The enterprise content management market, encompassing big data, document management, Web content management and a slew of other data management technologies, is massive. In fact, Markets and Markets forecasts the overall market will reach $12.32 billion by 2019.
Content management systems (CMS) are an important component of the market, typically comprising document and workflow collaboration and enabling publishing, editing and management of a variety of data. Because of their ease of use and automated nature, CMS offerings have naturally evolved over the years. And as demand for business continuity and document management has risen, there has been some interesting crossover between CMS and business continuity management (BCM).
To put it simply, BCM solutions typically use a relational database to provide extensive reporting on the data collected for ease of management and analysis. Often these solutions are complex and involve extensive application development and expertise, all geared toward helping customers reduce their administrative burdens and operate more efficiently. And as the market for big data and big data analytics blossoms, many BCM solutions provide a data warehouse-type approach to storage and management.
All that development can translate to costly investments for solution developers. And in an effort to save time and money, some BCM offerings have resorted to becoming CMS add-ons. In this case, the CMS solution is repurposed as a BCM offering, with its basic interface and design reconfigured as a BCM tool. This can be useful to an extent, but the limits of CMS offerings are readily apparent when wandering into the realm of relational database tools and analytics.
A fully developed BCM solution should have a wide variety of reporting and filtering capabilities, something that can only be accomplished by using a relational database. Attempting to convert information stored within the confines of a traditional CMS solution can be extremely frustrating and time consuming, negating any of the cost savings and efficiencies gleaned by using the CMS offering in the first place.
Organizations looking for a solid BCM solution should be mindful of these shortcuts and ensure the offering they deploy provides the scalability, filtering and reporting features they need. Failure to do so can lead to hassle and headaches down the road.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson