Enterprise content management, definition

Enterprise content management (ECM) is the technologies used to capture, store, preserve and deliver content and documents and content related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever that information exists. The term “enterprise content management” refers to solutions that concentrate on providing in-house information, usually using internet technologies. The solutions tend to provide intranet services to employees (B2E), but also include enterprise portals for "business to business" (B2B), "business to government" (B2G), or "government to business" (G2B), etc. The technology components that comprise ECM today are the descendants of the electronic document management systems (EDMS) software products that were first released in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Enterprise content management is a vision, a strategy, or even a new industry, but it is not a closed system solution or a distinct product.

Open Text Corporation, a Canadian high-tech company, produces and distributes computer software applications designed to enable enterprise content management solutions for large corporate systems. Its flagship technologies are, “Livelink ECM - Enterprise Server” and “Livelink ECM - Archive Server”, both core of many ECM products.

Livelink was marketed as a business solution for "collaborative knowledge management". The system was integrated with Open Text's search technology, as well as a business process management solution. With Livelink, Open Text was an early proponent of using Web technology for corporate intranets.

Livelink ECM is the combined offering of integrated products — many of them gained through mergers and acquisitions - packaged to meet specific needs, the core of all ECM solutions.

With the acquisitions since 2003 and later, Open Text positioned itself as one of the leaders in the enterprise content management market. ECM is a conjunction of solutions designed to meet many of the information needs and duties of large corporations. Some of the important requirements include content management in general as document management, transactional content management, knowledge management and web content management but also business process management, collaboration and online meeting. All, if needed, controlled by records- and storage management to achieve information governance for regulatory compliance.

Some of Open Text's key competitors in the enterprise content management market include: IBM with Filenet, EMC Corporation with Documentum or Vignette with Vignette ECM.