Summit: Content management tools "barely being used"

Shackleton: Telcos could enter the ECM market

Enterprise content management (ECM) is still at an extremely early stage of maturity, with deployment of these technologies at a very low level among corporates, according to John Shackleton, chief executive and president of ECM giant Open Text.

Speaking exclusively to V3.co.uk at its inaugural summit event, Shackleton argued that despite his company's success as one of the biggest ECM players around – having acquired web content management vendor Red Dot and more recently Vignette – the firm is penetrating less than 20 per cent of the market.

He added that some technology vendors that have tried to enter the ECM space have done little to advance the industry, in areas such as streaming video.

"The problem with the ECM industry is not only is it immature but we've only penetrated less than 20 per cent and we're one of the biggest players – it's barely being used," said Shackleton.

"People like Oracle just don't understand it – they're still a relational database company, but a blob of video is not in any way relational. So the tech giants who could have jumped on this stuff haven't, for whatever reason."

Shackleton predicted that the market would continue to consolidate until there were between two and four massive players, and added that as smartphones become the main device users use to interact with ECM, telcos will try to enter this software market to differentiate.

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