Selecting a Content Services Platform Solution, 2021

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Publication date

April 15, 2021

Author

Sue Clarke

Selecting a Content Services Platform Solution, 2021

Brought to you by Informa Tech

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© 2021 Omdia. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Summary

Catalyst Any enterprise still using legacy enterprise content management (ECM) systems should consider migrating to modern, cloud-native content services platforms, which support Agile development, deployment flexibility between cloud and on-premises models, and enhanced security to help protect content. This report compares the solutions from leading content services platform vendors and will help decision-makers to draw up a shortlist of products to consider.

Figure 1: The Omdia Universe for Content Services Platforms Solutions, 2021–22

Source: Omdia



Omdia view The most significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on enterprises has been the widescale move from office-based to home working, which has necessitated large-scale changes in how they manage both their workforces and the content they work with. Enterprises still using legacy systems may have managed to survive the pandemic thus far, but they are putting their future success at risk by continuing to use systems that are not optimized for flexible deployment, or the ability to adapt and change to rapidly evolving circumstances, and are not capable of providing enhanced security features to manage large numbers of remote workers.

COVID-19 has demonstrated that enterprises that have already implemented the latest cloud-native content services platforms as part of their digital transformation initiative have been able to survive the pandemic more easily. The ability to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances by having Agile systems has been a key enabler for enterprises suddenly having to support large numbers of home workers. However, it is not too late to change, and the pandemic should be seen as a wake-up call. Even if legacy systems have been adapted to securely support large numbers of remote users, it should not be assumed that the software will continue to provide the level of support or the security measures required in the future. It is almost inevitable, with a much more mobile population, that there will be future pandemics, or other emergencies that necessitate new and different ways of working and accessing corporate content, and enterprises need to ensure that they are prepared.

COVID-19 has also created huge challenges for content services platform vendors, particularly around how they can best support their customers, especially if they are still using systems that are not optimized for this level of remote working. In addition to providing support for new content services platform implementations, vendors have also been enhancing the capabilities of their content services platforms and applications offerings. Content services software is evolving rapidly and new technological developments such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are being embedded throughout the platforms to provide additional insights into content. Vendors are also adding features to enhance content security in their platforms including extending the cloud options available. Most vendors offer managed services, but some also provide their own data center facilities, while others develop partnerships with the large cloud vendors which allow them to integrate many of the features such as enhanced analytics and AI facilities with their own content services platforms.

While vendors are putting a great deal of effort into supporting enterprises in these difficult times, one area that still needs additional effort is simplifying the implementation and deployment of their platforms. Although content services platforms in general are not as complex as legacy ECM platforms, many still require extensive professional services to help with implementation. The aim should be for the vast majority of enterprises to be able to implement the platform in a timely fashion without external resources, and most vendors still have a way to go to achieve this. One way in which vendors could help speed up implementation is by providing more pre-built applications out-of-the-box for common horizontal tasks, and if appropriate, for vertical industries.



Key messages

• The content services platform market is continuing to consolidate with the acquisition of open source vendor Alfresco by Hyland, and further acquisitions likely.

• Both OnBase (Hyland’s flagship platform) and Alfresco Digital Business Platform (DBP) were assessed as part of the Hyland offering, as each platform is targeted at different enterprise types.

• More vendors have entered the content services platform space, including enterprise file sync and share vendor Box.

• The content management market is forecast to be worth $27.1bn by 2023, according to Omdia’s Software Market Forecast: Information Management, 2018–23, indicating that there is plenty of business for the content services platform vendors to play for.

• Hyland, IBM, and OpenText are Leaders because they provide extensive capabilities across all technology areas.

• Box, Micro Focus, and Nuxeo are all Challengers because, although they are strong across most technology categories, they all lack some features we would expect to see in a content services platform.

• AODocs is a Prospect because it has a specialized product, designed specifically to be used with Google Drive. However, this does not mean it is inferior, and its extensive features that include retention management will suit the requirements of many Google users.

• IBM and OpenText’s platforms are still too complex in terms of implementation and deployment according to customers, and this is an area that the vendors need to work on. Greater cloud adoption should help, but more out-of-the-box capabilities would help enterprises get up and running quicker.

• Omdia’s ICT Enterprise Insights 2020/21 survey, found that more than 30% of respondents have either not commenced digital transformation, do not believe it is relevant to them, or are in the early stages, demonstrating that vendors have not been entirely successful in convincing enterprises of the need for content services platforms.



Analyzing the Content Services Platforms universe

How to use this report The Omdia Universe report is not intended to advocate an individual vendor, but rather to guide and inform the selection process to ensure all relevant options are considered and evaluated in an efficient manner. The report findings gravitate towards the customer’s perspective and likely requirements, characteristically those of a medium-large multinational enterprise (5,000+ employees). Typically, deployments are considered across the financial services, TMT (technology, media, and telecoms) and government sectors, on a global basis.

Market definition In this assessment Omdia analysts have developed a series of features and functionality that would provide differentiation between the leading solutions in the content services platforms marketplace. The criteria groups identified are as follows:

• Content Services Platform. This category includes the content repository, document management and collaboration, workflow, integration, and search capabilities. Some platforms provide additional capabilities such as records management and analytics.

• Document management and collaboration. The ability to create and edit content in a collaborative environment; collaboration capabilities may include file sync and share.

• Search. The ability to locate content across the enterprise on local drives, desktops, and a wide range of repositories including those that are cloud-based.

• Content analytics. Tools that analyze how content is being used and who is using it, which is useful in assessing whether content has value to the organization.

• Workflow and business process management (BPM). The ability to create content-centric automated processes that are often triggered by the receipt of an item of content. These may range from simple approval processes to complex processes that involve interactions between multiple applications.

• Content services. The features that are included to enable content services such as development tools, common integration mechanisms, and pre-built horizontal and vertical industry



applications and components, as well as the content services applications themselves such as records management and capture.

• AI and ML. How AI and ML capabilities are embedded throughout the product in areas such as document management, content analytics, BPM, reporting, and search. Also, how enterprises are able to use the capabilities provided in the platform when building their own applications.

• Development and integration. The provision of low-code and no-code tools, components and widgets, and horizontal and vertical applications that are provided for developers to create applications that interact with content as well as the methods by which the content services platform can integrate with other applications, including the availability of prebuilt connectors to common third-party applications including analytics, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and other content services platforms.

• Cloud. The various options for cloud deployment including the cloud options available; which public clouds are supported; how the services are licensed and priced; the ease, cost, and speed of migrating content to the cloud; and cloud security.

• Governance and security. Features and functions included that help ensure that content is secure and managed appropriately.

Market dynamics The content services platforms marketplace had remained relatively stable in terms of acquisitions and consolidation since 2017 when Micro Focus acquired the information management and governance portfolio of HPE. Then in October 2020, Hyland completed the acquisition of the open source vendor Alfresco, which has grown Hyland’s market share in Europe, and provided it with access to the open source market. As this report was being published, the acquisition of Nuxeo by Hyland completed. It is too early to assess what long-term impact this will have on the Nuxeo platform, so for the present it remains a separate product and it is therefore relevant to assess it as such. There have certainly been fewer such acquisitions in this space over the past few years, but the area has grown as vendors from different technology areas have re-architected their platforms to suit a content services scenario. One area where acquisitions are growing is in complementary technologies, for example Hyland’s acquisition of the RPA vendor Another Monday, and OpenText acquiring mid-market security vendors to enhance the capabilities of their portfolios. Omdia expects content service platform vendors to continue to invest in companies that can complement their platforms and provide additional capabilities. One area where acquisitions may be expected in the coming years is in AI/ML and analytics, which is a technology where some vendors are lacking advanced capabilities.

The content services platforms space is dominated by the large ECM vendors, which have turned to content services to offer cloud-native platforms that are less complex and easier to implement than the old megalithic ECM platforms. There are also traditional electronic document and records management (EDRM) vendors such as Objective and Fabasoft, which have a heritage of providing solutions for the government and public sector verticals and were among the first vendors to gain



records management certifications in the early 2000s. Finally, there are enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) vendors, most notably Box, which has expanded into the content services platform market.



Figure 2: Vendor rankings in the Content Services Platforms Universe

Source: Omdia



Market leaders Hyland is a leader because both platforms that were assessed have a wide range of capabilities across all technology areas, with particular strengths in document management and collaboration, and AI and ML for Alfresco, and workflow and BPM, and the content services platform for Hyland. Both platforms have strong search capabilities. Extensibility is a focus as the vendor continues to enhance the developer experience through a variety of extensions to the Alfresco framework that allows the development of futureproofed, custom apps. Together, the two platforms provide extensive capabilities across the entire content services area, and Hyland’s commitment to open standards and APIs enables enterprises to integrate and customize solutions to meet business needs—but the vendor needs to ensure that it addresses any weak areas in each platform using the capabilities of the other. Above all, it must not become distracted by any integration or remedial work required, but must continue to innovate to remain a leader.

