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ECM Platforms:
The Next Generation of
Enterprise Content Management
The Evolution of ECM: Platform Oriented, Flexible,
Architected for the Cloud and Designed for Technologists
Over the last decade, content technology, use and expectations have signicantly
evolved - redening the requirements for architects, project managers and developers
responsible for implementing ECM solutions. Emerging best practices suggest that a
well-designed ECM platform supports solution development and deployment in a
manner that is predictable, sustainable and aordable.
This white paper explores these content technology changes, and explains the value and
benets to business and technical adopters of embracing a new generation of ECMplatform technology.
Eric Barroca, Roland Benedetti - August 12, 2011
www.nuxeo.com Copyright 2011 - 2012 Nuxeo. All Rights Reserved.
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Contents
Executive Summary_______________________________________________________4
Scope and Goals__________________________________________________________4Target Audience__________________________________________________________4
Defning Enterprise Content and Enterprise Content Management_______________5
What Is Enterprise Content Management?_____________________________________5
What Is Enterprise Content?_________________________________________________6
Drivers or ECM Adoption___________________________________________________6
Enterprise Content Trends__________________________________________________8
ECM: It's not Just File Shares as Content Tools_________________________________8
The Evolution o ECM______________________________________________________ 9
Content Diversity________________________________________________________10
Smart Content___________________________________________________________11Big Data Is Big Content___________________________________________________12
Requirements and Challenges or a Modern Content Platorm_________________15
Enabling Content-Driven Processes and Applications___________________________15
Providing Modularity and Extensibility________________________________________17
Supporting More Than Just the Server Side___________________________________19
Running Anywhere, Including the Cloud______________________________________20
Modern Development: Agile and Soon in the Cloud_____________________________23
Standards Matter, but Don't Be Blind_______________________________________26
Why Standards?_________________________________________________________ 26Existing and Emerging Standards___________________________________________26
The Business Case or Adopting a Platorm Approach to Content Applications__33
Qualitative Reasons______________________________________________________33
Calculating ROI__________________________________________________________34
Nuxeo's Enterprise Platorm: a Modern ECM Platorm _______________________37
Conclusion______________________________________________________________ 39
What You Can Expect When Adopting ECM___________________________________39
Table o FiguresFigure 1: Drivers or ECM Adoption (Miles, 2011)......................................................7
Figure 2: Reasons or Adopting New ECM (Miles, 2011)........................................... 7
Figure 3: Traditional ECM unctions...........................................................................9
Figure 4: The Evolution o Content Management (Miles, 2011)...............................10
Figure 5: How well is content managed (Miles, 2011).............................................11
Figure 6: The Evolution o Content.......................................................................... 12
Figure 7: Organizational Unit Content Growth (Chute, Manrediz, Minton, Reinsel,
Schlichting, & Toncheva, 2008)................................................................................13Figure 8: Architecture Pattern or Content Driven Applications...............................16
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Figure 9: Reasons or Inability to Meet ECM Vision.................................................17
Figure 10: Multi-Channel Content Delivery.............................................................. 20
Figure 11: Cloud Computing Taxonomy.................................................................. 22
Figure 12: Development as a Service...................................................................... 25
Figure 13: Linked Open Data................................................................................... 30
Figure 14: Beneft and Cost Categories...................................................................34
Figure 15: Nuxeo Architecture................................................................................. 37
Figure 16: Customizing the Nuxeo Platorm............................................................ 38
Table o Tables
Table 1: Example ROI Calculation........................................................................... 36
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Executive Summary
Scope and GoalsThis document is intended or technology leaders and inuencers who are in-
volved in the selection o solutions or managing enterprise content. The docu-
ment provides readers a detailed understanding o how organizational needs or
managing enterprise content are evolving, and why it is critical to implement pro-
cesses and tools that are sufciently exible to support these rapid changes
now.
Ater reading this white paper, you should understand:
What is meant by the terms enterprise content and enterprise content
management.
How enterprise content and organizational needs or managing that content
are evolving.
Why it is important to have tools based on a strong technology platorm that
support inormation and processes o increasingly diverse types, complexity
and size.
Technologies and standards or supporting enterprise content management
(ECM) in a process-centric manner.
How to create the business case or adopting a platorm or building content-
driven solutions.
Target Audience
The ideal reader is in a sotware, solution or enterprise architecture role and makes
or inuences decisions about development rameworks, enterprise content man-
agement systems or other content-centric platorms. The reader should have ageneral understanding o enterprise content management concepts, but is not ex-
pected to have detailed understanding o any specifc enterprise content manage-
ment process, application, ramework or platorm.
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Defning Enterprise Content and Enterprise ContentManagement
What Is Enterprise Content Management?
Organizations are becoming more conscious o the worth o the content they have
and the value o being able to utilize this content eectively. This is precisely what
ECM addresses. ECM is aimed at managing the lie cycle o inormation rom its
creation to archival and disposal. According to the Association or Inormation and
Image Management (AIIM):
ECM is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage,
store, preserve and deliver content and documents related to
organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the
management of an organization's structured and unstructured
information, wherever that information exists.(AIIM, 2011)
Although many may assume ECM is just a technology solution, it is not. ECM also
includes any operational or strategic processes that rely on content in addition to
the tools and technology used to support them.
The frst decade o the 21st century has caused organizational processes to
evolve ar beyond what many originally considered possible and content supports
many o those processes. This evolution has made ECM a critical component o
the enterprise technology ecosystem. Traditionally, technology solutions that sup-
port ECM provide capabilities such as:
search
collaboration
business rules management
workow management
document capture and scanning
version management
metadata enhancement
that help make access, delivery and management o inormation more controlled,
efcient and less costly. However, this list o eatures is evolving as ECM evolves
constantly adding new requirements and growing more demanding, with a greater
emphasis on integration and long term exibility.
Just like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) increases operational efciency andcompetitiveness, standardizing processes like fnancial management, ECM allows
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organizations to gain control over their content to accomplish organizational ob-
jectives.
What Is Enterprise Content?
The defnition above provides a description o what it means to manage content,
but what is the enterprise content that is being managed? Enterprise content
has evolved. It is no longer just digitized versions o scanned documents or a nar-
rowly-defned set o records. Enterprise content may include any type o content
that an organization captures and uses in its daily processes, rom structured con-
tent in relational databases, XML documents or enterprise applications such as
customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) or
enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools, to unstructured content such as text,
emails, word processing and spreadsheets.
Enterprise content is not limited to these items, however. Enterprise content may
also include multimedia such as images, video, voice mail, streaming media and
newer orms o inormation like geo-data that previously did not exist or occurred
inrequently. Social media may also be expanding its impact on enterprise content.
