Oracle outlines content management plans

Oracle plans to roll out new releases for five ECM systems over the next 12 months

Oracle has laid out the strategy for its enterprise content management (ECM) software products, planning to roll out new releases for five ECM systems over the next 12 months. 

ECM products help companies organise and manage vast amounts of documents, images and other types of digital content such as email messages.

Much of the new ECM software comes courtesy of Stellent, an ECM vendor acquired by Oracle last December. Oracle claims that the latest release has completely integrated Stellent's software into its own.

The company plans to offer three of the five ECM products bundled as a suite, including Oracle's Universal Content Management, Records Management and Imaging and Process Management software.

Running the Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite will cost companies $150,000 per processor.

The other two applications include a database content suite and an information rights management package that allows companies to control which users can access and alter a document.

Oracle is hoping that the new ECM software will give the company an edge in a market that has recently become much more competitive.

Rivals Opentext and IBM both made acquisitions in 2006 to beef up their ECM products, and Microsoft recently released the latest version of its SharePoint collaboration software.