Also, vendors such as Alfresco and Nuxeo have taken an open source approach to ECM product development. By offloading the engineering costs, these companies think they can deliver full functional ECM at lower prices than the traditional suppliers. However, these companies will have to overcome users' reluctance to rely on open source models for key products.
In addition, a few software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud options have emerged. Hyland Software, SpringCRM and Xythos Software are some of the companies taking that approach. These vendors will need to demonstrate that they can support large, complex ECM deployments.
In effect, the ECM market is a bit of an enigma. On the one hand, it is quite mature. "At the beginning, we did not even know what to call the product category," says John Newton, now the chief technology officer and chairman at Alfresco and founder of Documentum, which was launched in 1990.
However, the market is not demonstrating the signs typically associated with a mature sector. With the volume of data companies generate growing and regulations pushing corporations to purchase robust data management tools, the ECM sector is growing, attracting new suppliers and changing as companies try to manage their data more effectively.
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