More vendor consolidation despite ECM market growth

While the worldwide enterprise content management (ECM) market will continue to grow at a healthy rate, further vendor consolidation is expected in the next two years.

That is according to the latest report by analysts Meta Group on the ECM space. The report says that the ECM market will reach US$2.3B in software and US$7B in services by 2007, representing a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent.

This market comprises vendors supplying software that focuses primarily on the capture,storage, retrieval, and dissemination of digital content for enterprise use and life-cycle management.

"Although this is a growing market, vendors will continue to consolidate through 2005," said Charlie Brett, Senior Program Director with META Group's Technology Research Services and lead author of the report. "By 2006, approximately 60 percent of Global 2000 organisations will standardise on a strategic ECM framework, though many will maintain existing investments in tactical or line-of-business (LOB) content deployments."

ECM systems are generally tactical and non-discretionary expenditures, but they are increasingly becoming strategic core investments. With organisations seeking more strategic enterprise content solutions, the ability of ECM software to fully manage all enterprise content and avoid costs by consistently applying proper compliance and legal risk policies/procedures is emerging as critical to organisations.

"Gaps among vendor products are beginning to diminish and acquisitions designed to help achieve relative technology parity are increasing," added Andrew Warzecha, Meta Group's Content & Collaboration Strategies Service Director. "Support for previously 'non-traditional' content types - including email, digital asset management, and records management - is now viewed as becoming integral to ECM."

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