Author: Jim Lundy Date: July 15, 2015
Topics: Mobile, Content Management Research Note Number: 2015-24
Issue: Who are the Content Management providers and how will they evolve?
Summary: The demand by users for easy ways to manage content is causing an explosion of offerings from a number of providers. Our Hot Vendors in Mobile Content Management are poised for growth.
Making content easy to use and share, particularly in a mobile context, is what users are looking for. Many new entrants have emerged in the Mobile Content Management (MCM) space, due in part to the growth of content and in part to the unmet needs of business users who either cannot access or control a legacy ECM system or want a system that is easier to use. This research note identifies three providers that are making a mark in MCM.
A growing trend is the shift toward managing mobile content along with mobile devices and apps. Given the huge growth in mobility we expect as tablet use increases in enterprises, content will be a much larger part of the average mobile worker’s job. Managing critical content outside of repositories is a core MCM capability. Although there will continue to be standalone MCM products, EMM providers are beefing up this part of their suites in a big way, and traditional ECM vendors are addressing mobile content as well.
MCM does more than just manage content; it also provides security and access control, while allowing collaboration around it (see Note 1). Much of this takes place in the cloud, which makes it uniquely suitable for mobile users working on disparate platforms from distant locations. A lot of what is now MCM was born as a convenience utility for consumers with mobile devices that do not offer a conventional file directory system.
However, many MCM providers have moved on from a consumer focus to target business users, who now have the clout and the budgets to make their own technology decisions and have helped to fuel the growth of MCM. In a cloud-enabled world, these empowered users don’t have to make large capital investments; they can rent the storage and content management they need.
Moving to the Cloud
Innovation around MCM and mobile computing will continue to accelerate, particularly at the intersection of apps, repositories and the content itself. Enterprises that deploy mobile systems should inventory their content and collaboration needs, evaluate their technology providers and look for synergies that they can exploit in the emerging cloud-centric content and collaboration ecosystem. Many enterprises have been reluctant to move their content to the cloud, but that is changing, particularly since many have shifted their email to the cloud over the last five years.