11 September 2008

Many companies today are struggling with how to unlock the full value of their data when they have multiple content management solutions dispersed throughout their organisation

Melissa Webster, vice president of content & digital media technologies at market IDC EMC, IBM and Microsoft have jointly developed specification that uses Web Services and Web 2.0 interfaces to enable applications to interoperate with multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories by different vendors.

The companies intend to submit the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for advancement through its standards development process.

CMIS is designed to reduce the IT burden around multivendor, multirepository content management environments. It reduces the time and money required to create and maintain custom integration code and one-off integrations that enable different ECM systems within their organisations to talk to one another. The specification will also benefit independent software vendors by enabling them to create specialised applications that are capable of running over a variety of content management systems.

“Many companies today are struggling with how to unlock the full value of their data when they have multiple content management solutions dispersed throughout their organisation. Currently, ‘marrying’ these into one integrated system – or migrating content between systems – costs the IT department a lot in time and money,” said Melissa Webster, vice president of content & digital media technologies at market intelligence firm IDC. “Given the need for a common standard that will enable customers to access disparate repositories, today’s announcement certainly seems like a very positive step in the right direction.”

“Today’s businesses are driven by information,” said Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of the Office Business Platform, Office SharePoint Server Group at Microsoft. “When companies operate in silos, with information scattered throughout the enterprise, it becomes extremely difficult for customers to realise its full value. By working together, we believe we can enable customers to maximise the use of critical business assets.”