfiche.com/rio

• Laserfiche has positioned itself as a vendor of lower-cost offerings for small and midsize enterprises needing U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2-certified records management. At the time of writing, Laserfiche offers the only DoD-5015.2-certified integration for Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

• Laserfiche has achieved a high level of customer satisfaction and grown its business during the past five years. It continues to manage itself conservatively.

• Value-based pricing and alternative models such as the ability to "rent" a Laserfiche system keep this vendor competitive, even against SaaS vendors.

• Laserfiche's marketing efforts are only just starting to resonate with large enterprises.

• Laserfiche needs to expand beyond the government, education and credit union sectors, enter more geographies, and focus on dynamic and Web-oriented content.

• Combining Rio and Avante to create CCAs developed from the center and delivered via the channel will require focus and investment.

SharePoint has been a very successful product for Microsoft, as Gartner surveys show a high degree of market penetration. Gartner sees this momentum continuing with SharePoint 2010, mostly due to functional enhancements. The interdependence of SharePoint, Office, Windows, Exchange and SQL Server is helping Microsoft solidify its position as the provider of the most widely used document- and collaboration-centered application platform.

Website: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pages/Default.aspx

• SharePoint 2010 goes well beyond basic content management into portal, search and collaboration technologies, and is attracting a large following as companies plan evolutions from their implementations of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. Over half the inquiries Gartner receives about ECM include discussion of SharePoint.

• Thanks to Microsoft's position as a "stack" vendor, SharePoint has attracted a very large ecosystem. Many third-party software vendors are building extensions, and system integrators are generating big business around deployments and customizations.

• SharePoint has caused many enterprises to focus on an ECM strategy. It has also influenced other vendors in the ECM market, which have either positioned their products as logical supplements in a hybrid content architecture based on SharePoint or directed their product messaging toward vertical-market solutions that deliver value due to their specificity to domains in which Microsoft does not compete.

• Enterprises with earlier versions of SharePoint face a challenge to migrate to SharePoint 2010, especially in the case of customized implementations, even though Microsoft and several partners offer migration tools.

• SharePoint 2010 has records management and archiving limitations, modest WCM capabilities and somewhat limited BPM/imaging capabilities for building CCAs.

• Customer feedback regarding large, decentralized deployments of SharePoint 2010 indicates some improvements in scalability over SharePoint 2007, but still demands improvements in deployment management, latency and replication functionality.

India's Newgen has enhanced its presence as a vendor of transactional content platforms for large financial services institutions and business process outsourcers by becoming as noteworthy for process management as for content management. New promotions of solutions for customer communications management and BPM supplement its growing partner ecosystem and core transactional content management capabilities.

Website: www.newgensoft.com

• Newgen's Omni suite includes balanced components for capture, document management, process control, records retention and archiving. Beyond the core suite, Newgen has modules for BPM and knowledge management, and provides CCA development support via elegant interfaces and adaptors.

• Newgen has a strong services and support team, which supplements its solutions partners and business process outsourcers.

• Newgen, though relatively small in terms of revenue and footprint, delivers a platform used by many organizations because of its proven scalability and functionality.

• Newgen's product development in ECM and BPM will require substantial marketing investment to grow revenue, particularly as the company enters North America.

• Competition for transactional content management and CCAs is growing.

• Newgen's cloud-hosting and mobile content application development could prove a distraction from its core need for partnerships and expanded geographical presence.

Objective, an Australian vendor, focuses on the public sector, with CCAs delivered via on-premises and cloud-hosted models. Objective's direct approach to the market and its product capabilities in content and process management are well suited to the development of an expanding solutions portfolio for its government customers.

Website: www.objective.com/products/enterprisecontentplatform

• Objective avoids the distractions its competitors face by strictly limiting the number of partnerships and products it supports for delivery to its government customers.

• Objective's acquisition of Limehouse Software positions it to deliver a hybrid content architecture and solutions set.

• Objective's persistent R&D of a closely managed set of CCAs is a key differentiator.

