Oracle+ECM=Tsunami
By Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Ovum VP software and IT services
Oracle is set to announce late in Q4 a major entry into the enterprise content management (ECM) space, code-named Tsunami. Building on its strengths in structured data management, Oracle hopes to take a major portion of the emerging unstructured data management market (UDM), of which ECM is a large part.
This is a timely release and follows in the footsteps of Microsoft’s SharePoint initiative, which has seen great success in the low and mid-market with more than 20 million seats currently deployed. Oracle's Tsunami aims to be “SharePoint on steroids,” delivering mid-level functionality capable of scaling, cost-effectively and easily, to tens of thousands of seats.
Oracle’s entry into this market will likely have major repercussions for both existing ECM niche vendors such as FileNet, Open Text and EMC/Documentum and more significantly, also for structured data vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and Sybase.
Tsunami will deliver a major upgrade to Oracle's existing Collaboration Suite. It will provide a highly scalable ECM system, with the ability to scale up to tens and potentially hundreds of thousands of seats with ease. This will impact Oracle's business in two important ways: First it will give an instant boost to the Collaboration Suite, delivering some solid upsell opportunities over the first year of release. Beyond this (and more importantly in the long run), it will ensure that Oracle remains competitive with Microsoft in its core data management business. UDM will become a focal point for these vendors over the next few years, and Oracle needs to remain abreast of developments.
Tsunami, at first blush, appears to be a strong play, and if the focus and momentum behind the project continues, Oracle at least has the potential to take a leadership position.
What needs to be noted is that IBM and Microsoft are already deeply involved in UDM. Microsoft has seen great early success with SharePoint, and IBM has legacy business in document management. Interestingly, Oracle has taken the SharePoint model rather than attempt to emulate IBM's document management heritage. This is because Oracle is fundamentally a database company and believes that all data should be stored in the database. This is an argument that was difficult to defend five years ago, but with technology advances today it stands up more vigorously to defense. Oracle will be delivering UDM as infrastructure and attempting to provide truly enterprisewide deployments, rather than high-end, departmental-specific installations.
The market opportunity for Oracle is large, for in less than two years, Microsoft’s SharePoint has come to dominate the low- and mid-market for UDM, with cumulatively more seats deployed globally than all the other ECM vendors combined. Oracle hopes to emulate this success in larger enterprise deployments.