Cloud ECM Platform: Essential Characteristics

Essentials of Cloud Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

A cloud enterprise content management (ECM) platform consists of a pre-integrated set of technologies and services used to develop, deploy, integrate, and deliver multiple applications. Key characteristics of cloud ECM platforms include:

• A single instance, multi-tenant architecture in which the vendor is maintaining one instance of the platform used by all customers. This is why cloud ECM vendors are able to keep costs under control while supporting multiple applications and customers.
• The ability to configure the vast majority of all application functionality through software switches, settings, and other easily modified means instead of developing or compiling code – thus enabling tailored applications to be rapidly deployed, yet automatically upgraded as the platform is updated.
• A unified (typically Web services-based) integration capability across applications.
• Unified security and user management across applications.
• Unified billing, metering, provisioning, and performance management across applications.
• A development sandbox environment for testing application prior to deployment.
• A production / runtime environment.
• Infrastructure management (network, server monitoring).

All of these key features are fundamental parts of the SpringCM Cloud ECM platform. Vendors claim to be "cloud" but are actually ASP or hosted versions of their retrofitted, on-premise solutions.  Unless all of these features are present, you are dealing with something else, not a cloud ECM platform.

Today’s cloud enterprise content management (ECM) market has thousands of point solutions, but pressures on both customers and vendors will drive their consolidation into core platforms even faster than has been seen in deployed software markets.

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