• Objective's professional services partnerships are few, as it prides itself on a direct approach to the market, but it will be unable to sustain this approach if it aims to achieve global reach in the government sector.

• Objective's cloud-hosted product is not a perfect match for its on-premises offering. Creating an ideal hybrid set of capabilities for specific government solutions is an important next step.

• Integration complexity and limited technical support have frustrated some of Objective's customers.

Open Text is the largest pure-play ECM vendor and has continued to pursue an acquisition strategy in 2010, buying companies like Nstein for technology and Burntsand for services, even as it integrates larger acquisitions such as Vignette. Open Text's relationships with SAP and Microsoft are central to its strategic aim of providing an ECM suite that works within those vendors' infrastructure and applications. Open Text has strengthened its global partnership with SAP through multiple reselling contracts. The Open Text ECM Suite 2010 provides an integrated set of content management technologies and solutions.

Website: www.opentext.com/2/global/sol-products/sol-pro-open-text-ecm-suite.htm

• Open Text has many CCAs, including horizontal solutions for areas like accounts payable and vertical-market solutions for the government, energy and financial services sectors.

• Open Text's expanding reseller partner agreement with SAP gives it a competitive advantage when it comes to seizing opportunities with SAP customers, particularly for deals involving imaging, archiving, and document and records management. SAP also provides an extensive sales channel for Open Text.

• Open Text has a complete set of ECM technologies, led by its ECM Suite. They include Enterprise Process Services for BPM, WCM technologies acquired from Vignette, and Enterprise Library Services for repository and content life cycle management.

• Open Text needs to rationalize its product portfolio more quickly. As some product life cycles near their end, the company needs to consolidate and/or provide a migration path for these products.

• Microsoft SharePoint may reduce Open Text's revenue stream, as some customers may move to standardize on SharePoint.

• Open Text's service capabilities are still perceived negatively in some geographies. Acquisitions like Burntsand and New Generation Consulting may help, but Open Text must build its partner channel.

Oracle continues to expand its ECM market footprint while building content management functionality into its enterprise business applications. Oracle introduced its Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g in 2010. This release provides tighter integration with Oracle Fusion Middleware, including its portal and BPM components, and its business applications, such as PeopleSoft and E-Business Suite. It enables customers to leverage Oracle infrastructure and technologies, while at the same time reducing the overall cost of deployment. Oracle's sales presence and broad technology stack make it a strong contender in the ECM market.

Website: www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/content-management/index.htm

• Oracle Universal Content Management 11g is a mature, well-integrated suite that provides "productized" integration with Oracle applications.

• The size and capabilities of Oracle's sales force, product development and support organizations provide it with significant opportunities to grow its content management business and increase its market share.

• Integration of the Enterprise Content Management Suite with the rest of Oracle's software stack provides substantial benefits to Oracle customers.

• Oracle is only just starting to implement Web 2.0 and collaboration capabilities across its ECM products through its WebCenter Suite 11g, which is promising but still immature.

• Mid-market customers often find Oracle ECM too expensive for their content management applications due to software and services costs.

• Oracle still finds it challenging to compete for opportunities and "mind share" in organizations that are not Oracle-centric, where other leading ECM vendors may have an advantage.

Perceptive Software was acquired by Lexmark in June 2010 but remains an independently operating entity. Perceptive's ImageNow platform is well-known for fast integration and transactional content management solutions for higher education, government and back-office processes. Perceptive delivers solutions via several deployment and licensing program options.

Website: www.perceptivesoftware.com

• Lexmark has kept Perceptive's road map and priorities in line and continues to allow it to do the right things from a product and solution standpoint. Lexmark's global presence and sales support should help fuel its growth.

• Perceptive's focus on ERP integration (with Oracle, SAP, Lawson and PeopleSoft products) positions it as one of the few specialists able to meet the high demand in the solutions market.

• Perceptive's development strategy remains closely aligned with customer feedback. Generally, its customers are very enthusiastic about the company and its products.

• Perceptive's technology partnerships for intelligent capture and WCM may not bring the marketing uplift that other vendors enjoy from theirs.

