Butler predicts price war ECM market

Michiel Hazen works for TamTam, a Microsoft partner in The Netherlands. Over on his blog I came across a nice perspective by Butler Group on ECM and especially the role that Microsoft SharePoint will play in this field : “deployments of SharePoint will exceed all expectations“. I challenge their view on the uptake of Windows Vista and Office 2007, but do agree that it will take some time before this becomes mainstream.

According to Butler Group 2007 could well be the year a price war amongst Enterprise Content Management vendors is started by Microsoft:

While Microsoft will be disappointed with the number of enterprise deployments of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 during the coming year, deployments of SharePoint-based solutions will exceed all expectations. Microsoft’s apparent commoditisation of the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market could well start a price war amongst established vendors as they try to up-sell and compete with Microsoft. Those vendors with large ECM product portfolios will consider discounting their Document and Records Management modules in the hope of securing more business down-the-line. Consumer-oriented Internet- and Web-based technologies will continue to infiltrate the workplace, and these will cause many CIOs to re-think their information worker strategies.

Michiel Hazen’s blog