However, at this point, the medium is used more requently or communication,
collaboration and Web Engagement than or ECM use cases. In short, enterprise
content can be any piece o data, document, enterprise application content or
multimedia asset that is associated with an organizational business process, or
any content that an organization deems valuable enough to store and manage.
Enterprise content is at the heart o inormation systems an important part o the
processes and models o the business. Enterprise content is no longer a static en-
tity that exists beside business logic; content co-exists with business logic. It is
critical that platorms support content types and metadata that are capable o ac-
curately representing the complex relationships and transactions that occur every
day in the business to enable improvements in organizational process.
Drivers or ECM Adoption
As early as the mid to late 1980s, organizations were implementing stand-alone,
tactical solutions rom vendors like FileNet, ViewStar and Lotus to capture paper
documents and reduce the eort and time required to fnd inormation. Businesses
continue to adopt content management or many o the same reasons they did
over two decades ago, and the pace seems to be increasing.
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According to the 2011 State o the ECM Industry by AIIM, there are a number o
business drivers or adoption o ECM:
The study also captured drivers or adopting new ECM systems:
Although this white paper will not go into details on each o the drivers or ECM
adoption, it is easy to see that each o the issues will beneft rom the support o
an ECM solution based on a solid technology platorm.
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Figure 2: Reasons for Adopting New ECM (Miles, 2011)
Figure 1: Drivers for ECM Adoption (Miles, 2011)
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Enterprise Content Trends
ECM: It's not Just File Shares as Content ToolsA number o solutions outside o ECM tools have emerged that allow sharing doc-
uments and other content among multiple users such as DropBox, Box.net,
shared fle systems and Google Docs. While these solutions support sharing, col-
laboration and limited security eatures, it is a mistake to consider these tools hol-
istic ECM solutions.
Modern ECM platorms are not just simple fle shares and do not resemble early
document management solutions that were in many cases little more than user in-
teraces over a fle share. ECM platorms include a variety o capabilities such as:
Version tracking
Relationships between documents
Support or document meta-data and/or semantic details
Confgurable document workow and liecycle management
Check-in/check-out
Content streaming
Auditing and Traceability Business rules
that are oten critical or organizations to manage content efciently and are not
supported by popular fle sharing tools. Additionally, an ECM platorm must ulfll
the requirements common to all enterprise sotware, such as:
Complex integration with name directories (e.g. LDAP)
Capability to ft within a predefned enterprise technology portolio and con-
orm to architectural standards, whether in the cloud or on premise
High availability
which are also not supported by fle sharing applications.
In general, fle sharing applications are designed or independent, uncontrolled,
unstructured content and include ew tools to support structural management
(e.g. taxonomies) or to add supporting meta-data. Further, although these tools
support sharing, they do not support content reuse across the enterprise and lack
support or applying critical business rules, liecycle management or workow to
support content-centric business processes. Without the ability to classiy the
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content or to represent its relationships to other content in a uniorm manner, con-
tent becomes almost impossible to manage as the volume grows.
File sharing applications have another important limitation. As enterprise content
becomes more diverse and includes multimedia assets such as video and audio,
there is an increasing need to support rich content and activities such as stream-
ing a eature the majority o fle sharing tools do not support. Older document
management platorms also lack support or many o the newer content types.
Finally, organizations with legal and regulatory constraints should be very careul
about exposing content using document-sharing solutions, since they do not
provide high levels o security, traceability or control. Even i legal requirements
are not in place, exposing content perceived as private can be a large blemish on
the ace o an organization.
The Evolution o ECM
Like all business processes and the technology that supports them, ECM is re-
quently changing to introduce new models, concepts and meet new challenges.
Traditionally, ECM technologies have consisted o a number o independent solu-
tions:
However, increasingly organizations desire more integration. They want content to
be pervasive and available on-demand wherever its required not just within a
specifc standalone application supporting a single use case. Organizations want
content within the tools where and when they do their work and manage their
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Figure 3: Traditional ECM functions
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business processes without the necessity to access multiple tools and ollow nu-
merous disconnected processes.
These business demands are driving a new, modern breed o ECM technology.
ECM has evolved rom a departmental, siloed, single purpose solution to an enter-
prise-level inrastructure. These modern ECM solutions go beyond commercial o
the shel (COTS) applications that perorm a specifc unction, such as document
management, and even beyond integrated suites that combine multiple unctions.
Modern ECM technology is not an application; it is an interoperable, exible con-
tent platorm that exposes components and services that organizations can easily
integrate to support a diverse set o content-enabled business processes within
applications built on the platorm. The new ideal ECM platorm is transparent to
users only the capabilities are important. The diagram below illustrates this evol-
ution.
Content Diversity
Organizations are not only requiring content management solutions to be exible
enough to support more business processes; ECM solutions must also support an
increasing number o content types. Organizations are increasingly leveraging new
types o inormation to support their operation. As organizations manage more
types o enterprise content, they requently have concerns regarding the accuracy,
trustworthiness and accessibility o the content.
A 2011 ECM survey by AIIM showed both the dierent types o content organiza-
tions manage and the confdence leadership has in the quality o the manage-
ment. This clearly highlights the increasing diversity o content managed by ap-
plications, rom core business content to content more related to social collabora-
tion.
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Figure 4: The Evolution of Content Management (Miles, 2011)
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Smart Content
In addition to content growing more diverse, in some cases it is becoming smarter.
What does this mean? Traditionally, content managed by ECM solutions consisted
largely o fles and scanned images perhaps interpreted with simplistic optical
character recognition (OCR) and very limited metadata. Today however, modern
ECM platorms must be more sophisticated. They must support interpretation o
the actual contents o the document and assign meaning to the data it contains .
This smart content allows organizations to go beyond just storing a binary fle
with limited metadata or viewing and instead associate relationships, complex
metadata and business rules to automate business processes. For example, an
organization scans an invoice. ECM technology can extract the invoice number
and use it to relate the invoice to inormation in other enterprise applications (e.g.
a customer service system) so that users gain a more holistic view o the inorma-
tion and business rules can be applied.
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Figure 5: How well is content managed (Miles, 2011)
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ECM solutions are also augmenting content with growing amounts o metadata,
such as version number and security descriptors, that may be useul in making
management even more efcient. Metadata is no longer just inormational to the
reader; it is now one o the variables driving the business process.
Big Data Is Big ContentNot only is content becoming more diverse and smarter, it is growing at an almost
inconceivable pace. Companies are capturing increasing volumes o data about
customers, suppliers and operations generated because o other activities. The
McKinsey Global Institute projects data will grow at a rate o 40% per year (Ma-
nyika, et al., 2011) driven by an explosion o content, social media, mobile, video
and other rich media combined with cheaper storage and trends such as cloud
computing that encourage organizations to save everything. IDC has projected
even higher content growth rates. IDC predicts that the amount o digital inorma-tion produced worldwide in 2011 will be 10 times that produced in 2006. This
makes or a compound annual growth rate o close to 60% (Chute, Manrediz,
Minton, Reinsel, Schlichting, & Toncheva, 2008).
Content growth might have previously only concerned a ew niche areas, but it
now impacts every sector and organization and is quickly becoming a way or
leading companies to outperorm their peers as they gain new insights rom stored
inormation. For example, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, 30% o
Amazon. com sales are driven by product recommendations based on users pre-vious purchases (Manyika, et al., 2011). I this inormation is managed as enter-
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Figure 6: The Evolution of Content
Early DocumentManagement
Enterprise ContentManagementPrevious gen.
Next Generation oEnterprise Content
Management
File Only flesystem based
Binary Files +limited DublinCore
Content Structure+ complexmetadata + binary
fle attachment
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prise content, it can be leveraged in other content driven processes beyond sales
recommendations.
The ability to analyze and gain insight on larger volumes o inormation due to
more sophisticated ECM technology has a number o benefts:
Transparency: Making content more easily accessible to stakeholders ex-
actly when and where they need it. This reduces the time and eort required
to locate inormation, and it can improve perormance.
Data Driven Decision Making: Companies are collecting increasing amount
o inormation rom sensor data that can be used or making decisions in a
more quantitative and predictable way. For example, capturing the length o
time in a case management workow can inorm an organization which por-
tion o the process is most lengthy or most expensive. The data can also be
used in controlled experiments to determine the impact o making changes.
Customer Segmentation: As technology improves, organizations are better
able to develop unique customer profles to engage them more specifcally.
For example, they can consolidate inormation rom CRM systems with un-
structured emails and social media interactions to create a more complete un-
derstanding o customer needs across all channels.
Automated Decision Making: Access to content can provide all o the in-
ormation necessary to automate decisions previously made by humans, re-
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Figure 7: Organizational Unit Content Growth (Chute, Manfrediz, Minton, Reinsel,
Schlichting, & Toncheva, 2008)
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ducing operational costs. Even i companies dont automate decisions com-
pletely, content can be used to acilitate decision making. In claims pro-
cessing, or example, instead o going to multiple systems, enterprise content
management could allow sta to see all relevant documents rom a single in-
terace, improving the efciency o the process.
Identifying New Business Models, Products and Services: Aggregated
content and its analysis presents innumerable new business opportunities
rom real time price comparison services to preventative care solutions in the
health care sector.
Although the additional data is valuable, organizations are still struggling with their
attempts to manage, store and derive value rom the content. In many cases, as
content sizes grow, so does the complexity and cost associated with managing
the content.
Legacy techniques o managing inormation are no longer sufcient with growing
volumes o content. Users simply cant browse categories, or in some cases
search, the massive amounts o content stored in the enterprise its too over-
whelming. Growing content sizes make adoption o new content processes and
technologies essential. From cloud-based storage to semantic technologies that
improve the amount machines are able to assist users content growth is trans-
orming the entire ECM space.
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Requirements and Challenges or a Modern ContentPlatorm
Enabling Content-Driven Processes and Applications
Some organizations have made signifcant advances in leveraging ECM tools.
However, in most cases, use o the technology is still not optimal. Why? Many still
consider ECM a stand-alone tool instead o a middleware component that
provides services capable o supporting an extremely diverse set o business
unctions rom invoicing to case management.
For example, a human resources department may need a technology solution to
assist in executing the new hire process. This is a content centric process. A re-
sume, a potential employee profle and interview eedback are all potential content
types. The scenario may be even more complex. There may be a requirement to
automatically provision an accepted candidate in the user directory, or integrate
with a web content management system or other business processes. No boxed
ECM application is likely to meet these requirements perectly. This is a con-
tent-driven application. Instead o custom developing a solution using a lower
level ramework (e.g. Hibernate or persistence) the organization could beneft
rom the capabilities o a content platorm or managing the process.
Although electing to adopt a content platorm versus a traditional ECM application
has a number o benefts, some architects may question how to best integrate the
components into their technology portolio. The diagram below illustrates one
possible architectural model or organizing content-driven applications using con-
tent platorm components.
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In this model, the ECM platorm exposes services such as workow, authentica-
tion and access control and auditing via one or more interaces that can be used
to build custom content applications or integrate with existing packaged and en-
terprise applications. In addition, the content platorm also provides direct access
to stored content via standards-based interaces (repository services). The content
platorm can be used to build content-enabled applications that leverage either
the content directly or the set o high-level services provided by the content plat-
orm.
In this model, a user interace layer oers rameworks to expose its services to di-
erent user interace technologies. These rameworks can be leveraged to create
custom interaces rom the platorm that adapt to the organizational context, mak-
ing user adoption smoother and reducing the user learning curve.
A platorm should be architected in a modular and exible manner. It should ex-
pose an entire ramework or use by developers, and not simply a content reposit-
ory. Many ECM tools tend to be architected around the content repository only,
providing no additional layers. This is a more traditional approach, inherited rom
the client-server era.
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Figure 8: Architecture Pattern for Content Driven Applications
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A platorm should also provide a comprehensive set o services, rom low-level
directory services to high level user interace services. This is the design o a plat-
orm that supports integration. It is designed to be extended and assembled by
developers making solutions rom the platorm.
Whether this model is implemented or an alternate ECM design strategy, a com-
ponentized, platorm centric approach is the key to delivering truly exible ECM.
ECM evaluations and adoption discussions should move away rom specifc ap-
plications and unctional implementations that assume requirements and toward
one o content rameworks that can be easily customized and extended at the re-
pository, platorm and user interace level to work in the manner that is most ap-
propriate to meet organizational needs.
Providing Modularity and Extensibility
No vendor can anticipate every use case that must be supported or managing
enterprise content. New content types, standards and business models are con-
stantly being developed; thereore, it is important to select an ECM platorm that is
architected or interoperability, customization and extension not something all
vendors support. Lack o extensibility can have a direct impact on business cap-
abilities. Over hal o businesses indicate that lack o ECM tool support or their re-
quirements is restricting their ECM adoption (Miles, 2011). The chart below illus-
trates some o the reasons supplied:
A well-designed ECM platorm will support extensibility and customization in a
manner that is predictable, sustainable and affordable. Lets explore what this
means.