• Perceptive's installed base is primarily North American. Perceptive will have to depend heavily on Lexmark's resources to help build its brand elsewhere.

• It will take some time for Perceptive to establish itself in Europe, where competition from regional vendors is fierce.

Germany's Saperion focuses on transactional content management and CCAs. It has several delivery and pricing models, offered both directly and via partners. Saperion typically sells to midsize enterprises interested in scalable solutions for archiving and compliance.

Website: www.saperion.com/en/products/enterprise-content-management.html

• Saperion's strategy has been to focus on its core German installed base and expand over time via partnerships, a plan that it has executed effectively.

• Given the recent interest in case management foundations, Saperion's integrated BPM/ECM platform enables customers to focus equally on process optimization and information management.

• Saperion has improved its customer support, online documentation and partner portal ahead of delivery of its updated V7 platform.

• The user interface of Saperion's current V6 product is not very intuitive. In V7, it needs to be revised substantially for better usability.

• Saperion's product and company marketing has remained very conservative, resulting in limited growth.

• Saperion's customer support — both direct and self-service — attracts some complaints.

Italy-based Siav serves manufacturing and government customers with transactional content management solutions. Its Archiflow suite is the ECM platform base for its vertical applications. Although Siav has a substantial number of customers in Italy, it has been less successful in other markets.

Website: www.siav.it

• Siav's primary capabilities include imaging, workflow and document management. These high-value components integrate with Microsoft SharePoint, which amounts to a fairly substantial value proposition.

• Siav has several public sector and horizontal solutions that manage correspondence tracking, constituent self-service, and content for finance and administration functions.

• Siav's primary marketing message involves challenging customers to measure improvements in ROI in less than one year by saving time on daily operations and improving service quality for their constituents.

• Siav's use of SharePoint for document-centric collaboration, WCM and user interface may undercut its independent value proposition in some use cases.

• Although Siav does have reference customers outside Italy, its vertical-market offerings and efforts at geographic expansion continue to produce mixed results.

• Siav remains a small vendor in a volatile international market for ECM.

Cloud-based content management solutions are gaining maturity and increased user interest. SpringCM is one of the early movers in this field, which promises to deliver lower costs for infrastructure hardware, software and management, and less complexity. In addition, many back-office processes — such as invoice imaging in accounts payable — have long been supported by business process outsourcing and imaging hosts, so conversions to cloud content management offerings should be easy to promote, especially at departmental and mid-market level.

Website: www.springcm.com

• SpringCM has hired senior managers with good experience of content management. Subscription growth and procurements from larger enterprises underscore its perceived scalability and stability.

• The horizontal and vertical CCAs listed among SpringCM's departmental and industry solutions represent those in greatest demand from business buyers of on-premises versions. If SpringCM's resellers, consultants and independent software vendors can help create traction, the company could become much more relevant.

• SpringCM has focused on building its brand and platform. These investments have positioned it well in the market as a visionary driver of SaaS-based content management.

• These are still early days for cloud-based ECM services. Demand has been modest because content architectures in large enterprises tend to be complex, and many of these enterprises have been risk-averse when it comes to cloud services.

• SpringCM is a small company and faces significant competition from on-premises solutions in the ECM market. Its services and solutions partnerships are potentially fickle, and the early advantage they confer could be quickly lost if other vendors provide stronger platforms or richer incentives.

• SpringCM's competitive prospects could dim if it has to win business against larger vendors with deeper pockets that are entering the market for cloud-hosted content applications.

SunGard's EXP Macess is a long-standing transactional solution for health insurers — one of the first CCA markets. In 2010, the larger EXP product range became part of the iWorks suite in Sungard's Insurance Segment.

Website: www.sungard.com/EXP

• SunGard has continued to focus on combining content components with strong process capabilities. Macess integrates with SunGard's Infinity Process Platform, with Workpoint for graphical process modeling, and with third-party rule engines.

• SunGard's presence as an application provider in the financial services sector provides it with a strong buying audience for content and process solutions.

