Oz firms lead global DRM growth
Oz firms lead global DRM growth
February 20, 2009: Australia has emerged as a hotspot in the global Documents & Records Management (DRM) market, with a new survey finding a higher than average proportion of Australian enterprises considered it their most "important/critical engagement in 2008."
An analysis of the global DRM market by industry analysts Datamonitor predicts ongoing healthy growth to 2013 - particularly in the Asia Pacific region - "despite certain challenges in the post-consolidation phase and as the global economy shows few signs of recovery from the downturn.
Their survey uncovered many projects underway in Australia, which along with Italy and the Benelux have emerged as active markets.
Over 16% of enterprises surveyed in Australia and Italy responded that a DRM project was their most important/critical engagement in 2008.
"Among the ‘big four’ economies of Western Europe, only Italy has over 10% of enterprises prioritising DRM. France is at the opposite end of the spectrum, with an incidence of 2% while Germany and the UK follow with 5% and 8% respectively/"
"The United States too has an incidence of 4%, indicating that the DRM market is fairly mature with relatively little scope for green-field projects in these economies," the report notes.Datamonitor concludes that mid-market and very large enterprise segments are the most likely source of DRM investments over the next two years.
"As the segment is not saturated, enterprises operating in the mid-market with revenues in the range of $US50 million to $US250 million are most likely to make new and secondary investments in DRM technologies.
"Large organisations are increasingly grappling with the proliferation of unstructured content and are looking towards adopting more comprehensive DRM solutions to address ancillary requirements such as collaboration, archiving, and workflow management.
"A majority of large companies, with over $US1 billion in revenues, are likely to invest in DRM solutions despite a relatively higher degree of saturation. On the other hand, medium to large enterprises with revenues between $US250 million and $US1 billion are least likely to invest in DRM solution over the next two years. The segment is sufficiently saturated and apart from the drive for compliance, there are few pressing requirements to warrant additional investments in DRM."
The survey concludes that DRM will exhibit a strong growth rate over the next five years, outpacing most other enterprise application domains. "Though the incidence of various DRM component technologies is already fairly high, enterprises are looking to make new and further investments in DRM solutions in both the short and the medium terms.
"The ever increasing need to achieve regulatory compliance and avoid litigation risk is seen as a prime mover for the growth and adoption of DRM technologies in heavily regulated industries such as financial services, public sector, and healthcare. Datamonitor believes that the pressure for greater regulation and control will likely increase now that many systemic deficiencies have been brought to the fore by the recent crisis in the global financial services industry.
"Convergence between the DRM domain and the broader ECM eco-system will accelerate As enterprises look at ways to manage information flows across various internal and external channels, the need to couple traditional DRM capabilities with more advanced features such as automated workflow management, business rules, enterprise search and discovery, and collaboration is increasingly being felt."
Datamonitor believes that the boundaries between traditional DRM and the broader ECM domains are disappearing rapidly and the convergence is evident in all major DRM offerings and product roadmaps.
"DRM vendors will need to strengthen product integration capabilities to compete effectively Integration capabilities are now perceived as a major differentiator by enterprises considering DRM adoption and expansion. As the information architecture within large and small enterprises grows more complex by the day, they need to manage information flows across multiple systems such as ERP, CRM and BI, and across diverse usage and development environments."