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Figure 9: Reasons for Inability to Meet ECM Vision
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At a minimum, a well-designed content platorm should be modular, component
oriented and deliver unctionality as a set o independent, decoupled eatures (ser-
vices) with ew dependencies between the components or to the technical envir-
onment. This design allows architects to choose the precise set o eatures and
services necessary to meet project requirements. In addition, the platorm should
have an exposed API that can be used to access platorm services without hack-
ing, engaging specialty vendor resources or purchasing add-on products. Other
platorm eatures to support a sustainable model or building ECM applications in-
clude:
Testability: The platorm should support testing extensions/customizations
without being overly cumbersome. Ideally, the platorm should easily integrate
with a testing platorm and allow continuous integration so that the unctional
and non-unctional (e.g. perormance) aspects o customizations/extensions
can be verifed. Solutions such as the Hudson and Jenkins continuous integ-
ration servers have grown more popular, and ideally an ECM platorm should
enable teams to leverage these tools.
Multiple API Strategies: An extensible ECM platorm should expose multiple
application programming interaces (API) to allow the project needs to dictate
the integration strategy. Ideally, the platorm should provide multiple strategies
such as native language (e.g. Java API), REST, SOAP, or standards-based in-
teraces or accessing the underlying ECM eatures
Support for standard languages such as Java , PHP or others as opposed
to proprietary, vendor-specifc languages. Some vendors may elect to imple-
ment support or recently introduced hot languages to generate interest in
their products. Architects should careully evaluate the value o the languages
supported or actors such as adoption o the language, size o the developer
community, the intrinsic qualities o the language and the stas ability to sup-
port applications written in the language.
Consistent internal developer and client API: A consistent and supported
mechanism or extension by internal (vendor) development and external de-
velopers, which enables customer extensions to look and unction extactly
like native vendor eatures. Vendors should support this mechanism beyond a
single release and have an upgrade path that makes it possible to beneft
rom new releases without jettisoning their investment in customization and
extensions development.
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Deployment: The ECM platorm should support multiple deployment
strategies, rom simplistic single server to high-availability active/active and
disaster recovery, rom on premise to cloud-based. It should support complex
deployment confgurations designed or application validation (e.g. test to sta-
ging to production). In addition, the platorm should allow deployment o cus-
tomizations and extensions in a predictable and controlled way across all en-
vironments without impacting core platorm unctionality.
Performance Benchmarking: The platorm should have regular benchmark
data published and allow teams in charge o implementation to defne their
own perormance tests based on their specifc use cases and application
needs.
Supporting More Than Just the Server Side
Frequently, developers, architects and project managers evaluating enterprise ap-
plications ocus on the server side eatures o the architecture. They examine how
business data persistence is implemented, how business logic is designed and
what APIs are available or integration. However, client side eatures are just as im-
portant as the server side. When evaluating an ECM platorm, it is important to
consider more than just the core capabilities encompassed in server-based com-
ponents. Architects should also ensure that the platorm does not impose excess-
ive restrictions on the user interace the end user will leverage to access the ap-
plication content delivery and/or the content delivery o the content itsel.
ECM platorms should easily support multi-channel content delivery and interac-
tion. This capability is growing even more critical as businesses increasingly em-
brace mobile devices, tablets and other tools in addition to browser and rich-client
applications that run on P.Cs. Ideally, the platorm will provide or allow integration
with one or more presentation rameworks to support rapid application develop-
ment:
A range o dierent web user interface frameworks or dierent interaction
use cases (e.g. JSF, GWT, basic web templating, etc.) to ensure all kinds o
web applications, including mobile and tablet based user interaces, can be
served in the most appropriate manner.
RIA (Rich Internet Applications) frameworks supporting Flex and related
middleware such as Adobe Lie Cycle or Granite DS, to ease the development
o these interaces.
Silent Applications or scripting and batch processing purposes.
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Desktop applications
Thick mobile applications, supporting major technology such as Android and
iOS, and providing dedicated SDKs to wrap the platorm services and APIs.
Running Anywhere, Including the Cloud
Traditional enterprise sotware was designed to run on premise, and still today, a
large share o ECM solutions are running on premise, managed by internal IT op-
erations. In this scenario, it is important to leverage standard middleware. For ex-
ample, in terms o Java technology, it should be possible to install the entire solu-
tion on a standard Java Application Servers such as the lean Apache Tomcat ser-
vlet engine, JBoss application servers or other standard inrastructure without re-
questing additional specialized components to meet the requirements o the ECM
or its supporting components. The same considerations are important regarding
the underlying database. Release where you want and how you want should
be the motto. This enables companies to achieve better ROI by allowing them to
share and leverage their existing investments in a single uniorm stack.
Traditional solutions and platorms oten ail in this area. Many require specifc
setups, specifc systems and in the end, almost dedicated maintenance and oper-
ational processes that result in additional costs or organizations.
Beyond traditional on-premise environments, cloud computing has brought a large
range o opportunities and promises. Cloud computing has democratized techno-
logy or many organizations. Instead o hiring specialized sta and making large
inrastructure and sotware investments, organizations can obtain the same cap-
abilities or a low start-up ee and a monthly or usage-based subscription ee.
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Figure 10: Multi-Channel Content Delivery
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Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications
Cloud-based platorms allow architects to design sophisticated, reliable, and
highly available enterprise content solutions without concern or:
Installation dependencies
Computing storage capacities
Upgrade paths
Sotware confgurations
Hardware investments
Future scalability
that could constrain architecture and design decisions. Cloud computing is usually
segmented into the ollowing layers:
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): IaaS is the lowest level o abstraction in
the cloud technology stack. IaaS provides operating system support, storage
and processing. Vendors in this sector include Windows Azure and Amazon
EC2.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): PaaS is essentially the middleware o the
cloud. It is more abstract than the IaaS layer and provides components, an
environment and rameworks or building higher-level applications. Vendors in
this space include Heroku and CloudBees.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): SaaS is usually the highest level o the cloud
stack and includes complete application solutions designed to be leveraged
by end users such as web mail and Google Apps.
Forrester Research illustrates the cloud taxonomy as:
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Although SaaS is currently the most prolifc use or cloud computing, PaaS adop-
tion is growing; it is estimated that the market will grow to 11.91 billions $ in the
next decade (Reid & Kisker, 2011), driven by organizations seeking to reduce tech-
nology costs while simultaneously improving services.
ECM technology, like almost every other technology, has been impacted by cloud
computing. However, it should not be assumed that ECM solutions can seam-
lessly transition to the cloud. Many ECM tools have a number o characteristics
that make utilization in a cloud difcult, i not impossible. For example, many ECM
vendors have built their solutions through acquisition or independent product de-
velopment cycles that dont share a common architecture and have not (and may
never) standardize environmental requirements, resulting in a tool with a dizzying
number o external dependencies that cannot be supported in most standardized
cloud environments.
The frst thoughts o ECM in the cloud may point to SaaS. While this is a valid op-
tion, the reality is that an ECM platorm must enable use o all layers o the cloud
stack:
IaaS: Allow organizations that are already taking advantage o hosted inra-
structure to continue to use it without requiring specialized environment con-fgurations that make cloud hosting impractical.