• SunGard's CCAs have had strong out-of-the-box appeal to insurers.

• None of the core ECM-related products — EXP (process platform), EXP Macess (primarily for the healthcare payer market) and EXP FormWorks (document capture and processing) — represent "star" products within SunGard's overall portfolio.

• Due to SunGard's focus on transactional content applications, its functional capabilities for social, dynamic and Web-oriented content are modest.

• SunGard is a broad IT software and services company, and under this broad umbrella its ECM-related products have lacked promotion and visibility against strong competition.

Systemware has demonstrated capabilities ranging from enterprise report management to document archiving. It has also started to expand its ECM capabilities, such as those for records management. It has realized the value of offering CCAs and is delivering these in the financial services and healthcare sectors. It also provides cloud-based offerings and the ability to link mainframe data, scanned images, ERP data and other types of data to Microsoft SharePoint.

Website: www.systemware.com/

• Systemware provides a scalable and fully featured archiving platform. It has added e-mail archiving and records management to its Systemware Content Suite.

• Systemware has for years focused on supporting its customers. As a result, it receives high satisfaction scores.

• Systemware has good vertical-market expertise in financial services and healthcare. It also markets CCAs in these areas.

• Systemware could market its products more aggressively and pursue more technology partnerships, as well as more sales and partner channels, in order to compete in the broader ECM market.

• Systemware Content Suite is designed primarily for archiving. Its ECM product features and breadth remain somewhat limited.

• Systemware's customer base is predominately North American. It faces a challenge to sell and provide support elsewhere.

Xerox is a global vendor with a broad range of document- and content-related service offerings. DocuShare is an important part of its broader consulting, implementation and related services business, but Xerox's ECM footprint goes well beyond DocuShare with the massive acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) and the focused offerings resulting from its purchases of Amici and Advectis. Xerox is also displaying renewed vision with its cloud-based services offerings.

Website: http://docushare.xerox.com/products/ds_products.html

• DocuShare CPX is gaining modest acceptance, thanks to its increased functionality and scalability compared with DocuShare. Over time, Xerox might capitalize on the combination of process, forms and hosting options to become a bigger player in transactional content management deals, led by its services-side management.

• Demand for hosted back-office applications is driving an increase in the number of inquiries Gartner receives about Xerox.

• Advectis, acquired in 2006, is now Xerox Mortgage Services, with a cloud-based CCA that has a substantial share of the mortgage underwriting industry. Amici, acquired in 2007, is now Xerox Litigation Services, offering cloud-based services for e-discovery, among other things.

• Xerox is likely to increase some of its product capabilities through partnerships, but cost and copromotion considerations may make this a slow path toward a better product. Xerox should consider making additional selective acquisitions.

• The larger partner program for DocuShare is not deeply rooted, and Xerox's partners probably consider the product to be fairly basic. Xerox needs to combat this perception by improving product functionality so that channel interest and investment grow accordingly.

• Xerox must spend more on broader marketing to heighten awareness of its relevance in the cloud-based ECM space.

Xythos Software, a Blackboard company, has long focused on Web-based and collaborative document management, principally for higher education. Xythos's standards-based Enterprise Document Management Suite (EDMS) is easy to use, integrates with Microsoft Outlook, and is available in on-premises and SaaS delivery models. Its WebFile Server is embedded in Blackboard's Content System.

Website: www.xythos.com/products/enterprise_document_management_suite.html

• Xythos has a healthy installed base and a strong value proposition, including integration with SunGard Banner, for the higher education sector.

• Xythos has long embraced standards such as WebDAV and JSR 170. Recent enhancements include support for Web Services and an Ajax-based user interface.

• Blackboard/Xythos's partner program is cultivating relationships beyond its core installed base.

• Outside higher education, Xythos has limited market penetration.

• Xythos provides good basic content management capabilities, but more modest capabilities for transactional and Web-oriented content applications.

• Blackboard needs to market and promote Xythos's EDMS more as a platform and to broaden its partner channel, particularly in international markets.