IBM is a leader because it is strong across all technology areas, although it is strongest in document management and collaboration, search, and workflow and BPM. It has AI and ML embedded throughout its platform, which uses its Watson technology, and this is an area where IBM can provide real differentiation. Enterprises that want a single platform for document management, records management, governance, intelligent document capture and processing, and workflow management should consider the IBM proposition. The vendor needs to keep innovating (particularly in AI and automation) to maintain its leadership position.

OpenText is a leader because it has a wide range of capabilities in all technology areas and it benefits from Magellan, its AI and analytics solution, which adds capabilities throughout the Documentum platform. Its strongest areas are document management and collaboration, content analytics, and workflow and BPM. Documentum will appeal to enterprises in highly regulated industries, particularly in energy and engineering, and life sciences, where it offers vertical solutions. OpenText must continue to innovate and add extra capabilities to Documentum, particularly in the areas of AI and analytics but also in compliance and governance to help enterprises in highly regulated industries in order to maintain its position as a leader.

Market challengers Box is a challenger because it provides a wide range of capabilities that helps enterprises to manage their content. It is particularly strong in the areas of content services platform, workflow and BPM, content services, and governance and security. It is an ideal solution for enterprises that require a cloud-based solution and need to share content internally and externally. Box is a relatively new entrant to the content services market, and the fact that it is already a challenger demonstrates its potential to become a leader, if it adds a few additional capabilities particularly in AI and ML, and continues to innovate.

Although Micro Focus is strong across most technology areas, it does lack capabilities in development and integration, where it does not offer pre-built vertical or horizontal applications, which would help enterprises get up and running quicker, making the company a Challenger. Its strongest areas are content analytics, document management and collaboration, and search. It benefits from its IDOL AI-powered search and analytics engine, with capabilities embedded throughout the platform. Its emphasis on governance and security make it an ideal solution for



enterprises in regulated industries. Further innovation in the platform using its AI/ML technology, plus adding a few pre-built applications for common tasks, should enable it to become a leader.

Nuxeo is a Challenger due to the fact that while it is strong in most areas—including governance and security, cloud capabilities, document management and collaboration, and workflow and BPM—it does have a few weaknesses including development and integration where it does not have as many pre-built applications and components as some of its competitors. It will appeal to enterprises in the vertical industries that it focuses on including banking, insurance, and healthcare that prefer an open source solution. Increasing the number of vertical applications and use cases it offers would help it to become a Leader.

Market Prospect AODocs is a prospect because it is a specialized solution that offers capabilities that are designed for enterprises that have already deployed Google Drive. It leverages many of the features within Google Drive, but it also enhances many of these capabilities. It will therefore appeal to Google-centric enterprises that have already deployed Google Drive. In order to become a market Challenger, AODocs needs to increase the capabilities it offers and also deliver on its promise to extend its platform to Microsoft Office 365 to increase its potential customer base.

Non-participating vendors Microsoft and Oracle were both invited to participate in this Omdia Universe but declined. However, they are regarded to be too important not to get a mention. Although Microsoft and Oracle were not assessed and do not appear in the Omdia Universe diagram, there is a short writeup of each vendor’s offerings at the end of this report.

Market outlook According to Omdia’s Software Market Forecast: Information Management, 2018–23, the content management market is forecast to grow at a growth rate of 10.3% between 2018 and 2023. The market is set to be worth $22.4bn by the end of 2021, growing to $27.1bn by 2023, proving that there is plenty of market share available for content services platform vendors. However, the content management market is extremely mature, and while there are still plenty of enterprises that want to migrate from legacy ECM platforms to content services platforms at present, this will not continue indefinitely. There will come a point when the majority of enterprises that wish to will have implemented new cloud-native platforms. The architecture of these platforms whereby the platform and content repository are separated from the applications that access the content mean that enterprises no longer need to rip and replace the platform or undertake major upgrades every few years as their requirements evolve. Therefore, vendors need to find additional revenue streams to grow their content services businesses in the future. One way to do this is to expand their content services applications capabilities to provide many more pre-built applications and components making it much easier for enterprises to expand their content services implementations.

However, not all enterprises have started their digital transformation journey. Omdia’s ICT Enterprise Insights 2020-21 found that 13.4% of respondents have either not commenced digital transformation at all, or do not believe it is relevant to them when asked about their digital transformation progress in exploiting the value of data across the enterprise. A further 17.1% are in



the early stages. Only 15.6% believe they have completed the process. These are worrying statistics. Implementing a modern content services platform to better manage unstructured content, drive efficiencies, and increase agility should be seen as a starting point for a digital transformation initiative. These statistics should also be of concern to vendors as they demonstrate that they may find it difficult to persuade some customers to move from legacy ECM systems that they no longer support.

Cloud is also important to digital transformation. Legacy ECM systems do not always work well in a cloud environment, particularly if they were architected as on-premises systems. Most content services platforms have been rearchitected to be cloud-native, although many vendors are experiencing reluctance among customers to adopt public cloud solutions. At best most are finding that customers are either adopting private clouds, or a hybrid model. Omdia’s ICT Enterprise Insights 2020-21 survey backs this up. For storage management software, which includes document management and archiving, the current level of adoption in public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is 19.55%, and in public cloud platform as a service (PaaS) it is 15.54%. However, for software as a service (SaaS), it is only 8.65%. Legacy on-premises usage is still 14.49%. According to the survey, the figures for the next 18 months are similar to the current ones, suggesting that there will still be a significant number of enterprises using legacy on-premises systems, which indicates that there is still plenty of opportunities for content services platform vendors to persuade customers to adopt their cloud solutions.



Vendor analysis

AODocs (Omdia recommendation: Prospect) AODocs should appear on your shortlist if you have deployed Google Drive, but require the capabilities of a content services platform including additional document management and collaboration, workflow, and retention management capabilities AODocs is one of the smaller content services platform vendors, both in terms of revenue and staff. However, more than half of its employees are involved in research and development, which is carried out in its European facilities. It also has fewer offices than many of its competitors with two offices in the US, four in Europe, and one in India. Despite its relatively small size, it has a global customer base, helped by the fact that it has been designed to work solely with Google Drive. However, its small size has not prevented it from gaining some large enterprises and brands as customers, and it does not mean that its product is lacking in capabilities. It is differentiated from many of its competitors by the fact that it was designed as a cloud-based solution to run on Google Cloud. The emphasis of the product is on collaboration as it was built to work directly within the collaboration environment, and this is currently Google Workspace.



Figure 3: Omdia Universe ratings—AODocs

Source: Omdia

Strengths AODoc’s strongest areas are document management and collaboration, search, and the content services platform. Thanks to its tight integration with Google Workspace, it has extensive document management and collaboration features. It provides in-place management of documents allowing AODocs to manage the lifecycle of the content from creation to disposition, taking into account any e-discovery, compliance, or legal requirements. As an API-first platform, AODocs allows files to be created and worked on in third-party systems such as CRM, ERP, or HRMS using the document



management capabilities within AODocs. Granular retention policies—which can be automatically or manually applied—are supported, and an administration console provides extensive reporting capabilities for the records manager. Multiple metadata-based retention policies can be applied to a single record, reflecting the fact that many enterprises have to adhere to multiple regulations. AODocs manages permissions programmatically with check-in and -out facilities, and version control. The native collaboration features of Google are enhanced with additional commenting and approval workflows to review documents, manage changes, and finalize files. AODocs Advanced Viewer allows documents to be viewed without the native application being present, which is an important feature when documents are shared with users who may not have access to the application that created a document.

AODocs combines Google search via Google Workspace’s capabilities with the extended search through the AODocs UI across metadata, workflow information, and the audit log. Full text, metadata, browse by, filters, categories, and pre-filtered searches via configured views are all available. In addition, the AODocs Advanced Viewer provides whole word, begins with, ends with, and proximity search on files supported by the viewer. Google Workspace natively indexes files on upload and AODocs metadata is indexed in real-time making it immediately available. Users do not see any documents in a search that they are not entitled to view. Although non-AODocs-managed documents cannot be searched, Google Cloud Search can be deployed to search external repositories.

