The Real Story Group recently released its 2012 ECM Market Analysis – a look at where the ECM market is going in 2012 – designed to help document management buyers navigate the myriad of products and vendors and avoid pitfalls. This ECM Market Analysis is available for sale immediately at https://www.realstorygroup.com/Advisory/Download/116.

ECM is a mature market; buyers’ needs remain similar each year, and the core need to manage electronic documents remains. What changed in 2011 (and may be an even bigger trend in 2012) is the interest in the demands of the mobile workplace.

The interest is not in complex collaboration or integration; buyers want simple access to work-related files from any device and location. It is the Holy Grail of information management, and although we are closer to achieving it, considerable hurdles still must be overcome.

In addition, Autonomy was acquired for almost $11B by hardware giant HP in 2011, and this affected the document management/ECM market by putting the topic of information management back on the agenda and into the public eye (temporarily at least).

However, much bigger changes than ownership alone were afoot in 2011; EMC Documentum continued a major overhaul of its core product set with a plan to move everything to the cloud. Real Story Group Principal Alan Pelz-Sharpe noted, “Microsoft SharePoint had a shot sent across its lucrative bows from VC-backed upstarts trying to out-simplify SharePoint in its claims to simplify ECM.”