Author: Victor Bensusan, Managing Director
The Situation
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies are extremely useful in helping companies organize and manage unstructured data in an efficient manner. For quite some time now, ECM tools have been helping enterprises realize substantial ROI benefits by reducing content management costs and better data reuse, content integrity and records management capabilities.
However the absence of crucial standards in the ECM space has resulted in a lack of interoperability between products from different ECM vendors.
As a result, content developed and managed using one ECM technology can rarely, if ever, be easily accessed or managed using a different ECM system. Companies that have their data residing in multiple data repositories and ECM environments can find it challenging to integrate and share data from across the different platforms.
CMIS may help with this problem
The Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification is an attempt by some heavyweights in the ECM industry to address this vexing issue. The specification was originally proposed back in 2006 by EMC, IBM and Microsoft–arguably three of the biggest vendors in the ECM space.
More recently the three vendors have been able to get other large companies such as Oracle, SAP, Alfresco, and Open Text to lend their support to CMIS.
The Objective of CMIS
The objective of CMIS is to create a common Web services interface that will allow companies to enable a unified content management architecture for accessing and managing their entire information infrastructure.
The goal is to create an interface that will allow for the exchange of enterprise content regardless of whether it resides on an IBM, EMC, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP or other content management system.
How CMIS could benefit an enterprise
Such a capability would deliver enormous benefits to companies which have heterogeneous data repositories and content management tools scattered around the enterprise. For instance:
- the ability to seamlessly link multiple data repositories is crucial at a time when a growing number of companies are attempting to leverage Web 2.0 tools for reaching out to customers, business partners and suppliers
- the growing pressure on companies to comply with tough new e-discovery laws is also driving the need for capabilities that allow for data to be quickly accessed and meshed together from multiple enterprise data repositories
- the increased importance of interoperability in the content management space also eliminates vendor lock-in situations
Because most ECM systems in the market today are based on proprietary technologies, companies cannot easily switch vendors if they choose to. A CMIS standard will eliminate the need for companies to get stuck with point products.
This is an especially important consideration from an ECM adoption perspective because most companies are extremely wary about making substantial technology investments if there is even a remote chance of being locked into a single vendor.
Next steps
Though CMIS is currently supported by many of the largest vendors in the ECM space, it is not a formal standard yet. For that to happen, CMIS will have to be formally approved and adopted by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the body responsible for administering technology standards.
The CMIS specification is currently under review by OASIS and could get formally approved as a standard sometime this year.
Yakidoo will be watching this closely in the coming months.
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