Unlike other content services vendors, AODocs does not have its own repository, but makes use of Google Workspace and Google Cloud Storage for storing content through a patented integration. Because of the tight integration with Google and the dependency on Google Workspace, this is a sensible approach. In addition to the Google integration, AODocs also integrates with Office 365 but does not currently provide the same level of capabilities as it does from its Google integration. AODocs provides a low-code development environment and connectors to a number of applications including DocuSign, Adobe Sign, and Duo. AODocs can provide a real-time feed of its audit log to third-party systems such as cloud access security broker (CASB) and security information and event management (SIEM) solutions for analysis and detection of suspicious events. Comprehensive security APIs allow these systems to take action by updating permissions to address security alerts. AODocs provides training through its network of certified partners as well as directly through the AODocs service team. There is also a knowledge base available to users and administrators with information on how to use the platform comprising articles, videos, a user community, and the ability to submit support tickets.

Limitations The weakest areas for AODocs are content analytics and AI and ML. AODocs does not currently perform any analysis on content, so it only has limited capabilities in this area, and relies on the capabilities of Google to provide any capabilities that there are. Omdia would like to see AODocs adding content analytics to its offering in the future.

Similarly, AODocs’ AI and ML capabilities are provided through its integration with Google, and it is missing some capabilities provided by other vendors including the ability to perform sentiment analysis on content, which is important in order to detect and act on any negative comments in



content from customers before it can cause brand damage. More AI and ML capabilities would also enhance its workflow and BPM capabilities.

Another limitation at present is the fact that AODocs is cloud-only at a time when many enterprises have not yet commenced their cloud journeys in terms of content services platforms. As AODocs is cloud-native, its position in the market will improve as more enterprises embrace cloud options, but for the moment its growth potential is limited.

Opportunities A good opportunity for AODocs lies in the fact that enterprises are undertaking digital transformation initiatives to modernize legacy applications. As a provider of a cloud-only solution, AODocs is well positioned to expand its customer base as enterprises adopt cloud solutions, particularly among existing Google customers, and the vendor should exploit this relationship with Google. For organizations that have a hybrid environment with both Google Workspace and Office 365, the end users who are on the Microsoft environment can access AODocs via single sign on.

COVID-19 provides an opportunity for vendors such as AODocs that have lighter, more agile platforms allowing implementation times to be reduced at a time when enterprises are accelerating digital transformation strategies. The simple cloud and pricing model allows rapid deployment and lowers the barrier to entry, allowing smaller enterprises to adopt content services platforms. AODocs has also introduced the concept of a continuously validated SaaS solution for Quality Management use cases—extremely valuable in the Life Sciences space, which will further reduce implementation time. If AODocs can create vertical solutions for more industries and horizontal applications for common tasks, it will further enhance the attractiveness of the product.

Threats A major threat to AODocs comes from other content services vendors. As one of the smaller vendors, it has a lower market profile than many of its competitors, most of which have been established much longer. In addition, the fact that it needs Google Workspace to provide the optimum functionality limits its customer base. However, integrating with Google Workspace also works in its favor as this should help it win business from existing and prospective Google customers.

Another threat is the high number of enterprises that are not yet either committing to modernizing legacy systems, or are unable to do so because of the large quantity of dependent code and applications. AODocs needs to convince such enterprises that although modernization will be an expensive and major undertaking, the risks and hidden costs associated with obsolete technologies justify the cost and the pain involved in replacing legacy systems.

Box (Omdia recommendation: Challenger) Box should appear on your shortlist if you require a cloud-based solution and need to securely share content internally and externally In terms of revenue, Box is one of the larger vendors in this Omdia Universe. It has a major differentiator among the vendors in this report—and indeed to most content services platforms—in



that it started life as an enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) vendor and not an ECM vendor. This means that it perhaps does not provide as many features and functions as some of the well-established ECM vendors, but it also ensures that it does not include features that many enterprises will never use. Having a leaner platform also reduces the complexities that still plague many content services platform implementations. Coming from a file sync and share background, it is hardly surprising that it has very strong capabilities in the governance and security area with extensive security features for content in transit and at rest. Box has been built from the ground up as a cloud-native solution, which means it has well-established best practices around cloud security and governance, which should reassure enterprises considering Box as a content services platform. The vendor benefits from partnerships with a number of technology providers including IBM, Google, Microsoft, Slack, Zoom, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Okta. The partnerships run deep from a technology integration standpoint; for example, Box integrates with IBM technology such as Cloud Pak for Data, Watson AIOps, and InstaScan, enabling Box to extend the capabilities offered, as well as providing IBM’s platform with additional capabilities.



Figure 4: Omdia Universe ratings—Box

Source: Omdia

Strengths In addition to governance and security, other areas of strength for Box are the content services platform, workflow and BPM, and content services. Box’s content services platform includes many core features such as the ability to support any file type, with most files up to 32GB in size viewed natively including rich media assets such as video, AutoCAD files, and PDFs. Content can be annotated directly within the preview mode on both mobile devices and web-based interfaces for in-line collaboration, regardless of file type. “All New Box” is a revamped UI that allows content to be organized into Box Collections. Designed to maximize individual productivity, it allows users to organize the files they use most into collections, thus streamlining navigation and reducing the time



taken to search for documents. Support for mobile devices allows content to be collaborated on through both native and web browser applications using most devices. Administrators can define access rights by user, content type, device, and business need with content policies such as expiration dates to auto-delete files or deactivate links to time-sensitive materials supported. Mobile and sync security settings—including specification of which devices have access to Box and whether certain features are enabled—are also managed at the administrator level. Full auditing capabilities are provided for paying customers. Furthermore, free education and training are provided through Box Education, which includes a paid certification program. Courses are designed for all users including administrators and end-users. Training courses are delivered live, through on-demand recordings, short videos, and self-paced tutorials, delivered through Box University, hosted on the Cornerstone on Demand Learning Management System.

Extensive security features are built into the platform to protect content including the ability to ensure encryption at rest and in transit. Information rights management (IRM) provides granular control over the ability of users to access, view, download, edit, print, or share content. There are also seven granular access permissions, the ability to expire shared links, and dynamic watermarking across 150+ file types. The Box KeySafe product allows enterprises to keep control of their own encryption keys, which is of particular benefit to enterprises in highly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, government, and legal. Box Shield provides granular content controls and access policies preventing accidental data leakage as well as ML-powered threat and malware detection. Potential threats to content based on suspicious behavior such as anomalous download behavior, or access to content from suspicious user sessions, can be identified. There are also comprehensive data governance features that includes data retention, allowing users to set retention and disposition policies and data loss prevention capabilities. Data security policies allow users to apply quarantine or notification-only policies to sensitive confidential files such as those containing pre-defined attributes; for example, credit card numbers.

Box provides Box Relay—its native process automation tool—for creating workflows without the need for code or IT assistance. A self-service, no-code workflow builder based on “If This Then That” (IFTTT) logic is provided with users selecting a workflow trigger followed by a single or many outcomes. They are presented with multiple file, folder, tasks, and metadata events and actions based on the steps they have chosen and Box file and folder pickers, username and group lookups, and pre-loaded metadata templates all help to speed up the workflow design process. Metadata-based routing of files based on conditional logic is supported, and there are more than 30 event triggers provided, with in excess of 40 outcomes. Workflows can be scheduled to run at pre-configured times for frequently occurring business processes, and tasks can be assigned to external collaborators. Box Relay includes 24 pre-built templates for six lines of business (sales, marketing, HR, business operations, legal, finance), to accelerate departmental workflows. A custom template builder allows process owners and administrators to create and publish standardized workflows to use across the enterprise. In addition, out-of-the-box integrations with third-party integration platform as a service (iPaaS), workflow, and BPM tools are provided including Workato, Oracle Integration Hub, Appian, Nintex, K2, Pegasystems, and ServiceNow. In summer 2021, Box will launch Box Sign, a natively integrated set of eSignature capabilities based on technology from the SignRequest acquisition earlier this year. These capabilities will be included in the Box Business and Enterprise plans.



In terms of content services, Box provides features that IT personnel with basic cloud software experience and skills can use to create and customize content services including an extensive set of APIs and developer tools. However, Box consulting services are also available to help with implementation, content migration, integration with the broader technology stack, and driving end user adoption of the content services. Industry-specific offerings that combine technology, services, and marketing programs that can also include ensuring compliance with industry-specific standards and regulations are also available. Industry solutions are available for healthcare and life sciences, financial services, legal services, media and entertainment, retail, education, energy, and government. Box also provides solutions for common horizontal use cases, which include content service (general storage), content management for sales (and integration with CRM), customer support, sales enablement, securing content, building custom portals (for secure document exchange), a backend content repository for regulated and auditable content, virtual Deal Room or M&A Deal Space, lightweight Digital Asset Management, and Contract Management.

