Your chance in the open source market
Over the next two years, as much content will be created as it has not been created in the entire history of mankind, and 93% of it will be in electronic form. This conclusion follows from the Accenture report published in 2006. Think about it.
Now compare this data with the growth of the ECM market.
Looks good, right? You are mistaken. You assume that if you have a huge amount of content, then the market will thank you for it in dollars? But we do not observe this. In fact, only a single manufacturer (not counting, of course, Alfresco) will earn a lot of money on the increased demand in the market. And this manufacturer is Microsoft.
Why?
')
I think that the problem is more rooted in the approach of the giant manufacturers of ECM-systems to solve the problem: they do it in a large, monolithic and cumbersome way. All products are bought exclusively by large enterprises, which once bought an ECM system for their needs. I call it back office ECM. That is, businesses use these systems, not individual users. Therefore, the giant manufacturers of ECM-systems are able to reach only about 5% of the entire huge target audience.
Why?
Well, partly also because their products are complex, “heavy”, burdensome both in installation and in use. And they are insultingly expensive. Here, this complexity in the use and price inaccessibility of ECM-systems and does not allow them to fully meet the demand in the market of content management systems.
Microsoft managed to start playing differently, focusing on the needs of a front-office ECM system. They have created not even a full-fledged ECM system, but a kind of portal for joint work. Sharepoint is delivered free of charge to Windows Server 2003 and quickly gained huge distribution.
Sharepoint (with its interfering lock-in) at its fairly low price (cheaper than FileNet, Documentum) and ease of use (which is more suited to what Microsoft calls a “productive infrastructure” (read Microsoft Office) compared to Documentum, IBM and others, clearly showed for whom enterprises vote with their wallets.
Microsoft has long offered the market simpler use and lower price. From time to time, Microsoft will choose ways that are not quite legal, which in general does not prevent the company from making it easier for customers to work with their products, making them cheaper and easier to use. Such behavior [not entirely correct methods] can, of course, aggravate the situation of individual decision-makers, but it certainly brings many benefits to the market by expanding it. This trend is clearly seen in Larry Augustin’s charts, which he showed at the Open Source Business Conference in 2004:
The only thing missing here is the freedom from Microsoft, especially when you are already tired of buying all other programs to improve your work (Sharepoint, for example, requires using IE, buying SQL Server, Windows Server, etc., depending on what version you have; you might also need Office 2007).
Pay attention to open source
Microsoft is doing a great job, tying customers to a cheaper, easier to use and giving the opportunity to jointly manage the content system. And now think how much better the picture would be if you chose a system that was even easier to install and manage, even cheaper and without a lock-in limit for any of your systems (including Windows), for any of your databases (including SQL Server, if you wish), for any of your server and authentication mechanism, etc?
In short, the choice is yours.
It can be much better. And for the ECM market, which was discussed above, much more efficiently than Documentum, Vignette and similar systems.
That's why I work for Alfresco every day. In general, the purpose of this article is only to say "And so it is possible." We are not talking about rivalry with Microsoft or one or another company. An article about not yet fully mastered markets. Almost every corporate software market is not fully developed due to the complexity, complexity and distribution methods of this software.
This is a chance for open source software. And maybe your chance too. Your customers will thank you, and, well, your competitors are unlikely.
Note from the translator : I translated this blog post by Matt Asay specifically for the open source blog, finding that this article is more appropriate here than in translations .
Now compare this data with the growth of the ECM market.
Looks good, right? You are mistaken. You assume that if you have a huge amount of content, then the market will thank you for it in dollars? But we do not observe this. In fact, only a single manufacturer (not counting, of course, Alfresco) will earn a lot of money on the increased demand in the market. And this manufacturer is Microsoft.
Why?
')
I think that the problem is more rooted in the approach of the giant manufacturers of ECM-systems to solve the problem: they do it in a large, monolithic and cumbersome way. All products are bought exclusively by large enterprises, which once bought an ECM system for their needs. I call it back office ECM. That is, businesses use these systems, not individual users. Therefore, the giant manufacturers of ECM-systems are able to reach only about 5% of the entire huge target audience.
Why?
Well, partly also because their products are complex, “heavy”, burdensome both in installation and in use. And they are insultingly expensive. Here, this complexity in the use and price inaccessibility of ECM-systems and does not allow them to fully meet the demand in the market of content management systems.
Microsoft managed to start playing differently, focusing on the needs of a front-office ECM system. They have created not even a full-fledged ECM system, but a kind of portal for joint work. Sharepoint is delivered free of charge to Windows Server 2003 and quickly gained huge distribution.
Sharepoint (with its interfering lock-in) at its fairly low price (cheaper than FileNet, Documentum) and ease of use (which is more suited to what Microsoft calls a “productive infrastructure” (read Microsoft Office) compared to Documentum, IBM and others, clearly showed for whom enterprises vote with their wallets.
Microsoft has long offered the market simpler use and lower price. From time to time, Microsoft will choose ways that are not quite legal, which in general does not prevent the company from making it easier for customers to work with their products, making them cheaper and easier to use. Such behavior [not entirely correct methods] can, of course, aggravate the situation of individual decision-makers, but it certainly brings many benefits to the market by expanding it. This trend is clearly seen in Larry Augustin’s charts, which he showed at the Open Source Business Conference in 2004:
The only thing missing here is the freedom from Microsoft, especially when you are already tired of buying all other programs to improve your work (Sharepoint, for example, requires using IE, buying SQL Server, Windows Server, etc., depending on what version you have; you might also need Office 2007).
Pay attention to open source
Microsoft is doing a great job, tying customers to a cheaper, easier to use and giving the opportunity to jointly manage the content system. And now think how much better the picture would be if you chose a system that was even easier to install and manage, even cheaper and without a lock-in limit for any of your systems (including Windows), for any of your databases (including SQL Server, if you wish), for any of your server and authentication mechanism, etc?
In short, the choice is yours.
It can be much better. And for the ECM market, which was discussed above, much more efficiently than Documentum, Vignette and similar systems.
That's why I work for Alfresco every day. In general, the purpose of this article is only to say "And so it is possible." We are not talking about rivalry with Microsoft or one or another company. An article about not yet fully mastered markets. Almost every corporate software market is not fully developed due to the complexity, complexity and distribution methods of this software.
This is a chance for open source software. And maybe your chance too. Your customers will thank you, and, well, your competitors are unlikely.
Note from the translator : I translated this blog post by Matt Asay specifically for the open source blog, finding that this article is more appropriate here than in translations .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/1183/
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