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Figure 11: Cloud Computing Taxonomy
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PaaS: Leverage the antastic promises o the approach, as its all about deliv-
ering rameworks and components that can be customized, but abstracting
rom the complexity o the lower inrastructure level a very good match or
the modern ECM platorm, as depicted beore.
SaaS: A signifcant portion o users o the ECM platorm will deliver their ap-
plications in this manner, asking or all the technical requirements that it im-
plies:
Elastic resource allocation
Multi-tenancy
Security and privacy
Monitoring o large scale implementations.
Beyond allowing all three approaches to cloud-computing, a good technical plat-
orm should make it easy to move rom one mode to another, and also to switch
between deployment options without signifcant eort, high cost or lengthy time to
market.
When considering a new ECM technology, it is important to consider more than
just a supports the cloud check-box on an RFP. Cloud support is not a simple
YES/NO question; cloud requirements and capabilities vary and should be ex-
amined in detail. It is not sufcient to rely on the shiny Cloud based marketing
collateral.
Modern Development: Agile and Soon in the Cloud
The new requirements o ECM mean that out o the box solutions are no longer
sufcient. Content-driven applications have a level o uniqueness that requires
most organizations to set up a development team to confgure, develop, maintain
and deploy the solution. While the complexity and cost o this might be a concern,
using modern sotware methodologies, tooling and a well-designed sotware
ramework can dramatically minimize the delivery eort.
A set o best practices can ensure higher quality solutions with a lower cost o im-
plementation than traditional sotware delivery approaches:
Adopt Agile and iterative development practices. Embrace the release
early, release oten approach. These practices have been shown to reduce
delivery risk compared to traditional predictive project management practices.
Implement continuous integration. Building at every change ensures that
changes in the code base that have a negative impact are identifed early, be-ore they can cause additional issues.
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Implement automatic testing. This reduces the time, eort and cost o test-
ing and ensures that a ull regression suite is always available to confrm the
validity o sotware changes.
Use modern tools and techniques for source control (e.g. Git) that provide
developers with more efciency than traditional tools that lock entire fles
while a single developer makes changes. This newer breed o source control
tools also enables truly distributed development something that was chal-
lenging and expensive with earlier solutions.
Implement continuous and automatic performance testing/benchmarking.
This establishes baselines or the solution so that the team can easily identiy
any changes that substantially impact perormance.
Implement continuous deployment. Continuous deployment automates thedeployment process and reduces the time required to perorm tasks and the
risk o missing critical steps.
IaaS, SaaS and PaaS are now almost well-established areas or the cloud, but an
additional area is emerging development in the cloud. Cloud-based develop-
ment rounds out the cloud-computing environment, allowing organizations to not
only use (SaaS), assemble (PaaS) and run (IaaS), but actually build sotware re-
motely. In the current environment o everything as a service, it isnt a stretch to
assert that development as a service will be the next rontier o the cloud to exper-
ience growth.
Development in the cloud has many o the same benefts as other cloud-based o-
erings, such as lower acquisition cost, aster adoption, simpler setup and confg-
uration and reduced management and maintenance eort. A number o cloud-
based IDEs have been recently introduced, such as Eclipses Orion, Nuxeo Studio
or the Nuxeo Platorm and the popular Salesorce Force.com which provides
solution designers a high-level abstraction rom the actual source code. However,
development in the cloud isnt just about the integrated development environment
(IDE). To be truly holistic, development-as-a-service must support the entire de-
velop-to-deploy liecycle, which includes:
Code creation
Compilation
Source control
Continuous Integration
Automated Development Testing
Deployment to multiple deployment targets
This model is illustrated below and is already being oered by products such as
VMWares Code2Cloud and CloudBees Dev@Cloud. An ideal ECM platorm must
embrace this development model, not provide barriers to adoption, like manytools built with legacy architectures.
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Development-as-a-service is still in its earliest stages; a lot o evolutions must oc-
cur beore the ull development cycle is supported in the cloud. However, there is
already real value in adopting this new approach toward development, when you
can combine and integrate a cloud-based development environment with an on-premise development inrastructure, such as the continuous integration chain and
the deployment process.
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Figure 12: Development as a Service
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Standards Matter, but Don't Be Blind
Why Standards?Non-technical users really dont care about which standards exist and which are
emerging. They care that platorms play well together; they want interoperability.
They want solutions that can communicate with each other without excessive e-
ort and cost. They want to be able to move content between platorms i a new
tool is selected. It could be said that standards in the ECM space are more about
avoiding content lock-in than vendor lock-in.
Standards provide a set o guidelines and mechanisms or interacting with a tech-
nology. Adoption o standards has a number o benefts, with the most requently
cited being interoperability. No organization wants to be tied to a single vendor or
product option or implementing a technology solution no matter how well the
vendors solution unctions or the vendor provides service. Standards adoption
has a number o additional benefts such as:
Lower the technology adoption
costs
Increased development consistency,
simplicity and predictability
Improved code reuse
Reduced cost, time and eort to
transition between vendors and
solutions
Reduced ocus on commodity and
inrastructure
Ability to create composite inter-
aces that are tailored to the needs
o specifc job roles mashability
Improved application portability
Enable aster time to market be-
cause it is easier to purchase o
the shel components and applica-
tions that can integrate and provide
eatures or the solution
Organizations should understand which standards provide the benefts that are
most important or their needs when adopting an ECM solution.
Existing and Emerging Standards
They say the good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose. This
may be humorous, but seasoned technologists know that, unortunately, the quip
has some truth the world o enterprise content management is no dierent.
There is no single standard that is more important than all others. There is no uni-
versal defnition o what is most valuable; it always varies by the unique technical
and business needs o the organization.
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Not every ECM vendor and product will support every standard. However, it is im-
portant to determine the standards that are most important or uture business
and technical strategy and ensure they are supported by the potential ECM plat-
orm. For example, an organization concerned with the publishing industry might
have a strong interest in adopting the NewsML standard, whereas an organization
with more generic and horizontal coverage might have more interest in supporting
Content Management Interoperability Standard.
Standards impact a number o areas in the ECM market and it is important that
these be understood.
Interoperability
As noted above, interoperability is one o the primary drivers or standards adop-
tion. Interoperability takes many orms. In ECM, interoperability is primarily tar-
geted at providing a standardized way or content-based applications to share
their content assets.
The main standards related to interoperability or ECM solutions include Content
Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) and Java Content Repository (JCR).
CMIS has grown slightly more popular than JCR due to the technology agnostic
approach taken by the standard.