Limitations Box’s weakest area is AI/ML. Although there are no specific limitations in this area, there are not as many capabilities as some of Box’s competitors. In addition, AI is not currently embedded in Box’s native workflow solution (Box Relay), and AI/ML is not used to help sort and identify legacy documents for retention. In addition, third-party products are required to derive insights from content via Box Skills, which would be a useful feature for Box to provide natively. However, Box does provide native ML capabilities via its proprietary graph technology: Box Graph. Box Graph is responsible for a variety of content and productivity intelligence features, including detecting anomalous usage patterns via Box Shield and flagging potential threats, auto-suggesting collaborators, recommending applications, and providing personalized search results based on the content and apps a user works most with.

Content analytics is another area where Box is weaker. For example, the ability to assess the sentiment within content, which is important in a number of scenarios such as picking up negative comments about a product or brand or identifying complaints in correspondence so a response can be prioritized.

Opportunities X An opportunity for Box is the need of enterprises to accelerate digital transformation initiatives due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The ability to rapidly build applications and workflows with the 1,500 pre-built connectors to third-party applications along with the horizontal and vertical applications that are available will help enterprises to get up and running faster.

Box’s cloud capabilities also provide an opportunity for Box to increase its market share. Coming from a file sync and share background, the platform has always been cloud-native, and there has been no requirement to rearchitect the platform for the cloud. Its multi-tenant architecture supports more than 100,000 organizations with billions of files in a single platform. Box utilizes IBM, AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure for its data storage facilities, which should suit most cloud users, and it enables Box to locate content globally in the preferred region of its customers.



Threats Box faces threats from the high number of vendors that provide content services platforms. These include legacy ECM vendors, smaller vendors that started by providing document management and records management solutions, and newer entrants to the market. Box’s major differentiator is its background as an EFSS vendor, bringing a focus on cloud-native collaboration, security, and extensibility while continuing to add more robust ECM-like capabilities including governance and automation. Although there is no guarantee that other EFSS vendors will not enter the content services platforms arena, Box is by far the most feature-rich solution, and as long as it continues to innovate in the content services space, it should be able to stay ahead of any EFSS competitors should they enter the space.

Another threat for Box comes from enterprises that maintain legacy ECM systems and have either not yet commenced digital transformation initiatives, or have not prioritized replacing their legacy systems. Box needs to ensure that its marketing initiatives emphasize its content services credentials, as it is still associated with being an EFSS vendor by many enterprises, so that it is considered when enterprises are procuring content services platforms.

Hyland (Omdia recommendation: Leader) Hyland should appear on your shortlist if you want an open source content services platform with a modern, cloud-native architecture, or you have multiple use cases for content-centric processes necessitating the deployment of many applications on top of the content services platform Hyland has become a very acquisitive vendor over the past few years. It has greatly increased both its revenue to become one of the larger content services platform vendors, and also its market share. Hyland now has several content services platforms in its portfolio, including its flagship OnBase platform, open source Alfresco Digital Business Platform (DBP), Perceptive Content, and Saperion. For the purpose of this Omdia Universe, Alfresco DBP and OnBase were assessed. Over the last year Hyland has released Foundation versions of many of its products, which incorporate modern standards, up-to-date user experiences, and benefit from more frequent updates. Foundation is Hyland’s new versioning structure, and all of its key offerings will have Foundation versions. Another new initiative is the Hyland Experience Platform (HxP)—Hyland’s method of delivering cloud-based best-of-breed content services capabilities through a variety of SaaS applications and services, which help its customers expand their existing content services solutions. The first application delivered on HxP is Hyland Experience Capture, a web-based document scanning, classification, and data extraction tool that provides intelligent capture facilities. A differentiator for Hyland is its number of vertical applications for many industries, as well as horizontal applications or use cases that address common tasks. Hyland has made a number of acquisitions of complementary applications over the past 12 months including Learning Machine, a blockchain-anchored digital credentialing company, and Another Monday, which provides robotic process automation (RPA), which helps it to expand its capabilities for a wider range of use cases.

Hyland operates a global go-to-market strategy with a primary focus on government, healthcare, education, financial services (including insurance), and manufacturing. The company appeals to a broad spectrum of technology buyers, from departmental buyers looking for pre-packaged solutions



to technical IT buyers looking for a platform to custom-develop solutions, with the ability to scale to the enterprise regardless of the point of entry.

Figure 5: Omdia Universe ratings—Hyland

Source: Omdia

Strengths Both the Alfresco DBP and OnBase platforms offer a wide range of capabilities, but each has its particular strengths and will suit different use cases. Alfresco DBP is particularly strong in document management and collaboration, search, and AI and ML. It provides a large number of capabilities for document management and collaboration, including Federation Services, which allows content to be



managed in-place, with users able to search, manage, and govern information across more than 60 leading business systems and content repositories such as Documentum, OpenText Content Server, and IBM FileNet as well as network drives and emails. This will suit enterprises that have multiple repositories where consolidation to a single platform is not feasible. The entire lifecycle of content can be managed, including moving content between storage tiers based on age, version number, or the frequency of access. Alfresco also provides records management capabilities allowing enterprises to set retention and disposition schedules, meeting records management and open government compliance standards worldwide, including ISO 15489, ISO 16175, FOIA, U.S. DoD 5015.02 CH2 and CH3, EgovG, and MoReq, which will benefit enterprises in regulated industries that require stringent records management capabilities.

Alfresco’s search service is built on the SOLR search engine, with multiple search methods supported, including metadata properties, such as Boolean, dates, and string, as well as full text search, wildcards, and exact phrases. Natural language processing (NLP) is used to extract insights from content.

Alfresco has three AWS AI services that are natively integrated, and others can be easily integrated using Alfresco’s framework. AWS Rekognition uses deep learning technology and AWS image recognition to extract textual context from images with the information being stored in Alfresco Content Services as metadata. AWS Textract provides a self-learning intelligent OCR and information processing service to allow the bulk ingestion and automatic classification of content. AWS Comprehend uses NLP to analyze text to gain insights around entities. It supports more than 100 languages. These services can easily be selected by activating Alfresco Intelligence Services during deployment. One area where Alfresco Intelligence Services can provide greater security and protection is in the automation of digital filing and detection of PII for regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, as well as the automation of records declaration, classification, and disposition of records. In addition, AI-assisted search is supported across the Alfresco repository and other in-place managed repositories to identify sensitive content for legal holds and export into e-discovery tools.

OnBase’s strongest areas are search, workflow and BPM, and the core features of the content services platform itself. Hyland’s enterprise search solution is a web-based application that supports 500+ file formats and searches across multiple repositories and systems. It provides faceted navigation, conversational search, NL support, and full text search. Wildcards, exact phrase, Soundex, fuzzy, Boolean, thesaurus, near searches, and language stemming are also supported. A range of structured, semi- and unstructured formats can be searched including email, SQL databases, word processing documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, XML data, web pages, and enterprise software systems.

As a vendor with a leading case management solution in OnBase, it is not surprising that workflow and BPM is one of OnBase’s strongest areas. The acquisition of Another Monday with the RPA end-to-end features it provides should strengthen Hyland’s BPM and case management capabilities even more, and open additional opportunities for Hyland’s customers to augment and extend their process automation solutions. Hyland’s automation capabilities will appeal to enterprises that have a variety of use cases that require content-centric processes, and the large number of pre-built applications and components provided by Hyland will help to accelerate deployment. Workflow solutions can easily be designed using point-and-click configuration capabilities. More than 200 pre-



built rules and actions are provided to allow workflows to be built without the need for scripting or custom code. A full range of APIs and web services are provided to allow integration with most systems. OnBase electronic forms products (E-Forms, Unity Forms, and Image Forms) provide the ability to create a variety of electronic forms to help streamline and automate processes.

The OnBase content services platform includes a wide range of capabilities: multichannel capture with the ability to classify, extract, and validate incoming information; content management; process automation; customer communications management to easily configure templates, provide integrated document creation, and multichannel output and distribution; case management to manage data, tasks, activities, correspondence, and events surrounding unstructured cases and knowledge-driven processes; collaboration; reporting and analytics; enterprise search; and retention and records management. The auto-tagging of documents upon import into the repository is achieved through a number of tools such as intelligent data extraction (both template and non-template based), index files from other systems, configured text-based parsing of files, and OCR-assisted manual indexing. A Microsoft Outlook integration allows email messages and attachments to be stored in the OnBase system directly through the Outlook interface. Other experiences and interfaces include web and mobile.

Limitations Each platform also has its limitations, with Alfresco DBP’s weakest area being development and integration. While there are no specific limitations, Alfresco provides fewer connectors provided out-of-the-box than some competing products. It also does not have its own marketplace for the sale or exchange of connectors, but there is a large ecosystem of partners that build and provide connectors. Going forward, Alfresco customers should benefit if the Hyland community is expanded to include Alfresco connectors.

