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August 1998
Defining 'Enterprise' DM
Enterprise used to mean the ability to exist on thousands of workstations. But today's large enterprises are asking for more -- and many of the DM vendors are starting to deliver. So when you talk to vendors about enterprise, ask them the following questions:
- Can the system scale to support a large number of users, potentially thousands or tens of thousands of users?
- Can the system allow all users to access the same document repository? Or is the architecture limited to smaller repositories for distinct departments or smaller workgroups? Does the system provide database connection pooling or brokering capabilities to efficiently manage connections at the server level?
- Can the system scale to handle a large and growing volume of documents? Does it provide a way to manage storage, such as automatically migrating files to optical storage or purging them altogether?
- Can the system integrate with other technologies in the enterprise, including legacy systems or line-of-business systems such as those from SAP and PeopleSoft?
- How well does the system support geographically dispersed environments? Does the system provide a browser-based front-end to allow users to access documents from anywhere? Does it provide features such as replication to ensure performance and reliability for offices in different parts of the world that need to access the same documents? Can it support enterprises with mixed operating environments?
- Does the system provide enterprise reliability features, such as load balancing or transaction monitoring? Can the system integrate with middleware components that provide these capabilities?
- Is deployment and maintenance simplified through techniques such as leveraging the existing infrastructure (i.e. directories, security, databases, operating system administration tools)? Does the system enable remote administration?
- Is client deployment and maintenance reduced via a thin-client architecture?
- Can the system be customized to meet the special needs of different types of document management users?
- Is the system built for "inter-enterprise" use -- transactions that involve people outside your organization, such as with an extranet? Can the system handle the uncertainty and variability of transaction volumes that tend to occur in extranet applications?
- Does the vendor have the support infrastructure to help you if you run into problems? Whether the DM system provides any or all of these capabilities ultimately depends on the application focus of the product. Likewise, depending on your application needs, some of these capabilities will be more important than others.
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