May 1999
Rating 6 Systems for DM on the WEB
By Bill Chambers, Rich Medina, and Kelley West
How good are the Web-based document management solutions available today? More importantly, what are vendors doing to address Web content management? Doculabs takes a closer look.
As the Web explosion continues unabated, organizations have accepted the Web not only as an information distribution medium, but as a platform for real business applications. Organizations are looking for innovative ways to leverage their information and knowledge resources for competitive advantages.
For document management (DM) vendors, this means that the Web is no longer just a differentiator or architectural strategy, but a necessity. Organizations increasingly want their applications and infrastructures (including DM) to operate in a Web-based or intranet-based environment. Web-based DM allows users in any location to consume information, collaborate on shared information, and participate in business processes - all while reducing the organizationıs administrative effort and training costs.
At the same time, there is a real need for organizations to effectively control and manage their Web content. These days, your customerıs first impression of your company may be your Web site. Presenting customers with out-of-date or erroneous information, whether on paper or over the Web, creates a negative impression.
If Web-based DM and Web content management are so important for DM products, just how well do todayıs products measure up? This was a major focus in Doculabıs most recent benchmark assessment of DM products, in which we evaluated solutions from InterTech Information Management, IntraNet Solutions, Lotus Development, Open Text, PC Docs/Fulcrum and 80-20 Software.
Of course, all the vendors recognize the importance of the Web, and provide at least some level of Web-based functionality. Some vendors already provide full functional parity between their Web-based solutions and their client/server versions, but some vendors havenıt gotten there yet. And far fewer vendors provide full-featured Web content management systems.
Using the Web for DM
Clearly, a Web-based approach to traditional document management offers attractive benefits for organizations. With platform-independent Web clients, users can access documents from any machine in any location and can collaborate in business processes. With three-tier architectures, Web-based DM systems can adequately support large numbers of users accessing the DM system through Web servers. Browser-based clients typically require no user training or special expertise, and they do not require extensive client-side administration and maintenance.
In assessing Web-based DM functionality, we explored whether these systems would let you do on the Web everything you can do through a standard client - including library services, administration and workflow. We were also looking for solid back-end architectures and approaches designed to optimize the Web, including thin clients, three-tier architectures, Web-based administration and support for standards such as HTML, Java, ActiveX and XML.
Most of these products provide basic DM capabilities over the Web, but some do not yet provide robust document management features designed with the Web in mind. Such products include those from 80-20 Software, PC Docs/Fulcrum and Internet Information Management.
For example, Document Management Extensions (DME) for Microsoft Exchange 6.0 from 80-20 Software, is tightly integrated with the Microsoft Exchange and Outlook environments. Although the DME viewer does provide simple HTML interfaces that users can access from any browser on any platform, the full complement of system features are only available through the Exchange environment.
With version 2.5 of the Docs Fusion Server and CyberDocs, PC Docs/Fulcrum has made some advancements in the area of Web-based DM. This three-tier system now provides users with the full complement of Docs Open library services over the Web, including searching, viewing, check-in, check-out and version control. PC Docs/Fulcrum was recently acquired by Hummingbird Communications. This gives Hummingbird a strategic solution for unstructured information management to go along with its structured information management technology for business intelligence applications.
DocuPact 4.0 from InterTech provides general DM capabilities over the Web, using ISAPI or CGI to access the Internet server. The system also lets you add cabinets over the Web, and it supports some Web-based administration. The solution makes good use of Java to provide a robust interface with the same look and feel as the standard DocuPact client.
Domino.Doc 2.0 from Lotus offers more comprehensive Web-based capabilities. Thanks to its integration with the Web-based Domino server, the browser-based Domino.Doc interface provides virtually all of the functionality contained in the Notes client; Web users can create and modify documents within the Domino.Doc repository.
The products that impressed us the most in this area were those that were developed for an Internet-based environment in the first place: Intra.Doc! 3.6 from IntraNet Solutions and Livelink (8.0) Intranet from Open Text. Intra.Doc! provides full library services over the Web, and users access all system services and documents from a Web browser. Livelink Intranet is also completely Web-based, with the added benefits of collaborative features that rival groupware systems - an extremely powerful metaphor for Web-based document management.
Using DM for Web Content Management
As anyone who has managed a Web site knows, the process can be filled with headaches. You need to convert the content to Web-ready formats such as HTML or PDF. You need to make sure that you are publishing the most current information available - which means keeping track of whatıs new. And you need to make sure that you are providing appropriate access controls on your corporate content.
