The average number of content systems within organizations has increased in the last ten years from three to almost five. More than 14% of organizations now handle over seven content management systems. With more data and information across more systems than ever, content management has become more challenging. This is how Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) came into the picture. It was set up in 2010 to create an open standard that enables different content management systems to work with each other over the Internet.

Let’s understand what CMIS is, how it works, and what benefits it brings to enterprises.

CMIS is an open standard that allows different content management systems to communicate with each other. It is supported by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), a technical committee of organizations that provide or use ECMs. 

The main advantage is that it doesn’t matter how individual ECMs store content or metadata. CMIS helps client applications connect with them in realtime with no specific code changes. For example, if a developer writes a client application for the SharePoint user interface, that application can integrate with IBM Filenet or Alfresco without code changes. It provides organizations unified access, reduced integration effort, and vendor neutrality. 

CMIS consists of two major components and operates in a structured way. We’ll explore how it works and what processes are usually followed for each component.

CMIS Architecture and Components

CMIS architecture comprises common objects, like document objects, folders, relationships, and policies. These standardized objects facilitate seamless data exchange between different repositories. 

CMIS protocol bindings serve as communication channels between clients and repositories. The primary bindings include web services, RESTful HTTP services, and JSON, catering to diverse integration needs. By supporting multiple protocol bindings, CMIS enables developers to choose the most suitable approach for their specific needs, such as performance requirements and platform compatibility. 

Moreover, CMIS API operations enable CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) functionalities. This allows clients to interact with repository content efficiently. It also defines a query language, operations for versioning, and managing security.

CMIS Interactions

CMIS interaction can be divided into three main parts:

• Authentication and authorization: Ensures secure access and management of content across repositories. This is made possible with standard authentication mechanisms. These mechanisms are basic authentication, OAuth authentication, and token-based authentication. Authorization in CMIS is often handled through role-based access control and permissions management.
• Queries: CMIS offers a query language similar to SQL called CMISQL. It enables users to search, retrieve data, and filter results from CMIS repositories. The key aspects of queries in CMIS are metadata-based searches, full-text searches, query execution, filtering, and sorting. These queries facilitate content management and collaboration across ECMs.
• Folder management: Involves creating, navigating, and organizing content within repositories using standardized folder objects. It enables users to establish hierarchical structures. Moreover, it allows access control and consistent management across diverse content management repositories.

CMIS can help organizations across different fronts. Here are four common use cases of CMIS:

• Get unified content access: Access documents from multiple repositories through a single interface. For example, a company may store documents in several content management systems, such as SharePoint, Alfresco, and Documentum. CMIS provides a standardized way to access and manage content from all these document systems.
• Integrate across platforms: Developers can use CMIS APIs to build applications that interact with CMIS-compliant repositories. For example, an organization can integrate document management capabilities into its CRM system. This helps store and retrieve documents directly from the CRM interface.
• Synchronize content: Organizations can synchronize content between repositories. For example, a global healthcare firm may use CMIS to synchronize patient documentation across regional healthcare facilities. Synchronization ensures that the board can access patient information regardless of location.
• Centralized search: Instead of conducting separate searches in each repository, users can perform a single search query through CMIS. For example, a knowledge management system may use CMIS to search across various document repositories, intranet sites, and file shares.

CMIS plays an essential role in the smooth operation of multiple content repositories. Here are six main benefits.

No need to write individual connectors

Organizations benefit from not having to develop custom connectors for each content repository. Developers can use CMIS APIs to access content uniformly across various systems, eliminating the need for bespoke connectors. This simplifies development, reduces complexity, and accelerates deployment speed.

Easy discovery and collaboration

CMIS centralizes access to content assets, enabling distributed teams to collaborate seamlessly. With realtime sharing and editing of documents, CMIS fosters efficient collaboration, irrespective of team members’ locations, enhancing productivity and promoting effective teamwork.

Reduced development costs

Developers no longer need to learn the intricacies of each individual system’s API. A single API saves time and allows developers to create quick applications that interact with multiple repositories. Thus, organizations don’t have to invest much money in development.

Flexibility and scalability

Scalability in CMIS makes it suitable for organizations of all sizes to evolve content requirements with ease. Whether for unified content access, federated search, or collaborative document management, CMIS adapts to diverse use cases. Additionally, it scales to accommodate large volumes of content and users. 

Vendor neutrality and standardization

As CMIS is an open standard maintained by OASIS, it ensures vendor neutrality and platform independence. The best part is it promotes industry-wide standardization and collaboration. This drives innovation and adoption of best practices in content management.

Streamlined compliance and governance

With consistent metadata management and access controls, CMIS ensures adherence to industry standards and regulatory frameworks. It provides centralized oversight of content, simplifying auditing and monitoring processes. By enforcing governance policies across repositories, CMIS promotes transparency, accountability, and compliance with regulatory mandates and organizational standards.

A best-of-breed ECM management solution will monitor Content Management Interoperability Services for ECM platforms, ensuring the business-critical actions in the CMIS interface for a given ECM platform are running as they should be.

Some offer pre-built tests that monitor every component, like repository, database, infrastructure and storage. These ECM management platforms can also monitor CMIS transactions, user interactions, and content access patterns. This allows organizations to identify performance bottlenecks, track user behaviour, and ensure compliance with industry standards. 

By analyzing data on response times, throughput, and error rates, this can enable organizations to optimize CMIS performance and enhance user experience.

CMIS has become a go-to standard for organizations managing multiple ECM systems. It provides unified content access and helps make the deployment of applications easier. At the same time, you need to ensure your systems are running correctly. One way to do that is by utilizing an ECM management platform.

Brian DeWyer is CTO and Co-Founder of Reveille Software.