Content analytics is OnBase’s weakest area, where it has only limited capabilities. For example, it does not currently support the ability to recognize similar documents, perform concept-based classification, or identify concepts and context, which are all important capabilities in content analytics. In addition, it has not embedded AI and ML capabilities into its content analytics, which is an area where other vendors are investing, nor does it provide specific search features for extracting insights from content. Incorporating some of the Alfresco features in this area would strengthen OnBase’s capabilities.

Opportunities HxP provides Hyland with an opportunity as it aims to deliver value to existing customers in the near-term through a range of cloud apps and services, integrating with currently deployed products. The longer-term strategy is to provide a market-leading content services cloud platform, incorporating the best capabilities from Hyland’s portfolio, leveraging its full suite of integrations with other cloud platforms and leveraging best-in-class third-party cloud services available, such as AI/ML services. Recent acquisitions such as Learning Machine—enabling blockchain-enabled credentialing—will help with this initiative.

Alfresco has rebuilt its architecture to be cloud-native, and thanks to its strategic partnership with AWS, it has been able to leverage much of the functionality of AWS including analytics, as well as AI/ML capabilities. Alfresco DBP is available as a PaaS solution on all major public cloud platforms,



such as Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and AWS, which enables it to support large cloud deployments. Hyland has a single cloud strategy, which enables OnBase customers to take advantage of these capabilities, which should enhance the appeal of OnBase.

Threats Hyland currently has four content services platforms in its portfolio, which are Alfresco DBP, OnBase, Perceptive Content, and Saperion. This could create a threat as the vendor runs the risk of confusing potential customers and deterring them from considering a Hyland platform unless it makes it very clear in its marketing collateral which platform will suit enterprises’ individual requirements. Hyland has stated that it will discuss enterprises’ business needs and requirements to help them decide which platform is appropriate, but many enterprises want to limit the number of vendors they talk to and therefore pre-select the platforms they wish to consider.

Hyland competes with a number of vendors including bigger high-profile vendors that tend to attract larger enterprises, but also smaller vendors that enterprises looking for simpler, less complex platforms are increasingly turning to. A common criticism of content services vendors is that their platforms are still too complex to implement and deploy. Hyland needs to ensure that it continues to work on simplifying the implementation of its platform, allowing it to continue to compete effectively with other vendors with cloud-native platforms.

IBM (Omdia recommendation: Leader) IBM should appear on your shortlist if you prefer a single platform for document management, records management, governance, intelligent document capture and processing, and workflow IBM is one of the largest content services platform vendors in terms of revenue, and it has one of the leading platforms. As a high-end solution most of its customers are large enterprises and brands, which often have very complex requirements resulting in a need for extensive professional services, which IBM can provide through its global professional services organization. IBM benefits from Watson technologies for cognitive exploration and content search, analytics, and AI/ML capabilities, which is embedded throughout the platform. Its AI and ML capabilities are a differentiator for IBM over many of its competitors. The Cloud Pak for Business Automation, which includes FileNet content services, provides a single platform with pre-integrated automation services for content services including records management and governance, intelligent document capture and processing, workflow, and RPA. IBM also has a variety of complementary solutions that provide additional capabilities enabling the end-to-end management of content.



Figure: Omdia Universe ratings—IBM

Source: Omdia

Strengths Document management and collaboration, search, and workflow and BPM are IBM’s strongest areas. IBM has extensive document management and collaboration features, with all of the expected features such as version control with major and minor versions available, check-ins, check-outs, and a complete audit trail. Each version of a document is immutable to ensure that governance requirements are met. The in-place management of content is enabled through Content Federation Services with the ability to organize content into documents and folders. A variety of records management options are available ranging from the ability to apply basic retention policies to more stringent capabilities such as file plans with more complex retention schedules, legal holds, the



management of physical records, automated event and time-based retention management, auto classification and declaration with optional support of natural language processing and reporting. The records management offering is DoD1502.2 certified, VERSE, and SEC17a-4 compliant. Flexible storage options include Cloud Object Storage, WORM storage, and Amazon S3. A DocuSign plugin is available for Content Navigator to allow digital signatures. Collaboration is supported through Teamspaces. Features such as comments, likes, tags, annotations (using the document viewer), highlights, customizable stamps, text, arrows, rectangles, and polygons are supported.

The search capability provides enterprise search capabilities that work across multiple repositories. Access to Watson Explorer Deep Analytics Edition is included in the offering, which provides indexing and search, as well as content analytics, across a wider set of content sources. Full-text, Boolean, and natural language searches with facets are available, with the ability to combine full-text and Boolean techniques in a single search. Hit highlighting for content-based searches is also included. Users can type simple text and/or select metadata as search criteria, and recent saved searches can also be selected that use pre-defined criteria. Documents are indexed automatically in the background in real-time. An event subscription model is included where an email is sent to a subscribing user when new content is added, updated, or when metadata and security are updated. The notifications can include updates on any objects in the system such as documents, folders, cases, and work items. However, users that are not authorized to view a document will not generally see it in search results. Search results can be embedded in other applications via APIs, UI components, and via native connectors. IBM provides a Salesforce connector which shows content associated with Salesforce objects including cases and accounts. Connectors are also available for SAP and Microsoft applications. In addition, partners have built connectors to other applications, such as Guidewire, using the IBM provided APIs and UI components.

IBM benefits from having a full BPM solution in its portfolio, which means that its BPM and workflow capabilities are extensive. No-code and low-code options are available for building processes and integrating content in processes, and a visual editor with wizards is available with built-in validation. Case Builder enables the easy creation of content-centric cases. Business experts and developers can collaborate simultaneously to author all workflow patterns including ad hoc, content centric, structured, non-structured, event driven, straight through, human centric, integration, and dynamic case management, using a web-based authoring tool. Workflows can be reviewed and tested using the playback function. An extensive number of out-of-the-box rules and actions are provided to help speed up the workflow building process. Advanced activities that include RPA and Automation Service Activities is included. Many pre-built connectors are available, and APIs and tools are provided to enable integration including REST, GraphQL, CMIS, Web Services, Java, .NET, and JavaScript. IBM provides 111 out-of-the-box process templates across industries based on the APQC process frameworks within Blueworks live. In addition, there are solution frameworks for banking, healthcare, and telecoms that include workflows, data models, service models, vocabularies, case hierarchies, and dashboards. The platform includes two sample applications (Hiring Process and Procurement Process) that run out-of-the box to assist with self-guided training.

Limitations IBM does not have a community or marketplace for the sale of connectors, which some vendors have. However, some connectors are available directly from IBM, partners, or from third-party



vendors whose products integrate with IBM’s. There are also fewer out-of-the-box connectors provided to leading applications than some vendors.

One area that IBM needs to improve is the deployment of its platform. Although IBM has done much to try and simplify the implementation and deployment process, customers have concerns that it is still too complex, and the ease of deployment was the lowest scoring factor when customers were asked about their experience with the vendor.

Opportunities IBM’s AI-based capabilities provide an opportunity for the vendor. IBM has many innovative features within its portfolio, and it is always seeking new ways in which Watson AI can be applied. For example, its service that automatically classifies and extracts content, negating the need for a data scientist, will appeal to line-of-business users. Enhancing Watson capabilities further will help to ensure that IBM remains at the forefront of AI development.

Another opportunity for IBM is the expansion of its partner ecosystem for content services and overall Cloud Pak for Automation with an increased focus on embedded solution agreement (ESA) and OEM programs. This will broaden its coverage to new use cases within market sectors that it already addresses, such as private wealth within Financial Services, or new privacy requirements in the Government and Public sectors.

Threats A threat for IBM comes from enterprises that are still using legacy ECM systems, which, because of a high level of dependent code are difficult to replace. Some of these enterprises will be using IBM platforms. Because a move to a new system will be such a major undertaking, they are more likely to procure a completely new system rather than attempt to upgrade their existing one. This means that IBM faces stiff competition from a large number of competitors, including smaller vendors that are boasting major enterprises and brands as customers.

IBM has always been regarded as a high-end vendor, with an extensive, complex platform that requires professional services to help with the implementation. Although this is now changing as content services platforms tend to be lighter in terms of the technologies that are included in the platform and are therefore less complex to implement, this perception that IBM’s platform is too complex may deter some enterprises from considering IBM. The vendor needs to ensure that it continues to simplify the implementation of its content services platform as much as possible and provides more pre-built applications and components to help enterprises to get up and running quicker.



