Core ECM Vendor Comparison

Nope, I’m not doing a feature comparison I’m doing something much more interesting…a name comparison. In my defense my flight was delayed over two hours and now I am on a 6 hour flight to California. I was finishing up my EMC-SAP Relationship overview PPT when my mind began to wander – can’t imagine why…

I got to thinking about the names of the core ECM players and how I could not understand how they came about.

Documentum – There’s nothing like some pseudo Latin to make a boring concept seem…outdated I guess. To be fair, at least this one made sense when Documents were what we managed albeit the name sounds like V1.0 only worked for parchment scrolls.

OpenText – I can use Notepad or an ACSII emulator to open text files so that’s no great feat. You have to wonder if their original vision didn’t call for highfalutin features like store or delete, just open. Maybe it is open from a standards perspective…nope, pretty sure that isn’t it.

FileNet – really? Storing ‘files on a network’ – that’s exactly what ECM systems compete against Arguably, NotFileNet would have been a better name for the company.

Alfresco - I hope that you have waterproofed your content because it appears that our open source friends are keeping your content outside in the yard.

SharePoint – Neither sophisticated or subtle really, I’m thinking that Microsoft rejected ShareyPlacey and Place2Go2Share to come up with this one. The name does not reflect any aspirations in the ECM arena probably because SharePoint seemed to accidentally become an ECM solution. Although ShareyStoreyPlacey would have been kinda cool.

PurpleSprout – OK, this one does not exist but I think I might use it for my next ECM venture because no matter how ECM evolves the name will not become any less aligned with the goals and aspirations of the company.

 

Comments

[Lee]

Marko once had a similar psychotic break. You should see the same therapist. http://bigmenoncontent.com/mission/

[Sander Hendriks]

I guess Contentum or IndiciumIntelligentium would be closer to EMC's current Information Intelligence paradigm :)

[Thomas Rouse]

I am favoring CloudDog...a noble loyal beast in the clouds that always buries and is able to find...something...