Yesterday Intalio, Inc. an Open Source BPMS company, announced a partnership with Alfresco Software, an Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) company. The integrated offering allows users to manage document-centric workflow processes and support the collaborative development of business processes. (See details.)
Despite its age the ECM market is ripe with new beginnings. As readers of the blog know, I am wrapping up the Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 (register for 3/27 webinar). Major themes of this topic include collaboration, low-barrier application development and open business models. Part of the report looks at the intersection of Enterprise 2.0 and ECM. Although with a slightly different perspective, this announcement by Inatlio and Alfresco does the same thing.
Alfreso provides an Open Source approach to ECM. With the integration of Intalio, an Open Source workflow offering the ECM platform is far more complete. But, even more fascinating to me is the fact that the integration effort was undertaken by the Demand Driven Development (D3) model introduced by Intalio in 2006, an Enterprise 2.0 approach to development in and of itself.
There is great synergy in this simple announcement on many plateaus. Open Source and SaaS represent new models to implementing ECM in an enterprise. Enterprise 2.0 offers new ways to support and facilitate collaboration in an enterprise, as part of an ECM strategy. And here the twain doth meet. These are all industry trends that AIIM must, and will continue to monitor.
The ECM market is anything but dull.
