ecm platforms- the next generation of enterprise content management whitepaper

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  • 8/2/2019 ECM Platforms- The Next Generation of Enterprise Content Management Whitepaper

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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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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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    Taking a Platform Approach to Building Content Centric Applications

    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

    Page 37/40

    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.

    Page 38/40

    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/

    Page 40/40

    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]