CMIS is one o the most recent standards in the content management space; it
was specifcally designed to support interoperability among ECM solutions. Of-
cially adopted in May 2010, managed by OASIS, and supported by a large number
o vendors, the standard defnes a vendor agnostic domain model, a protocol ab-
straction and a set o bindings that allow the sharing and accessing content
across multiple ECM tools. Key services provided by CMIS include:
Repository Services: Enable inormation discovery o the content repository
and the object types defned or the repository Navigation Services: Supports navigating the older hierarchy in a CMIS re-
pository
Object Services: Enables management o repository objects (Create, Re-
trieve, Update, Delete)
Discovery Services: To search or objects in a repository
Versioning Services: To manage the liecycle o repository items.
A number o vendors have dedicated themselves to moving the CMIS standard
orward. An example o this is are the Apache Foundation CMIS protocol imple-
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mentations, developed within the Apache Chemistry project, with support o de-
velopers rom various content management vendors, such as Adobe and Nuxeo.
Another notable eort is the contribution by Nuxeo o its content repository code
to Eclipse, demonstrating their willingness to work on a reerence implementation
o CMIS in a content repository. The project, originally called Eclipse Enterprise
Content Repository, has been ofcially approved by Eclipse and was rebranded
Apricot." It relies on the Apache Chemistry project.
Other ofcial or de acto interoperability standards that architects may want to ex-
plore because they could impact the overall ECM solution interoperability include:
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS): Not actually a standard, but a set o
services or accessing content in Microsots SharePoint products.
Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV): a HTTP-based
standard that acilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing
documents and fles stored on web servers.
Java Content Repository (JCR): a low-level Java specifcation, although ad-
apters have been created or other languages, defned under the Java Com-
munity Process.
Common Internet File System (CIFS): a protocol that allows applications to
make requests or fles and services on remote computers via the Internet.
Metadata
Metadata augments content stored by ECM solutions with additional details such
as taxonomy, relationships, security attributes, usage characteristics, auditing in-
ormation, and any number o additional attributes. How important is metadata to
an ECM solution? It is critical. Without metadata, it becomes almost impossible to
manage, maintain control and fnd content in an ECM tool. There are a number o
standards that impact metadata creation and management within ECM solutions
such as XML, Dublin Core and semantic technology related standards (e.g. RDF).
Support or some o these standards, like Dublin Core, is important, but not suf-
cient or solving all ECM metadata needs. Keep in mind that many standards that
address taxonomies and semantic technologies are still maturing, so adopting a
platorm with the exibility to support the standard in the uture will be key.
The most important standard, although it is a much lower level standard than
many o the others discussed in this white paper, is without a doubt XML. The Ex-
tensible Markup Language (XML) is a standard managed by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C). The human and machine-readable text-based markup lan-
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Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications
guage, similar to HTML, is now amiliar to most technologists. Unlike HTML, XML
does not have a single defned set o tags and attributes; it allows adopters to
defne their own elements or utilize a vocabulary defned by another party. XML is
a core technology or defning structured content and data, and o course,
metadata; it is the oundation or a number o other standards like Dublin Core and
XMP.
XML has been such a core technology that almost all vendors will promise sup-
port. However, like with computing, architects must examine what support
means. Not all vendors ully support XML equally or integration and transorma-
tion, storage and publishing. Architects should explore in detail the XML capabilit-
ies o an ECM platorm when it comes to managing, storing and processing XML-
based data.
Another domain that is mentioned more requently related to metadata is semantic
technology. Semantic technology allows association o meaning or context to di-
gital content not just meaning or people but or computers as well. I com-
puters can learn the meaning behind content, they can learn what users are inter-
ested in and provide assistance with common tasks, such as search or augment-
ing data with existing details based on known relationships. Without semantic
technology, content is typically just links between structured and unstructured re-
sources. Semantic technology provides context to these resources and their rela-tionships so that machines can recognize entities such as people, places, events,
organizations, etc. within the content.
Support or semantic technologies is limited in the majority o ECM platorms, al-
though some orward thinking vendors are beginning to incorporate the techno-
logy. I semantic technology lives up to its promises, the enhancements it provides
or metadata, categorization and content enrichment will substantially improve
ECM technology. This can be seen in research and open source projects like the
Interactive Knowledge Stack (IKS) project. IKS is an European Union-unded re-search project involving vendors like Nuxeo and Adobe, ocused on building an
open and exible technology platorm or semantically enhanced content manage-
ment. IKS has resulted in several Open Source projects, such as the Apache Stan-
bol project, which provides a connection between Semantic Web data sources
and traditional content management solutions. The growth o Public Open Data
(as illustrated by the W3C SWEO Linking Open Data community project in fgure
13) is clearly advocating or this kind o initiative, bridging traditional ECM and Se-
mantic Web technology. The use o a modular ECM platorm will no doubt make
this easier!
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Other Non-Content Related Standards That Matter
Technology and development languages are evolving and there is a range o tech-
nical standards that are must-have and high value or a modern content devel-
opment platorm.
OpenSocial is one o them. OpenSocial was originally created as an open spe-
cifcation or accessing and sharing user profle, relationship and activity data
across social networking sites, instead o working with the proprietary interaces
each site oered. However, its adoption has now grown beyond social networks
into the enterprise, to provide a general-purpose web application integration tech-
nology. It is especially practical or creating dashboards where end users can fnd
inormation rom dierent applications in one place.
OpenSocial is comprised o two high-level concepts: gadgets and APIs. Gadgets
are small, pluggable, HTML/JavaScript based components with a basic liecycle
that run in containers responsible or providing the gadget with the rendering en-
vironment and JavaScript APIs. The core OpenSocial APIs provide capabilities or
managing people, activities and data and are exposed via JavaScript and REST.
OpenSocial gadgets can also be used to provide a simple and light integration
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Figure 13: Linked Open Data
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Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications
solution between applications, and they can access any piece o inormation in
the enterprise that is exposed via REST.
In addition to the existing capabilities o OpenSocial, there are eorts underway to
provide tighter integration between OpenSocial and CMIS; the changes are tar-
geted or version 2.0 o the OpenSocial specifcation.
There are a number o additional standards not directly related to content that are
important or ECM development, such as OAuth, REST and LDAP. Each o these
technologies can play an important role in solution delivery.
OAuth is an open protocol standard or delegated authentication. It provides a
standard way or developers to oer their services via an API without orcing their
users to expose their credentials. From a user perspective, the standard allows auser (resource owner) to grant access to a protected resource rom one applica-
tion (service provider) to another application (service consumer). OAuth is a orm
o delegated authentication, which enables a single identity to be shared across
multiple sites without sharing credentials. In addition to providing a standard way
to grant access between applications, OAuth also provides a mechanism to re-
strict the scope and lietime o a service consumers authentication. This is a much
more secure strategy than sharing credentials and granting unlimited access to a
third party. It is also convenient or users, who are reed rom creating more login
credentials. Prior to OAuth, there were a number o other proprietary internet au-
thentication protocols. Unlike many o these earlier protocols, OAuth supports use
by non-web based applications.
