Driven by the need to mange content at the enterprise level, the global market for content management software is expected to grow at a rate of 12pc a year to US$4.2bn by 2010, says research player Gartner.
This year alone the worldwide enterprise content management (ECM) market revenue is expected to total US$2.9bn, up 12.8pc on last year.
Irish content management software companies that stand to benefit from this trend include Terminal Four and pTools.
The reason for the anticipated growth is the need for organisations to control the vast amounts of unstructured data residing on company networks, ranging from word processing documents, spreadsheets, rich media files and other documents.
Gartner warns that company’s will need to make this content available to workers, business partners, customers and applications across the organisation to automate business processes, increase efficiencies and reduce costs.
“For many organisations, unstructured content is fundamentally out of control,” said Tom Eid, research vice president for Gartner.
“Employees are creating all types of content for internal and external use with delivery through both formal and informal channels (such as wikis and blogs).
“While some of this business-specific content is now being managed through insurance claims processing, loan origination, case management and Web content management, the vast majority of this content is not being managed as an enterprise asset.”
Gartner is predicting consolidation in the ECM market in the years ahead. In the meantime, however, the quality, performance and ease of use of content management technologies will improve.
It says ECM products will be split into two tiers: broad, platform-based solutions will tackle heavy-duty chores, such as focusing on process-centric and mission-critical documents, such as compliance efforts, while streamlined basic content services (BCS) offerings will appeal to companies that need only entry-level functions, such as document security and library services.
“In many instances, it is appropriate to have BCS and ECM technologies being used together,” Eid said. “BCS will increase the adoption of ECM technologies. As more content is created, more content will need to be managed.
“As the content becomes more valued, it will become more of a corporate asset that is managed in a more comprehensive manner through ECM offerings,” Eid said.
By John Kennedy