DM systems are uniquely positioned to address Web content management because many of the problems of Web content management are classic document management problems. DM systems provide version control that can ensure that the most current content is available to users. They provide security to control access to certain content based on user profiles. Some DM systems even provide rendition engines designed to convert documents into alternative formats for consumption.
Web content management poses other challenges, especially in the area of dynamic information presentation. Organizations want their Web sites to deliver custom content to specific users - particularly external users such as business partners and customers - based on user profiles, preferences, job responsibilities and other parameters.
Because so much of the information in an organizationıs DM repository is likely to end up on the Web, it makes sense to use the document management system to manage that content. But of the DM products we evaluated, a number of them are not yet attempting to provide a solution to the Web content management problem.
For example, the solutions from Lotus, PC Docs/Fulcrum, and 80-20 do not offer out-of-the-box Web content management capabilities. Using the tools for this purpose will require extensive customization, or in the case of PC Docs, integration with Transit Central from InfoAccess.
InterTech offers Event Objects, which include a standard API written in COM. Developers can use the API to create objects in the development environment of choice, such as Active X or Java. Event Objects can be used to build customized applications for managing Web content. However, InterTechıs DocuPact still lacks out-of-the-box Web content management capabilities.
Open Text Livelink makes managed documents available via a Web server, can post documents to a Web site and can provide security and access control. This is a good first step, but it is not true dynamic Web content management.
The most advanced DM products in terms of content management are those that take an electronic publishing focus. In this area, IntraNet Solutions provided an especially compelling strategy. The product provides full Web publishing capabilities, handling the start-to-finish process of rendering and publishing approved documents to intranet sites and keeping the content constantly updated. However, the offering still lacks comprehensive Web content management capabilities, such as dynamic content presentation and personalized delivery.
Even the leaders in this arena still have a long way to go in providing fully interactive and dynamic Web content management out of the box. For example, none of the solutions we evaluated can dynamically compose documents or HTML pages by pulling components or content from multiple sources without add-on modules or integration with third-part products. Such capabilities would allow the Web site to dynamically deliver different information to different users, providing organizations with new opportunities in areas such as personalization and one-to-one marketing.
Whatıs Next for CM With DM Systems?
Clearly, using the Web as an application infrastructure has extended to the DM world. If organizations are using the Web for more and more applications, it makes sense to use it for DM. And the DM vendors have gotten the message.
Now, Web content management is quickly becoming a function that organizations expect from their DM vendors as well. And the need for this functionality indicates how strategic document management systems have become to organizations. Now, organizations want to include documents that are published to the Web under the document management application umbrella.
We see this trend only continuing as the growth of e-commerce applications drives organizations to manage documents wherever they are on the business cycle. Successful e-commerce applications demand fast adaptation to changes in customer demands, short product cycles, and increasingly quick customer fulfillment. Organizations must be able to quickly update all content on the Web that supports a Web application - making Web content management a critical factor in e-commerce growth.
Of course, there are other vendors in the market besides the ones reviewed in this article, and some of them are trying to enter the Web content management space. For example, FileNet (Costa Mesa, CA) now offers a Web Content Publishing module that is designed to publish any document in the repository to a Web page as HTML, and to allow users to automatically initiate the process by flagging a document as ıpublished.ı
Perhaps the most complete solution available is RightSite from Documentum (Pleasanton, CA), which has been available for some time. The RightSite add-on is a well-conceived solution that handles dynamic composition and delivery of specific content to individual users based on their access rights, roles, and preferences.
But by and large, the document management industry in general has been slow to respond to this demand. For far too long, the industry has concerned itself with just providing access to the system using a Web browser.
But organizations have moved past this requirement, and are now asking DM vendors to manage a critical part of business over the Web. Perhaps this is the catalyst that will spur the vendors to create solutions that make sense as strategic business solutions with broader value than the tactical benefits of document management. The opportunity is there for the taking.
Bill Chambers and Rich Medina are senior analysts and Kelley West is a technical writer at Doculabs, a Chicago-based advisory firm specializing in document management, knowledge management and Internet technologies. To order the companyıs book comparing the DM products mentioned in this article, contact Doculabs at 312-433-7793, info@doculabs.com, www.doculabs.com.
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