Report: ECM to Hit Mobiles Big Time

CMS Watch, sometimes referred to as Content Management Solutions Watch, reportedly announced that Enterprise Content Management vendors are seriously targeting ECM apps for mobile handset devices in a big way according to its latest market research report.

The report, titled, “The ECM Report 2009,” found that ECM is widely accepted as the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes, and also help an org to manage its unstructured information, which may reside in storage silos across continents.

"Information within ECM systems typically remains highly secured, but outside the application environment it becomes uncontrolled and unsecured," said Alan-Pelz-Sharpe, principal analyst for CMS Watch, in a statement. "The move by ECM vendors to develop and support applications for remote and offline environments is an important step toward dealing with that challenge."

Official sources said that typical ECM business scenarios may include a combination of streams such as enterprise content platforms, high volume imaging, engineering document management, forms processing, regulatory compliance, case management, workgroup collaboration, marketing information management, and enterprise Web publishing.

Research analysts at the firm said that they see an explosion of industry specific solutions such as SpringCM is building a network of value added resellers with solutions from its Software as a Solution, or “Saas” offerings, and Nuxeo is creating packages for diverse sectors like museums, libraries, and energy. The trend will continue among vendors in the tiers below the platform offerings of EMC, IBM, and Oracle (News - Alert), officials said.

"Much of what we see today from Enterprise Content Management vendors in terms of mobile support is little more than eye-candy," said Jarrod Gingras, analyst for CMS Watch, in a statement. "But based upon industry directions, ECM customers will see more mobile-related functionality later in 2010/11, and this will bring new options for ambient information management to those enterprises that carefully assess their choices."

CMS Watch said that most vendors are developing connectors that sync up mobiles and ECM solutions with Microsoft (News - Alert) Office SharePoint Server 2007  because MOSS 2007 promoted team sharing and collaboration in and of itself, and also complemented the traditional ECM market, without replacing it.

It makes sound marketing sense for vendors to seriously look at mobile hand held devices since these gadgets are becoming popular by the day. The popularity of mobile phones may be gauged by the following commentary: 1.21 billion mobile handsets, including 171 million smart phones, were sold in the year 2008 resulting in a 5.4 percent increase in sales over the previous year and brought the total number of mobile phones ever sold to 4 billion all across the globe by the end of 2008. Current indications are that sales are still going strong.

Given the kind of referencing and computing power that some ECM solutions may demand it is envisaged that these apps would find more widespread usage on smart phones. Among consumer electronic devices, smart phones are the gizmos that have a demand in the current down economy as evidenced by the following facts: 171 million smart phones were sold last year, and with other handset sales struggling to grow substantially, companies are ramping up their marketing strategy for selling smart phones. This, coupled with a reasonable consumer acceptance in Q408, augurs well for the future of smart phones. Additionally, consumers feel that they are getting a lot of devices and utilities rolled into one carry-anywhere- access-anything-use-anytime advantage.