Given that enterprise content is core to many business processes, it is important
that a well-designed platorm provide a standard way to control access to its ser-
vices. Instead o reinventing the wheel, vendors like Nuxeo are integrating OAuth
in their platorms to control which services and data are shared between applica-
tions.
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is another protocol standard archi-
tects should consider. The LDAP protocol allows applications to access inorma-
tion stored in an LDAP server. LDAP servers can store any type o inormation, but
they are most requently used to store contact inormation, security credentials
and group inormation. The majority o organizations that support secured access
to resources or email store user inormation in an LDAP directory. LDAP servers
are so common, ECM platorms should support integration, at least at a read level,
with LDAP servers so that user inormation does not have to be replicated in mul-
tiple locations.
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Representational State Transer (REST) is an architectural style based on how the
web works, not a standard or application integration. RESTul interactions involve
two components - clients and servers. Clients make stateless requests to servers;
servers receive requests, process them and return a response. Requests and re-
sponses transer representations o resources. A resource is any object at an ad-
dress (URI) that can provide inormation or have an operation executed against it.
Given the growing popularity o RESTul style services, architects that have em-
braced this style o integration should careully examine which services a platorm
exposes via REST. Some vendors indicate they support REST, but have very lim-
ited eatures exposed.
And fnally, at a lower level, standards like OSGi are concretely delivering sotware
modularity and extensibility. Technology architects who are still associating the
Java technology to the heavy and hard to extend early versions o J2EE should
defnitely consider exploring OSGi. It provides the Java stack with a new approach
to modularity and extensibility. Sotware like the Eclipse Equinox project, the
Spring Java development ramework and Nuxeos platorm extension point sys-
tem are leading the way, and demonstrating the value o modularity, extensibility
and component-driven sotware architecture.
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Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications
The Business Case or Adopting a Platorm Approachto Content Applications
Most architects know, or at least suspect, that implementing a platorm centric
approach to building content-driven applications has some organizational value.
Ad-hoc processes, multiple tools and inconsistent practices are rarely in the best
interest o any enterprise. However, just trust me is typically not a sufcient justi-
fcation or an executive to champion changing business processes, introducing or
changing stafng and/or investing in new technology platorms.
It is critical that architects defne or contribute to the defnition o a business case.
What is a business case? A business case justifes the rationale or architectural
recommendations in a cohesive and compelling manner. A well-defned business
case should include qualitative reasons, and i possible a quantitative justifcation,
or return on investment (ROI) or undertaking a project not just the technical per-
spective.
The ollowing sections present a sample model or calculating ROI and general
(qualitative) benefts o using a platorm to manage enterprise content.
Qualitative Reasons
Implementing a platorm approach to building content driven applications has a
number o benefts such as:
Reduced training needs or technical resources, since a single approach is in
use throughout the enterprise. Architects, developers and designers can learn
the strengths, weaknesses, eatures, constraints and interaces once and
build numerous applications. This allows the resources to ocus on delivering
high-value eatures instead o learning vendor tools.
Improved content reuse and consistency Lower costs due to a reduced number o tools required to support the requis-
ite use cases
Reduced time to market, since a consistent tool is being used to deliver mul-
tiple applications.
Keep in mind these are only generalized benefts. An eort should be made to
identiy the benefts specifc to the organization adopting the ECM platorm.
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Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications
Calculating ROI
Adopting an enterprise content management (ECM) platorm may mean signifcant
organizational investment. And, like any investment, it is important to understandwhen the acquisition will pay or itsel ROI. A number o techniques can be used
or calculating the return on investment (ROI), however, a simplistic approach in-
volves identiying the beneft o implementing the new solution, quantiying each
beneft and deducting the cost. The categories below include sample beneft and
cost areas. They will vary or each organization/project.
In addition to identiying costs and benefts, you may want to segment one-time
items rom recurring items (e.g. annually) to depict initial ROI with reoccurring ROI
or project ROI within a time-rame.
Sample ROI Calculation
The ollowing tables depict an organizations ROI estimates or delivering three ap-plications using a single purpose application to deliver a business solution versus
leveraging a content platorm. In this example, the applications can all be classi-
fed as content-centric applications.
Project A is a generic Document Management project to serve the organiza-
tion's requirements or managing internal documents.
Project B is a content application that is more process oriented; an imple-
mentation o an extranet application to manage customer product returns. It
must integrate with the ERP system.
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Figure 14: Benet and Cost Categories
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Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications
Project C is a Digital Asset Management application or the Marketing and-
Communications team.
This example assumes the content platorm is open source, delivered under a
subscription model. Because o this, most o the sotware cost or the content
platorm approach are operational, as opposed to large upront CAPEX costs like
the traditional packaged Document Management and DAM solutions. Do not as-
sume open source means ree. It does not. Open source has a cost, its just not an
acquisition cost; the cost o open source is mostly in reoccurring maintenance and
support.
This fctional model can be used as a starting point or your own ROI analysis o
adopting an ECM platorm. Keep in mind that to assess the true value o adopting
an ECM platorm, you must look beyond a single project and examine the impact
over time.
Project A: Internal
Document
Management
Project B: Customer
Return Processing
Project C: MarCom
Dept Digital Asset
Management
Specifc ap-
proach,
buying sot-
ware rom a
DM provider
With
Content
Platorm
approach
Specifc ap-
proach, devel-
oping the ap-
plication rom
scratch, usinga development
ramework
Lever-
aging the
Content
Platorm
used orproject A
Specifc
approach,
buying an
out-o-the-
box DAMsolution
Lever-
aging the
Content
Platorm
used orproject A
CAPEX
Consulting
(advisory, cus-
tomization and in-
tegration)
65,000 65,000 80,000 60,000 5,000 5,000
Internal
(process defni-
tion, training, pro-ject management)
34,000 34,000 12,000 24,000 5,000 5,000
Sotware acquisi-
tion
45,000 0 3,000 0 60,000 0
Inrastructure
setup
15,000 15,000 15,000 2,000 14,000 0
TOTAL 159,000 114,000 110,000 86,000 84,000 10,000
OPEX
Year 1 17,600 37,600 9,500 6,000 15,000 0
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Ongoing project
cost
(enhancements,
project manage-ment)
24,000 16,000 18,000 15,000 0 0
Sotware main-
tenance & sup-
port
10,000 30,000 500 5,000 10,000 0
Inrastructure 7,600 7,600 9,000 1,000 5,000 0
Year 2 35,600 49,600 22,500 15,000 15,000 0
Ongoing project
cost
18,000 12,000 13,000 9,000 0 0
Sotware main-
tenance & sup-
port
10,000 30,000 500 5,000 10,000 0
Inrastructure 7,600 7,600 9,000 1,000 5,000 0
Year 3 45,600 55,600 33,500 23,000 15,000 0
Ongoing project
cost
28,000 18,000 21,000 17,000 0 0
Sotware main-
tenance & sup-
port
10,000 30,000 500 5,000 10,000 0
Inrastructure 7,600 7,600 12,000 1,000 5,000 0
TCO (on 3 years
only)
257,800 256,800 175,500 130,000 129,000 10,000
Specic approach Platform approach
TOTAL Cost of Ownership,
all projects
562,300 USD 396,800 USD
Cost Reduction - 165,500 USD
Table 1: Example ROI Calculation
Although this model is purely fctional, it illustrates the value o adopting a content
platorm instead o leveraging single-purpose applications or developing custom
solutions. Notice that consulting, inrastructure and sotware costs or the pointsolutions remain high over each application implementation, while these costs de-
crease or are eliminated or subsequent implementations using the ECM platorm.