Micro Focus (Omdia recommendation: Challenger) Micro Focus should appear on your shortlist if you require a platform that focuses on end-to-end information management that is strong on governance and security Micro Focus is a relatively new entrant to the content services market; however, its offering is not. In 2017, Micro Focus acquired the ECM portfolio of HPE, which comprises a number of very mature products including its AI-powered search and analytics engine, IDOL. The inclusion of IDOL provides a differentiator for Micro Focus in terms of AI and ML features, as its capabilities are way beyond those of many of its competitors. Micro Focus has taken a slightly different approach to other vendors in terms of content services platforms as its content management and collaboration capabilities are part of a larger information management and governance product group. This provides a number of important capabilities including unified endpoint management, information archiving, and data protection and backup as well as content management and collaboration. Together, these capabilities help provide the additional security measures required to support enterprises as they manage large numbers of home workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to providing many of the capabilities required to manage the entire lifecycle of content.



Figure 7: Omdia Universe ratings—Micro Focus

Source: Omdia

Strengths The strongest areas for Micro Focus are content analytics, document management and collaboration, and search. Unsurprisingly, Micro Focus provides extensive analytics capabilities, which are embedded with IDOL to provide valuable insights that are applied throughout the product set. Content analytics is embedded in the platform and is provided out-of-the-box in a number of deployment options including on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid scenario. Its analytics capabilities provide insights into how content is being used at the document, record, or object level. Content can be classified by customer, conversation, project, or topic and it can be categorized according to the level of risk or privacy requirements. Auto classification is supported, which



includes conceptual visualization, data, and pattern recognition. Multiple techniques are available to identify concepts and context including keyword search, phrase search, conceptual search, natural language, example documents (to find similar documents, related categories, relevant users, or queries that would match), images, video segments, audio segments, user agents (explicit and implicit), and analysis of a set of documents. Speech-to-text analytics are supported, allowing audio to be analyzed, which is a differentiator over most of its competitors. Sentiment analysis, which assesses the degree to which the sentiment of a piece of text is positive, neutral, or negative, using both linguistic analysis and a statistical, pattern-based approach—is also provided.

Micro Focus offers extensive search capabilities, using built-in Micro Focus IDOL or Elasticsearch. It provides an enterprise federated search capability that can search across multiple indexed repositories as well as conducting web searches. It employs a number of techniques including phrase, proximity, and Boolean logic and is able to conduct full content and metadata searches. The Elasticsearch engine option offers features such as ranking results by relevance, shading of large search indexes, and AI for indexing the most used metadata fields first. Micro Focus’s proprietary NLP Engine extracts sentiment, conversation, emotion, effort, intent, slot filling, and fact extraction. The conversational capabilities detect intent and classify utterances to inform the conversation. Search results can be viewed through Micro Focus UIs including the windows client, web client, desktop client, and Admin Console Client. In addition, a built-in content viewer is embedded within the tool of choice negating the need to have the native application present. If a user does not have the rights to view a document, it will not appear in the results set.

Micros Focus provides the tools and support for third-party integrations to manage the entire lifecycle of content through creation, management, retention, and archiving, to deletion, and legal holds. Content Manager provides out-of-the-box integrations to SharePoint on-premises and Office 365. External participants can be invited to collaborate with all actions tracked within the audit trail. Team collaboration is supported through the integration with SharePoint and Office 365, and packaged integrations are also provided to the partner developed collaboration solutions, such as iCognition RM Workspace, and Objective Perform. Team file sharing is supported with Micro Focus Filr, which allows users to share files stored on corporate networks securely, and content can be synced to a user’s desktop for offline viewing and editing. Records management capabilities are also provided with user defined retention policies based on policies using triggers such as event dates. File plans, physical records, the transfer of physical records to warehouses, and transfer of records to a new custodian are all supported, as is the ability to move records between storage tiers as requirements change. Micro Focus is DOD 5015.2 standard certified including optional chapters, Victorian Electronic Strategy (VERS) compliant, and meets or exceeds ISO 15489, ISO 16175, and CFR 21 part 11. Lifecycle policy retention can be extended to external content stores in SharePoint, Documentum, or FileNet with ControlPoint, which allows in-place records management. Support is provided for mobile devices with content encrypted on the device and in the cloud. For organizations that require additional remote device security, device controls, management, remote lock, and remote wipe capabilities, Micro Focus provides its Unified Endpoint Management solution, which manages all mobile devices, laptops, desktops, point of sale, kiosks, ATM, and IoT devices.

Limitations Micro Focus’s weakest areas are content services and development and integration. It does not offer pre-built customizable vertical or horizontal applications to help speed up implementation, but



rather supports its large ecosystem of system integrators and consultancies such as Deloitte, Accenture, Capgemini, DXC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Ingram Micro, PWC, WiPro, Infosys, and Tata Consultancy Services who specialize in providing customized solutions.

Micro Focus does not have a community or marketplace through which connectors can be sold or exchanged as some of its competitors do. However, some open source connectors are available on GitHub, and in addition, Micro Focus develops and adds a number of connectors to its portfolio each year.

Opportunities With its wider portfolio, which includes security products, Micro Focus can benefit from the move to remote working caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as it is able to help enterprises to provide secure instant access to content from any location at any time, and marketed appropriately, this can provide an advantage. The requirement for transparent access to and insights from information is also helping Micro Focus as one of the strengths of its portfolio is its ability to provide insights from content thanks to the AI/ML capabilities of IDOL.

Cloud provides another opportunity for Micro Focus. It offers flexible deployment options including a managed service as well as allowing customers to work with their current managed services provider. The vendor intends to enhance its cloud offerings by increasing the breadth and depth of its cloud solutions across the Content Services portfolio to decrease costs and provide more storage options, as well as working with partners to further their hosted subscription services. These enhancements should increase the attractiveness of the Micro Focus proposition.

Threats A major threat for Micro Focus derives from the vendor’s limited tenure in the content management market, and the fact that many enterprises will not be aware of the fact that Micro Focus now has an extensive content services/content management portfolio. Micro Focus needs to ensure that its marketing initiatives highlight its capabilities in the content services space. In addition, many existing customers will be using legacy HPE (and earlier) solutions, and will not be aware that the latest versions of their systems are now owned by Micro Focus. The vendor needs to be much more vocal in highlighting the origins of its portfolio of products.

Micro Focus faces a threat from the large array of content services platform vendors, which include specialist vendors as well as large multiple product vendors. With its own professional services capability as well as its large ecosystem of partners, it is well positioned to help enterprises with their implementations. However, an increasing number of organizations want much simpler platforms that are quick to deploy and are supplied with a large number of pre-built applications and components. Micro Focus should consider providing applications for common tasks out-of-the-box that will enable enterprises to get up and running much quicker without the need for extensive services.



Nuxeo (Omdia recommendation: Challenger) Nuxeo should appear on your shortlist if you have a large number of digital assets that need to be managed alongside content or you are in the banking, insurance, or healthcare sectors Nuxeo is one of the smaller content services platform vendors in terms of revenue, but it has evolved over the past few years, particularly in terms of reach and revenue. An open source vendor that was originally headquartered in France, it moved its headquarters to New York in 2014, which has enabled it to grow its customer base in North America, resulting in it currently deriving approximately 60% of its revenue from the US. In the past, the company has been financed through outside investment, but it has recently enjoyed its first profitable year, and expects to be self-financing going forward, demonstrating the extent of its growth in recent years. Nuxeo has a single Content Services Platform that serves two distinct markets and corresponding use cases, which are ECM/Content Services and Digital Asset Management (DAM), although some customers deploy the platform across both use cases. Key industries for Nuxeo include banking, insurance, and healthcare payer organizations where the vendor provides solutions for a number of use cases, but it also supports many horizontal use cases making it suitable for enterprises across a wide range of industries. It is embedding AI and ML throughout its portfolio with Nuxeo Insight, which supports trainable ML models for business users.



Figure 8: Omdia Universe ratings—Nuxeo

Source: Omdia

Strengths Nuxeo’s strongest areas are governance and security, its cloud capabilities, document management and collaboration, and workflow and BPM. Nuxeo provides a number of security features to help secure content providing secure access, encryption of documents and metadata in transit and at rest, records management features to manage the retention and archiving of content, and a full audit trail. This allows Nuxeo to ensure that individuals have the right to be informed, the right of access, the right to rectification, the right to erasure, the right to restrict processing, and the right to data portability, which helps enterprises to ensure compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. An important capability supported by Nuxeo is the ability to move content between storage



tiers, particularly where long retention periods are involved, but records may only need to be accessed periodically, if at all. Another important feature is redaction, which is supported with Nuxeo Enhanced Viewer. Automated redaction is achieved using search terms, or content can be manually redacted using drawing tools. A pluggable interface supports the creation of customized security policies. Document metadata properties, group membership, and other factors can be used to implement policies.

