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Enterprises with diverse content management needs will have new options from IBM and Open Text Corp., following announcements from those companies regarding new products and an acquisition, respectively.
IBM last week rolled out new content management software for small and midsize businesses and Linux shops, as well as new content management integration offerings and records management product enhancements.
The new IBM DB2 Content Manager Express, for smaller companies, provides the same client experience as IBMs enterprise-class Content Manager but has limited scalability, is restricted to two processors, and does not support hierarchical storage management or distributed resource management, officials said.
Randy Dufault, principal and senior engineer at Minneapolis systems integrator MBS Technologies Inc., said DB2 Content Manager Express should be a good fit for the government customers his company works with. “The IBM Content Manager offering, although its a world-class enterprise solution, [has] become more and more difficult to install in small-to-medium-size counties and cities and even some larger cities,” Dufault said. “IBMs new offering is substantially more robust than competitive offerings on the low end. It works better, and its more reliable.”
IBM, of Armonk, N.Y., also announced a Linux version of DB2 Content Manager that supports distributions from Red Hat Inc., SuSE Linux AG and UnitedLinux.
IBMs DB2 Content Manager Adapter for WebSphere Business Integrator allows Content Manager to access content from and share content with other applications. Lotus Workplace Web Content Management for DB2 Content Manager provides Web content management capabilities.
DB2 Records Manager was redesigned in Java for WebSphere to provide better scalability and performance, IBM officials said.
Finally, IBM unveiled new versions of DB2 CommonStore for SAP, DB2 CommonStore for Exchange Servers and DB2 CommonStore for Lotus Domino.
Meanwhile, Open Text last week acquired German enterprise content management software developer Ixos Software AG, which is expected to add content management and archiving to Open Texts core strengths in collaboration and knowledge management. The $225 million deal comes on the heels of Open Texts August purchase of another German content management software developer, Gauss Interprises AG.
After the Ixos deal closes in February, Open Text will be organized into two divisions. The North American division, in Chicago, will have global responsibility for collaboration and knowledge management solutions, while the Munich, Germany, division will have global responsibility for content management and archiving.