7 September 2009 | A comment by Per Andersen, IDC Nordic
Handling of information has become a central challenge for many organisations. The latest IDC analysis shows that the amount of information in the digital universe will approach one billion gigabytes in 2010, and 85 percent of this information will be handled by organisations. The majority of this information is ‘unstructured’.
With Sharepoint Server 2007, Microsoft has taken a huge step towards the content management (CM) market. Sharepoint has the necessary facilities to handle content and posts, and integrates easily with Microsoft Office document metadata. Sharepoint is spreading rapidly and has already had a major impact on the CM market, which is confirmed by all of the leading CM suppliers announcing integration with Sharepoint.
Businesses plans for Sharepoint use (IDC Enterprise Panel):
- Already using Sharepoint: 32.1%
- Planning to start using Sharepoint:13.5%
- Using another CM tool: 17.9%
- Using no CM tool: 32.1%
Source: IDC, 2008. N = 436.
Organisations struggle to control information and the way it’s managed throughout its lifecycle. When asked what “content management” means to them, nearly every other business replied that “content management is a huge challenge for our business”.
There is a need for effective collaboration tools to manage information creation. When the content has reached its final form, a place is needed for storing the information – a place where anyone who needs the information can find it. Then as the information becomes obsolete, a filing system is needed to store the content that businesses need, or are legally required to keep.
CM needs are different at each phase of the information lifecycle and the same is true of the tools used. At the same time, the flow of information between the phases must be easy and without barriers.
IDC believes that IT managers in large organisations will seek solutions that will help them control information through its entire lifecycle, and that will give them the freedom to choose the best point solutions for collaboration, control and filing. This requires more than just good interfaces between the systems. Ultimately it places demands on the integration of metadata, posting and searching processes – as well as new technologies and classification systems.
In the short term, we expect to see a significant increase in basic content services –“core services”, according to Microsoft. This is the market that Microsoft is targeting with Sharepoint Server 2007. But Sharepoint Server also has full content/post control functionality.
Microsoft and their partners are in the process of developing vertical solutions for a number of industries at the top of Sharepoint Server 2007. This will further consolidate the proliferation of this platform in the market.
The significance of Microsoft in the CM market is similar to what we have seen in other areas. First and foremost, one of the effects will be that the use of CM will become widely accepted across various markets, and it will be increasingly considered an area where everyone can play a part. Because CM is far from fully exploited by most businesses, there is a wealth of possibilities for suppliers, and especially for Microsoft, to create strong growth in the use of these tools in future.