AIIM 2001 Centers Around Content

In the trade show business, very little changes. Every year, technology manufacturers and developers rush to introduce their latest and greatest products at the events. They invest in dramatic booths, flashy floor shows, and elegant parties - all to launch their new wares. However, all of this pomp and circumstance often surrounds products that are months to years ahead of what customers are buying.

This year's AIIM 2001 Conference and Exposition, April 30 to May 3, in New York City was no exception. All of the buzz centered around enterprise content management (ECM). AIIM International, the trade association that produces the show, defines ECM as the creation, capture, delivery, customization, and management of content across an enterprise. ECM is the glue between front end applications like sales automation and customer relationship management (CRM) and back end applications like enterprise resource planning (ERP) and order processing.

Differentiating Between Types Of Content Management
Companies like Broadvision, Interwoven, and Vignette are most commonly associated with content management. These vendors offer products that allow Web sites to aggregate content from multiple sources. Now, many traditional document management companies have entered into the content management space. Some of these companies are "testing out the waters," while others have "dived in headfirst" into the technology. For example, Gauss (Irvine, CA) offers content management capabilities at the level similar to a Broadvision, in addition to their document management offerings. On the other hand, document management companies like Hyland Software (Rocky River, OH) and OTG (Bethesda, MD) are more focused on enabling the "content" from their enterprise document management systems onto the corporate intranet or Web site. According to Ralph Gammon, editor of The Document Imaging Report, true content management and content-enabled document management really play at different levels of the continuum.

The Channel & Content Management
At AIIM 2001, I spoke with a number of companies offering content management to ascertain the channel's involvement with this technology. Executives at Gauss provided insight on VARs and integrators in both the document management and content management spaces. Presently, Gauss maintains two different channels for these product lines. (Gauss was originally a content management-only company. Then, it acquired Magellan Software, a document management company.) However, the vendor is working to educate the traditional document management integrator about the benefits of selling and implementing content management through Web and regional seminars. Other document management vendors with content management offerings are also finding education is key to transiting VARs and integrators to content management.

But, channel companies interested in pursuing this technology should not waver too long. A Gartner and AIIM study recently reported that by 2002, more than 80% of Global 2000 enterprises will purchase or build content management packages to handle the escalating costs of Web content and components. With the Global 2000 as early adopters of content management, it's only a matter of time before demand for content management trickles down the market into your customer base. Will you be prepared to meet these needs?