ecm platforms - executive summary

7/30/2019 ECM Platforms - Executive Summary

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Content Management Platforms:

The Next Generation of EnterpriseContent Management

The Evolution of ECM: Platform Oriented, Flexible,

Architected for the Cloud and Designed for Technologists

Available for download as a PDF or for ebook readers.

This whitepaper is an executive summary of the full ebook

Visit www.nuxeo.com/whitepaper to get the full paper

whitepaper
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Enterprise Content Management and

Content Technology Trends

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions, a direct descendant of

traditional Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS), have seen

significant changes since introduced in the late 90s, and more changes will

come in the future.

With the Digital Revolution brought by the Web and other Internet related

domains, content technology is everywhere, beyond traditional Enterprise

Content Management applications, constantly reinventing and challenging the

established usage and solutions.

This is a powerful driver for Enterprise Content Management, which is evolving

to a next generation of technology and usage, continually providing more value

to enterprises and organizations.

The Evolution of Content Management (Miles, 2011)


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Much More Than File Shares and Document-based

Systems: Content-driven Business Applications

The first generation of ECM solutions are direct descendants of Electronic Document

Management Systems. In parallel, a new generation of file sharing systems also

showed up (Dropbox, Box.net ...)

But the problems organizations are trying to solve today are way beyond the

limitations of these two families of solutions, they want and need:

to incorporate content into business applications and business processes and

not keep it in content only siloed applications.

to usesmarter content, involving more agile uses of metadata and semantics,

and a wide range content typologies.

to be able to build tailor made content-enabled applications to run their

business.

to have the flexibility to build and constantly evolve.
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Big Data, Big Content

While Big Data applies to a usually well delimited category of massive datasets, the

reality is that today and tomorrow, all applications are impacted by the phenomenon of

exponential data growth, both in number of records and content size, a natural

consequence of the advent of Digital Media. In that context, the challenges for

Enterprise Content Management technology are various:

Scale and absorb the growth without performance or system management

issues.

Preserve transparency and accessibility to content always and by any means.

Enable data mining, facilitate analysis and automated decision making.

Support new business processes and added value from this massive amount of

digital knowledge organizations are building.

Traditional Enterprise Content Management solutions are struggling to try make the

above possible, and often failing because they are not designed for that purpose!

Organizational Unit Content Growth (Chute, Manfrediz, Minton, Reinsel, Schlichting, & Toncheva, 2008)


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Requirements for a Modern Content

Management Platform

Looking at the way Enterprise Content Management, and content management

in general, are evolving, the best technology to meet the needs of organizations

for today and tomorrow is a platform approach to use for building solutions,

instead of out-of-the-box software solutions.

But using the platform term is not enough, and as nothing is as simple as

tagging a software box with this term, it is necessary to elaborate on what a

platform is, from a technology standpoint, and what we should expect from it.

Any software architect, technologist or IT decision maker involved in the process

of choosing a software solution for a project with content management

requirements should have a clear understanding of these requirements.


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Enabling the Building of Business Applications

To make this possible, as a development framework, a Content Management Platform

must

be Service Oriented, and provide access to its features, from low level to high

level, through APIs, embracing as much as possible standard technologies such

as REST, Soap, CMIS or others. This will enable integration with other

components and applications involved in the business process.

be based on a modular and extensible software architecture from its core.

Modularity brings the ability to scale lean. Extensibility is the key to delivering

the specificities of each application without rebuilding from scratch each time.

Both will result not only in fulfilling the initial requirements successfully, but also in

better controlled, affordable applications that are easier to maintain and evolve.

Other must have are: a standard development language and platform (such as Java),

efficient and accessible development tools, effective testing and deployment

strategies ...


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Supporting More Than Just the Server Side

One distinction is worth mentioning: a Content Management Platform is more than a

content repository. Its mission is not only to store any content type and make it

accessible, but also to make it easy for developers using the platform to develop any

kind of user interface. Too many content management solutions skip that part. A good

platform should help developers efficiently develop:

Traditional Web Applications with a set of different technologies. For instance

using HTML5, Ajax, CSS and JavaScript, Java Server Faces (JSF), Google Web

Toolkit (GWT), web templating systems such as Freemarker, etc.

Rich Internet Applications, supporting technologies like Adobe Flex for

implementing the front-end layers.

Mobile Web Applications and rich Mobile Applications (based on SDKs for

standard platforms such as Android and iOS).

A modern content management platform should not make the choice for the

developer, but provide support for as many client side technologies as possible, so the

developer is not locked into a single approach!


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Run Anywhere, Including the Cloud

Similar to the openness and choice of a client-side technology, a platform should be

agnostic when it comes to the deployment and run strategies of the organizations

using it. It must support both

On-premise deployment on a standard system infrastructure (for instance, an

enterprise grade Java stack such as Tomcat, JBoss or others)

Cloud-based deployment, since Cloud computing is no longer a theory, but a

reality!

However, Cloud based deployment should be further explained. Like the

termPlatform, nothing is as easy as adding the buzz word Cloud to marketing

collateral. Depending on the use case, organizations may have different strategies

when it comes to running in the Cloud:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

or simply Software as a Service (SaaS).

