2015 ECM Predictions: Greater investment, more upgrades, a focus on adoption

Enterprise content management veterans see more organizations eyeing a solution refreshes this year, but don't expect buyers to get swept up in the hype of the latest tools.

Technology Services Group recently reviewed some of the enterprise content management (ECM) predictions it made over the last few years and offered up a few insights for what's ahead in 2015. According to TSG, new customers are doing more interface evaluations before selecting the best ECM tools. "We have seen multiple evaluations...not surprisingly, we increasingly see our own product, HPI, and Cara considered as alternatives to D2 or xCP."

Given the age of most of TSG's client systems, coupled with a reawakening economy, the group is seeing more clients with older infrastructures, skipping a release or two and either upgrading their legacy ECM implementation (FileNet, OpenText, and Documentum) or moving to something new. "We continue to see clients moving to Alfresco from legacy systems and would expect the trend to accelerate in 2015," they write.

TSG also expects Box.net to struggle in much the same way as Microsoft SharePoint and eRoom have in years past. "[W]e would predict that many of the keys to Box's success (viral adoption and freemium) will lead to Box's struggles getting to be a true ECM solution, similar to SharePoint and eRoom before that," the company writes in its blog. "When it comes to replacing existing ECM platforms, we have not seen any of our clients move to Box.  While some consider it, it typically is only the collaboration portion of the overall ECM architecture."

Finally, TSG sees mobile as a "nice to have" for ECM, and expects mobile ECM access to mimic small browser-based applications (versus native applications). "...