In terms of cloud capabilities, Nuxeo is cloud-native, which allows it to be deployed in any type of environment including public cloud infrastructures, private cloud, hybrid environments, and on-premises. Nuxeo Platform deployments are supported on AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, or a customer-managed cloud data center. Nuxeo provides its own hosted and managed service—Nuxeo Cloud—which supports a VPC infrastructure deployment on AWS. In a benchmarking exercise, Nuxeo demonstrated the scalability of its platform by ingesting and managing more than 11 billion objects. Nuxeo’s professional services organization provides end-to-end implementation services, providing development, business analyst, and project management resources to scope, design, and develop the entire solution. It also offers developer training. Pricing is based on an annual subscription model which provides access to Nuxeo Studio, Nuxeo Marketplace, and support. Pricing is determined by tiers according to the overall capacity of the system required to support operations. This takes into account the number and type of users, size and volume of assets (including typical throughput over a given time period), as well as volume and type of API calls (if there are direct system integrations).

Document management and collaboration includes all of the features expected of such a solution including the granular control of content assets, check-in and check-out, full version control, and the complete lifecycle management of content including records management. The Nuxeo Enhanced Viewer allows documents to be viewed without the application that created the content being present. It also provides a suite of redlining and annotation tools for documents, images, and videos, as well as redaction capabilities. The Nuxeo Enhanced Viewer is available for purchase as an add-on. In addition, Nuxeo supports a standard, open-source viewer (PDF.je) which is available to customers free of charge.

BPM and workflow are supported through Nuxeo Studio, which enables users to update and create custom workflows. Based on a canvas, Nuxeo Studio enables users to drag and drop standard operations onto the Nuxeo workflow canvas. The Nuxeo Task editor provides a tabbed, wizard-like experience to configure the conditions of the task such as assignee, due-date, automation, output actions, fields, and escalation rules. Minimal training is required, enabling non-technical users to create workflows. Several out-of-the-box reports are provided, and customized reports can be created.

Limitations Nuxeo’s weakest area is development and integration, where it does not focus as heavily on producing ready-built applications and components as some of the other vendors. It believes that its low code development tools enable developers to rapidly build applications. Pre-built applications and components for common tasks would help enterprises to get up and running quickly, especially at a time when COVID-19 is forcing digital transformation initiatives to be accelerated. However,



Nuxeo does provide many out-of-the-box integrations and connectors, which helps to accelerate and simplify integrations with line-of-business and other applications.

Opportunities Nuxeo’s Insight service, which uses AI and ML provides a good opportunity for Nuxeo as it increases the use cases for the technology around productivity and security intelligence as well as vertical and horizontal use cases. Its intention to focus on the interplay between humans and content bots will help to provide an engaging user experience.

Another opportunity is centered around connectivity, a continuing focus for Nuxeo as it increases the number of out-of-the-box integrations to popular business and productivity applications as well as commonly used tools. Its roadmap includes many more connectors, which should help Nuxeo to increase its attractiveness.

Threats The content services platform market has a large number of players with some vendors providing more than one platform and new entrants providing viable platforms including the EFSS vendor Box. This makes the space even more competitive and Nuxeo needs to ensure that its marketing initiatives highlight its differentiators, such as the work it is doing in ensuring that AI and ML is embedded throughout its platform.

Another threat comes from enterprises that are using legacy ECM systems that are yet to commence their digital transformation journeys. Many of these companies have dependent code, which makes it a complex, major undertaking to modernize their content management platforms to a modern cloud-native content services platform. Nuxeo needs to ensure that it is able to provide extensive support and professional services—either directly or through a strong partner network—to enterprises that wish to replace legacy systems.

OpenText (Omdia recommendation: Leader) OpenText Documentum should appear on your shortlist if you are in a highly regulated industry OpenText has two major content services platforms: Documentum and Extended ECM. Documentum is the focus of this report, although complementary products such as OpenText’s AI and analytics product Magellan, and its development platform AppWorks, can be used by both platforms. OpenText is one of the largest vendors by revenue in the report, and it also provides digital experience management, e-discovery, business network, and security products in its large portfolio. OpenText has a global reach through its regional sales and marketing teams, which are supplemented by a large network of partners, allowing it to target new markets, sectors, and accounts. Documentum is an ideal solution for enterprises in highly regulated industries and there are packaged industry solutions for energy, engineering, and life sciences including OpenText Documentum for quality and manufacturing, life sciences, research and development, and eTMF. Documentum provides flexibility by offering a number of user interfaces including Documentum D2 and Documentum xCP (for case management), several deployment options ranging from on-



premises, hybrid, and cloud, and native integrations with a range of third-party and OpenText products.

Figure 9: Omdia Universe ratings—OpenText Documentum

Source: Omdia

Strengths OpenText is strong across all areas, but three of its strongest areas are document management and collaboration, emphasizing its document management and records management roots; content analytics; and workflow and BPM. It includes extensive document management and collaboration features including an intuitive UI that works on common internet browsers on desktops and mobile



devices. Automated content controls include auto-inheritance, auto-naming, auto-numbering, auto-linking and electronic signatures to help ensure proper control. Collaboration features include threaded discussions, collaborative authoring of large documents, comparing Word files, and merging Microsoft Office documents. Virtual documents can be created by collecting multiple documents into an ordered logical unit that can be managed and controlled at the same time as allowing each individual document to be managed by its content owner. Documents can be managed in the context in which they are used, allowing users to access Documentum functionality from within the applications they use on a daily basis, for example SharePoint, Teams, Office applications, and SAP. Integration with OpenText Core Share allows content to be created in D2 and pushed out to OpenText Core Share, which manages external consumption and/or collaboration workflow as well as making content available to non-Documentum users. Integration with content viewer OpenText Brava allows content to be viewed without the originating application to be present. Brava supports annotations and markups, and it provides widgets that enable viewing, annotation, redaction, and publishing functionality within the D2 experience. There is also integration with records management systems including OpenText’s own solution, allowing content to be managed throughout its entire lifecycle.

Content intelligence, which is embedded in Documentum, provides a number of capabilities. Content Intelligence Services analyzes the textual content of objects through three types of analysis: categorization, entity detection, and pattern detection. Tagging and classification can be run automatically, based on a predetermined schedule, a workflow task, or a lifecycle state. A number of search methods are supported including entity extraction, content recommendation, fuzzy search, natural language queries, proximity search, and suggested search/auto complete. Related content, subject matter experts, search expansion on significant terms, and result expansion are all available. OpenText’s content analytics capabilities are enhanced by OpenText Magellan, which provides business insights through an AI data analytics platform combining open source ML with predictive and self-service analytics. It allows big content made up of structured and unstructured data stored in enterprise data management platforms and external sources to be analyzed. A number of methodologies are used to allow Magellan to identify and extract the most relevant semantic metadata including statistical patterns, linguistic patterns, ML, decision trees, and post-processing algorithms. A number of pre-built industry taxonomies are included, and sentiment and emotion analysis are supported.

OpenText is a vendor that offers case management through its xCP interface, and as such it has a full BPM solution in its portfolio, which means it has very strong and extensive workflow and BPM capabilities. It provides a graphical designer for creating processes and workflows through a drag-and-drop feature, with wizard-based guidance provided through predefined activity templates and support for the creation of nested sub-process groups, business rules, triggers, timers, performer selections, and process data mapping. Form-based task processing and runtime configuration of workflow instantiation through configuration are also provided. Rules and actions are provided out-of-the-box, but a framework is also provided to allow the creation of more complex rules and custom actions. A reporting capability is provided with a number of report templates provided out-of-the-box. OpenText Magellan Analytics Suite’s integration with Documentum provides data analytics software to identify patterns, relationships, and trends through data visualizations and interactive dashboards. Pre-built connectors for Documentum include Microsoft SharePoint, Office, and SAP, and there are also direct integrations with other OpenText applications including OpenText



Core Share and OpenText InfoArchive as well as OpenText Magellan Analytics Suite. A process debugger allows the design of a process model to be tested before it goes live with the ability to add breakpoints to make debugging easier. A comprehensive set of pre-built solutions are available for life sciences, with horizontal solutions also available including Accounts Payable for finance departments.

Limitations There are a few current limitations in Documentum. The product is ideally suited to enterprises in highly regulated industries, yet the vendor only provides pre-built solutions for life sciences, energy, and engineering, relying on partners to create solutions for other industries. OpenText also provides fewer pre-built connectors out-of-the box to third party applications than most of its competitors. More connectors would benefit Documentum customers.

Documentum is considered to be a high-end product that caters for enterprises in highly regulated industries with complex requirements. However, the vendor needs to do more to simplify the implementation and deployment process. Although Documentum, in general, scores highly in terms of customer experience, the lowest scoring element is ease of deployment, indicating that some customers still regard the process to be too complex.

Opportunities A major opportunity for OpenText Documentum is with highly regulated industries such as energy, financial services, life sciences, and public sector. It is optimized for large enterprises in regulated industries, but if it were to add vertical solutions for the financial sector and the public sector it would increase its attractiveness and therefore its market share. Having records management and extensive e-discovery solutions in its portfolio will also appeal to large, regulated enterprises.