The three of them should be made possible by a modern platform!


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Modern Development Techniques: Agile and in the

Cloud

As choosing a Content Management Platform is essentially not a choice for a one-time

development project, but part of a mid- or long-term strategy, and a cornerstone of

this strategy, a modern platform should embrace todays and tomorrows successful

development techniques. This includes:

Supporting Agile and iterative development practices (Scrum, Extreme

Programming or others).

Providing a framework and infrastructure for continuous integration as a whole

part of the platform, potentially relying on de-facto standard tools like Hudson/

Jenkins.

Supporting automatic testing, continuous and automatic performance testing/

benchmarking and continuous deployments.

Using modern, proven tools for managing customized source code in a way that

is consistent with the platform, such as Git for source control and Maven for the

build process.


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Standards Matter, but Dont Be Blind!

A last area to explore, but one of importance: a modern platform should embrace

industry standards. This is often important for integration purposes, but also a

guarantee for the sustainability of the projects. Standards offer a long list of benefits,

however, again here, it is not only about simply supporting standards, but also how the

platform will implement them. When choosing a platform, one should not only look at

the list of supported standards, but also at how they are implemented, and the

constraints they can bring alongside the promised benefits!

Standards that should be looked at include:

Content management standards, such as interoperability standards (CMIS for

instance, now emerging as the main interoperability standard between

document oriented content management systems).

Programming standards, such as REST, SOAP, OSGi and others.

Integration standards, such as OAuth, LDAP, and OpenSocial.

Emerging standards such as those for semantic technologies and HTML5.


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The Business Case for the Platform

Approach

It is certainly not difficult to convince architects and developers to go for a platform

approach. In most cases, the software quality and interest for the technology are their

main criteria. That is, however, not a sufficient reason for any significant technology

choice, as in the end, technology is here to serve business and organizational goals.

The real reason for choosing a modern Content Management Platform is not technical,

but about its business value: considering the evolution of Enterprise Content

Management as depicted above, a modern Content Management Platform offers

significant benefits. While every use case should be looked at in detail, in a general

manner, it will:

Reduce Total Cost of Ownership of an enterprise-grade content management

infrastructure, by supporting all content management requirements in a single

solution that organizations can capitalize on

Increase Return On Investment, by delivering tailor-made applications and a

very competitive time to market

Improve overall quality and efficiency of IT operations, by enabling high-quality,

efficient and controlled development processes with a unified set of standard

tools


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The Nuxeo Platform, a Modern

Content Management Platform

Nuxeo, a leading Open Source ECM vendor, has taken a platform-centric approach for

the design of its software. The Nuxeo (Enterprise) Platform is a modern, but already

mature technology that fulfills most of the requirements explored in this paper and

provides the associated benefits to any organization developing content-centric

business applications.

The Nuxeo Platform is a perfect foundation to build and run a wide range of content

management applications, including:

Document Management, Case Management, Records Management, Digital

Asset Management

Specific use cases for any Business Content Application,

and all this on a single, well architected platform designed with developers in mind!
http://www.nuxeo.com/http://www.nuxeo.com/


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Available for download as a PDF or for ebook readers.

This whitepaper is an executive summary of the full ebook

Visit www.nuxeo.com/whitepaper to get the full paper

Conclusions? Want to Find Out More?

This executive summary introduces the main topics covered by the paper entitled

Content Management Platforms: the Next Generation of Enterprise Content

Management.

While this clearly highlights some obvious reasons and benefits for a modern content

management platform, we recommend:

1. Reading the full paper, available at http://www.nuxeo.com/en/content-

platform-whitepaper

2. Building your own business case, and exploring how a Content

Management Platform could contribute to the success of your projects

3. Having a look at the Nuxeo Platform, and involving architects and

developers, to see how it implements the vision of a modern content

management platform.
http://www.nuxeo.com/en/content-platform-whitepaperhttp://www.nuxeo.com/en/content-platform-whitepaperhttp://www.nuxeo.com/en/content-platform-whitepaperhttp://www.nuxeo.com/en/content-platform-whitepaperhttp://www.nuxeo.com/http://www.nuxeo.com/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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About Nuxeo

Nuxeo provides an extensible and modular Platform for Enterprise Content

Management (ECM) enabling architects and developers to easily build and run

business applications.

Designed by developers for developers, the Nuxeo Platform offers modern

technologies, unmatched modularity, a powerful plug-in model and extensive

packaging capabilities. It comes with ready-to-use applications for typical use casessuch as Document Management. Digital Asset Management and Case Management.

Using a fully open source development model, Nuxeo provides a subscription program

with software maintenance, technical support and customization tools.

1000+ organizations are relying on Nuxeo to run business critical applications,

including Electronic Arts, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Jeppesen, a Boeing Company

Orange and Pearson Education. Nuxeo is dual-headquartered in North America

(Boston) and Western Europe (Paris).

More information is available at http://www.nuxeo.com. Or contact us:[email protected]
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