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Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications
Nuxeo's Enterprise Platorm: a Modern ECM Platorm
Open source ECM vendor Nuxeo has taken a platorm centric approach to deliver-
ing content management capabilities (Fermigier, Delprat, Grisel, Guillaume, 2010.).
Unlike traditional ECM tools, which provide a monolithic application or managing
content, Nuxeo provides a componentized solution, organized in logical layers,
that allows applications to be assembled. The diagram below presents a high-
level view o the Nuxeo ECM technology.
Each layer o the modular architecture builds upon the services provided by the
layer below. This model allows an enormous amount o technical and business
exibility to create content-driven applications with the specifc eatures required
to support the business process. Nuxeos architecture supports a number o use
cases:
Customize the pre-built applications (Document Management, Digital Asset
Management, Case Management Framework)
Customized Nuxeo deployment
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Figure 15: Nuxeo Architecture
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Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications
Application integration with the Nuxeo platorm
How is this possible rom a single platorm? The lowest level o the Nuxeo archi-
tecture is the runtime. It is a container or other Nuxeo components and services
similar to how Java provides a runtime container or .Net has a common language
runtime. On top o the runtime is a lightweight CMIS compliant repository that can
be embedded into other applications or used to create a customized solution.
Each layer adds additional capabilities that organizations can optionally elect to
implement.
In addition to a modular architecture, Nuxeo provides an extension point model
that can be used to:
confgure services and components
extend existing platorm servicesas well as pre-packaged ECM applications that can be used as is or customized
to meet enterprise needs.
Nuxeos architectural strategy is one example o a modern ECM platorm oering
all o the value and benefts described in this white paper. This is in contrast with
strategies ollowed by vendors that oer a suite o tools or a single-purpose ap-
plication.
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Figure 16: Customizing the Nuxeo Platform
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Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications
Conclusion
Ater reading this white paper, you should now understand:
What is meant by the terms enterprise content and enterprise content
management.
How enterprise content and organizational needs or managing that content
are evolving.
Why it is important to have processes and tools that support data o increas-
ingly diverse ormats, complexity and size.
The key standards that support ECM technology.
Technologies and standards or supporting enterprise content management
(ECM) in a process-centric manner.
How to create a business case or adopting a platorm or building con-
tent-driven tools.
Why it is necessary to adopt an ECM platorm that doesnt just allow delivery
o a single pre-defned use case, but instead oers IT teams an efcient and
elegant way to build, customize and maintain solutions that can evolve.
What You Can Expect When Adopting ECM
No matter what strategy is pursued to support enterprise content needs, it should
not be expected that all enterprise processes and issues can be addressed in a
single project. Initially, organizations should select one or more use cases, work
with and understand the platorm and use the lessons learned in the next imple-
mentation. These quick wins are important or evangelism and improving user ad-
option as well as learning or technical resources.
In addition, organizations should expect that content, standards and business
needs will change over time. They will need to regularly re-evaluate their ECM
platorm to determine i it is still the best ft or organizational needs.
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Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications
Works Cited
Association or Inormation and Image Management (AIIM), 2011. What Is ECM?
Retrieved 06 10, 2011, rom AIIM Website: http://www.aiim.org/What-is-ECM-
Enterprise-Content-Management.
Miles, 2011. State of the ECM Industry 2011. AIIM.
Manyika, et al., 2011. Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and
Productivity. McKinsey Global Institute.
Chute, Manrediz, Minton, Reinsel, Schlichting, & Toncheva, 2008.An Updated
Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011. IDC.
Ried & Kisker, 2011. Sizing the Cloud. Forrester Research.
Fermigier, Delprat, Grisel, Guillaume, 2010. Lessons learned developing the
Nuxeo EP open source, component-based, ECM platform. Proceedings o the
2010 ICSSEA Conerence.
Additional Resources
For additional inormation on items listed in the white paper, you can review the
resources below.
Oauth: http://www.oauth.net /
Open Social: http://www.opensocial.org/
W3C SWEO Linking Open Data:
http://www.w3.org/wiki/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData
OSGi:http://www.osgi.org/
Jenkins/Hudson: http://java.net/projects/hudson/
Apache Chemistry: http://chemistry.apache.org/
Apache Stanbol: http://incubator.apache.org/stanbol/
Interactive Knowledge Stack: http://www.iks-project.eu/
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http://www.oauth.net/http://www.oauth.net/http://www.opensocial.org/http://www.w3.org/wiki/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenDatahttp://www.osgi.org/http://www.osgi.org/http://www.osgi.org/http://java.net/projects/hudson/http://incubator.apache.org/stanbol/http://incubator.apache.org/stanbol/http://www.iks-project.eu/http://www.oauth.net/http://www.oauth.net/http://www.oauth.net/http://www.opensocial.org/http://www.w3.org/wiki/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenDatahttp://www.osgi.org/http://www.osgi.org/http://java.net/projects/hudson/http://incubator.apache.org/stanbol/http://incubator.apache.org/stanbol/http://www.iks-project.eu/ -
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About Nuxeo
Nuxeo delivers an open source document management application built with acomplete, modular and extensible open source platform for enterprise content
management. Other packaged applications built with the platform provide solutions
for digital asset management and case management.
Designed by developers for developers, the Nuxeo Enterprise Platform oers modern
technologies, unmatched modularity, a powerful plug-in model and extensive packaging
capabilities. Using a fully open source development model, Nuxeo provides a
subscription program with software maintenance, technical support and customization
tools.
Nuxeo ECM is trusted by 1000+ organizations across 145 countries, including Cengage
Learning, Pearson Education, AFP News Agency, EllisDon and Jeppesen, a Boeing
Company.
Nuxeo is dual-headquartered in North America (Boston) and Western Europe (Paris).
More information is available at www.nuxeo.com.
Or contact us: [email protected]