With its extensive cloud options, many enterprises that want flexible deployment options will find Documentum attractive. OpenText is actively encouraging existing Documentum customers to upgrade from on-premises installations to its latest modern cloud architecture that runs in any cloud. For current and prospective customers that prefer on-premises deployments, OpenText is promoting hybrid cloud options that provide services that run in the cloud to extend the capabilities of Documentum including OpenText Core Capture and OpenText Core Share. OpenText’s use of containerization makes it easy to deploy Documentum anywhere, which will help to increase its popularity.

Threats OpenText is a large vendor with a huge portfolio of products. While this will appeal to many large enterprises that prefer a one-stop-shop approach, it can also be seen as a threat as many enterprises appear to be moving away from larger vendors that have traditionally been associated with having portfolios that are complex and difficult to implement, and selecting smaller vendors that have much lighter platforms. As such smaller vendors with platforms that are easier to deploy, such as Hyland with its Alfresco platform and Nuxeo pose a threat.

Another threat for OpenText comes from enterprises that are still using legacy ECM systems where upgrading would be a difficult and major undertaking. Some of these are current Documentum users. There is a danger that because of the complexity of the upgrade task, many customers will not



attempt a straight upgrade, but will start from scratch and look to procure the platform that best suits their current and future requirements. With a high number of content services platform vendors in the marketplace, OpenText will face tough competition in these situations, and ease of deployment will be key to winning bids.



Non-participating vendors

All vendors included in the report were approached to provide input to this study. The vendors that appear in this section either declined to participate or did not complete the response questionnaire in time before publication. The non-participant vendor evaluations are based on publicly available information and vendor briefings.

Microsoft Microsoft’s content services platform comprises Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive as well as many other capabilities across the Microsoft stack including SharePoint Syntex, Microsoft PowerApps and Power Automate, Azure Cognitive Services, and Microsoft Search.

In terms of revenue, Microsoft has the largest share of the ECM market. However, many enterprises that use its products have not deployed them as a content management or content services solution, so it is difficult to estimate the proportion of revenue generated from Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive that can be attributed to a content services platform and content services. Furthermore, many enterprises that are using these products as part of a content services implementation are doing so at the departmental level or for ad hoc users, rather than as an enterprise-wide solution. For this reason, all content services platform vendors need to ensure that their platforms integrate with Microsoft SharePoint and can work with SharePoint file shares. In many ways Microsoft has the perfect content services platform, as it provides extensive core capabilities and has a large ecosystem of partners that provide content services and provides integration capabilities allowing enterprises to bolt on their favored solutions.

SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365 include AI and ML capabilities. The Microsoft Cognitive Services suite provides AI/ML APIs, which can be built into business applications. In addition, Microsoft Search, which features in both SharePoint and OneDrive, is a combination of Bing’s AI and the insights derived via the Microsoft Graph. It is a SaaS solution for intelligent search, and can be supplemented for specialized needs with Microsoft’s PaaS offering; Azure Cognitive Search. In February 2021, Microsoft released Viva Topics, a solution using Microsoft AI technology to automatically search for and identify topics in an organization and compile information about them, such as a short description, people working on the topic, and sites, files, and pages that are related to it.

The extensive BPM capabilities of the Power Platform allow applications to be built that address specific use cases combining content, people, and process. Its ease-of-use means that non-technical business users can create processes and it also includes a forms builder to allow online forms to be created. Microsoft has invested in RPA technology including the May 2020 Softomotive acquisition, which it is actively integrating with other Microsoft solutions, including BPM, to improve the user experience.



SharePoint is generally deployed in Microsoft’s Azure data centers, although Microsoft does also support third-party clouds. Azure includes many applications, with a large number in the area of AI and ML including: a bot service; analytics; various search options including image, news, and video search; cognitive services; content moderation; an ML service; translator service; linguistic analytics; document extraction services that understand forms; and text analytics. SharePoint users are able to benefit from these applications, many of which can be deployed as content services.

SharePoint Syntex provides digital capture using AI and ML to automate the capture, ingestion, and categorization of content, and streamline content-centric processes. Content is automatically classified, and information is extracted using easy-to-build workflows, and metadata is automatically applied. Sensitivity and retention labels that allow security and compliance policies to be applied are also added automatically.

Oracle Oracle declined to participate due to the relaunch of its content services platform, which is scheduled to occur after the publication of this Omdia Universe. This is a major product update for Oracle, which will see many new capabilities in the platform including a new business document repository designed to handle very large quantities of content that need to be managed, which will make the system very scalable. Oracle has applied the same techniques for managing content that it applies to managing digital assets in its digital asset management (DAM) system.

At the highest level, Oracle Content and Experience (OCE) is used to natively classify assets into three classes: images, videos, and files. Enterprises can also define custom asset types, which the software will be able to recognize when they are ingested into the system. Assets can be further categorized using custom defined taxonomies. So, for example, an invoice could be defined as a custom asset type. User-defined metadata can be applied to the asset including the ability to specify mandatory fields.

Granular security capabilities with role-based access ensures that access to content is tightly controlled. Security levels such as public, private, and confidential can be applied to asset types as well as an individual asset. Repository membership defines whether a user can view or edit assets, and permissions can be defined at the content-type or category level for more granular control. To further extend the example, a granular level of security could be used to give content admins access to all assets within a repository, AP global managers access to all invoices, and AP regional managers access to only invoices categorized for their region.

New capture capabilities make it easier to ingest content, such as purchase orders or invoices with content captured from an array of different content sources, such as email, a scanner, or a network file share. The content can then be moved to specific business repositories within OCE. Captured content can be converted to PDFs and other standard searchable formats and can be enriched with metadata captured from the content. Information can be extracted using a trained engine, which recognizes different types of documents and forms to capture pertinent information. Multi-step content validation and approval processes can be enabled through custom workflows, which can be automatically or manually triggered.



Advanced search capabilities with multi-language support for custom relevancy, auto suggestions, stemming, spelling, and synonyms make it easier and quicker to find content, particularly with the enhanced metadata-based taxonomy. Searches can be saved, and search result fields can be defined.

Oracles’ portfolio will also include records management, particularly in its asset archiving and retention capabilities. Administrators can set default expiration policies for all assets if no policies are defined for individual asset types. Expiration policies can also be set for an asset repository, an asset type, or at a category level. Forced archiving retention, or deletion of expired assets can be enforced.

One of the major gripes enterprises have about migrating from legacy systems is a lack of migration tools available to help with the task. Oracle has addressed this by introducing a new set of migration tools which will make it easier to migrate from an on-premises deployment model to the cloud.



Methodology

Omdia Universe The process of writing a Universe is time consuming:

• Omdia analysts perform an in-depth review of the market using Omdia’s market forecasting data and Omdia’s ICT Enterprise Insights survey data.

• Omdia creates a matrix of capabilities, attributes, and features that it considers to be important now and in the next 12–18 months for the market.

• Vendors are interviewed and provide in-depth briefings on their current solutions and future plans.

• Analysts supplement these briefings with other information obtained from industry events and user conferences.

• Analysts derive insights on the customer experience with each solution via reviews and ratings on TrustRadius.

• The Universe is peer reviewed by other Omdia analysts before being proofread by a team of dedicated editors.

Inclusion criteria The criteria for inclusion of a vendor solution in the Omdia Universe: Selecting a Content Services Platform Solution 2021–22 are as follows:

• The solution provides a platform for content services, where all of the core functionalities can be accessed and managed though a single interface.

• As a minimum the platform must include a content repository, document management and some collaboration tools, search, and integration capabilities.

• Each content services platform must be capable of being deployed in the cloud and preferably be cloud-native.

• The products have a significant level of recognition among enterprises, cover a range of verticals, and have a presence in multiple geographies.

https://www.trustradius.com/



• The vendors must provide or include the ability to integrate with a wide range of content services.



Appendix

Further reading Fundamentals of Content Services Platforms 2021, (January 2021)

Hyland helps enterprises to become more agile during COVID-19 pandemic, (January 2021)

Analyst Commentary: OpenText supports the resilient organization, (May 2020)

Author Sue Clarke, Associate Senior Analyst

[email protected]

https://omdia.tech.informa.com/OM014520/Fundamentals-of-Content-Services-Platforms-2021

https://omdia.tech.informa.com/OM014664/Hyland-helps-enterprises-to-become-more-agile-during-COVID-19-pandemic

https://omdia.tech.informa.com/OM010582/Analyst-Commentary-OpenText-supports-the-resilient-organization

mailto:[email protected]

Selecting a Content Services Platform Solution, 2021 45


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