Getting a Bead on AIIM

by Doug Henschen

Last month I argued that enterprise content management (ECM) is more spin than reality, yet vendors are moving quickly to fill the gaps in their ECM portfolios. Witness FileNet's $10 million purchase in early April of eGrail, a little-known Web content management (WCM) company based in Bethesda, MD.

EGrail had only $5 million in sales last year, but the company's technology was highly regarded by analysts for its ease of content contribution. More to the point, eGrail fills the biggest gap in FileNet's ECM arsenal — a gap that kept it out of the running in more than a few major deals.

FileNet CEO Lee Roberts said the deal is part of a strategy to create a one-stop-shop for ECM technologies.

"Large, global companies are embracing end-to-end ECM," Roberts said. "These firms want to deal with large, stable vendors, and FileNet is now one of only a handful of companies that can rapidly deliver the entire breadth of ECM technologies."

Roberts predicted that "stand-alone" WCM vendors will be increasingly marginalized, and he placed Vignette, FileNet's erstwhile WCM partner, on that list.

Andrew Warzecha, a senior vice president at Meta Group, cautioned that FileNet "must quickly integrate the eGrail offering to position against other emerging ECM players (such as Documentum, Gauss, Stellent and Interwoven) that are already offering single API set frameworks."

Integration might be tough given that FileNet has COM-based Panagon, Java-based Brightspire and now J2EE-oriented eGrail. The company promised links between Panagon and eGrail by June and a Brightspire integration by year end.

Connie Moore, vice president of research at Giga Information Group, said FileNet's move had "shaken up the content management market" and she wrote that it would "place additional competitive pressure on IBM (which lacks its own WCM product)."

Will IBM acquire a WCM vendor of its own? Brett MacIntyre, vice president, content and information integration, hinted that Big Blue would soon have more to say about WCM, but he added that IBM is not "out to kill the Web content companies."

"FileNet is on an Oracle strategy, telling customers that they have to buy its entire stack [of technology] saying it's the best available," said MacIntyre. "But customers just don't operate that way."

True, customers don't always buy from one source, but incremental sales may be the real win for FileNet. Roberts cites research that some 60 percent of corporate Web sites are still home grown, and he adds that many of those sites aren't scaling well and meeting customer needs. FileNet has more than 3,600 customers, so it may get the first and best crack at more than 2,000 prospects.

With this kind of math, we're sure to see yet more acquisitions of WCM companies in the months ahead.

Doug Henschen, Editor-in-Chief

Send questions or comments to dhenschen@cmp.com