After its acquisition of FileNet, IBM emerged with multiple enterprise content management offerings and people often ask if the company would combine or retire some of the overlapping products. IBM says it will not discontinue any of the FileNet products (Panagon or P8) or IBM products (CM, OnDemand, OmniFind, etc.) for the foreseeable future.

Its new "Project Tango," however, aims to integrate the two offerings, in three phases:

1. Federation, using IBM Information Integration Content Edition (the former Venetica toolset)
2. A common user interface architecture, using (what else?) Web 2.0 approaches, with planned integrations to IBM Quickr and MS SharePoint.
3. And finally in Phase 3, some common integrated components (e.g., Content Archiving).

So if you presently license any of the IBM ECM products, you can perhaps sleep easier because both the product lines (consisting of more than 50 products) should continue to see regular releases and upgrades at least till end of 2008. However, if you are a prospective customer, your choices get a little trickier because you will need to evaluate both the products carefully.