Enterprise Content Management—Thinking Beyond the Repository

Achieving this vision involves several key factors, including:

• The ability to identify information within legacy stores;
• The ability to implement policies for those legacy stores;
  • Retention policies based on content usage, updates and metadata; and
  • Records policies based on corporate classifications and legal processes.
• Implementing policies without disrupting users or business processes; and
• The uniform and consistent application of policies across content stores.
  

Applying records and retention policies to this enterprise content in place within existing content stores allows companies to leverage their investments in existing infrastructure, while reducing content clutter and storage costs. Also, and perhaps most importantly, companies can minimize risk by managing content in legacy data stores according to corporate policies for legal discovery and destruction where and when it is appropriate.

Step 3. Securing Information Beyond Managed Environments

Once content is managed in both traditional ECM systems and non-strategic legacy content stores, companies should extend their ECM vision to desktops and places beyond their “corporate” reach. In other words, organizations need to secure and track their information wherever it resides, even when copies are sent beyond their own networks or firewalls.

Information rights management (IRM) ensures the right people have access to business information, and controls who can edit or extract that information. Using IRM technology, companies can monitor unstructured data on desktops, laptops, flash drives, external hard drives and email inboxes—absolutely anywhere it is stored.

The key to a successful IRM deployment is creating a policy-driven method for classifying content that is easily understood by business users and connected to role-based permissions that grant access to classified information. Many organizations already classify documents using terms such as “company confidential” or “public.” These classifications can be leveraged by an IRM system to limit access to information to only authorized individuals.

This process provides classifications and security for all content within an enterprise, including information housed within traditional ECM systems and non-ECM legacy content stores.

Broadening Enterprise Content Management

The long-heralded promise of managing all content within an enterprise can now be fulfilled by moving beyond the traditional ECM repository and instead approaching ECM as a larger, broader strategy. This ECM vision provides enterprises the flexibility to utilize non-ECM content stores, but at the same time, institute IT systems for managing key content assets and applications within those storage areas. Additionally, it enables companies to extend ECM to user desktops and locations outside of their organizations, giving them control of unstructured information as it travels throughout the enterprise and beyond. By following the steps outlined above, IT departments can begin to truly manage all of their unstructured information while allowing business users to continue to work as their business needs dictate.

Oracle Content Management

A Truly Universal Approach to Managing Content

Oracle provides a traditional ECM system and other middleware applications enabling companies to implement true ECM strategies.

Oracle Content DB, Universal Content Management and Imaging and Business Process Management provide support for all aspects of ECM, including file server consolidation, a services-based unified content management platform and line-of-business imaging applications.

• Content DB provides enterprise document management services for consolidating
  infrastructure while providing user-friendly integrations with key desktop applications.
• Universal Content Management is built upon a unified architecture that allows organizations to deploy Web content management, document management, collaboration, records and retention management, digital asset management and email management applications on one platform and with one user interface. This architecture enables customers to fully leverage content management investments across the organization and throughout various applications.
• Imaging and Business Process Management allows companies to capture, store and manage all of the documents and data associated with critical business transactions. Oracle enables organizations to extend, leverage and integrate critical business applications, such as ERP and line-of-business systems, allowing increased effectiveness of strategic infrastructure investments while reducing costs, improving process efficiency and enhancing customer and vendor satisfaction.
• Oracle Universal Records Management enables organizations to apply centralized records and retention policies to content across multiple stores, including custom content stores, and execute those policies locally, wherever content resides. Oracle Information Rights Management is a highly scalable, enterprise solution for managing, securing and monitoring information regardless of where it is stored, even after it leaves the enterprise.

Note: Oracle officially acquired content management provider Stellent, Inc. in December 2006

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