Constant content

IBM has unveiled new enterprise content management (ECM) software, which, the company says, is designed to enable clients to manage their increasing volumes of information and reduce their business processing time, helping to cut costs and increase efficiency.

IBM adds that the new software includes a comprehensive business process management offering with analytic capabilities, new features in IBM’s content management product line and full-featured ECM starter packs that are specifically designed for clients looking for smaller deployments.

IBM elaborates on the new offering:

• By consolidating five products into one offering, IBM’s new content-centric business process management (BPM) bundle provides clients with more functionality and improved ease of use, and simplifies the way they obtain BPM capabilities by offering a comprehensive, all-inclusive product for content-centric BPM. Included in the IBM FileNet Business Process Manager bundle are IBM FileNet Process Monitor, IBM FileNet Business Process Framework, IBM FileNet Connector for Microsoft Visio, and IBM FileNet eForms. Addressing business activity monitoring capabilities, the offering also includes IBM Cognos Now, which is designed to provide clients with real-time monitoring and visibility into business operations.
• IBM FileNet Business Process Manager utilizes Web 2.0 technologies such as enterprise mashups from IBM, along with a set of standards-based widgets. These ECM-based widgets are visual services that provide useful ECM and BPM functions. Assembling widgets and mashing data together gives organizations more adaptable options for ECM applications, reducing development time and increasing business agility.
• IBM Content Manager and IBM FileNet Content Manager are secure and open content repositories designed to provide content services such as security, search, integration and workflow. New improvements in IBM Content Manager include enhanced document handling capabilities; consumability and performance enhancements; process automation, execution, and management via BPM integration; full-text search (z/OS), and high-volume batch loading capability (z/OS). Enhancements to IBM FileNet Content Manager include significant improvements in installation and upgrade processes, reducing the cost of deploying enterprise class content capabilities.

In addition, IBM’s ECM portfolio now includes ECM starter packs. The packs are four full-featured ECM packages targeted for smaller or departmental deployments. The starter packs include: IBM Content Manager, IBM FileNet Content Manager, IBM FileNet Business Process Manager, and IBM Content Collector Discovery Analytics.