Open Text Adopts the One Environment Rule
This week at its annual user conference, LiveLinkUp (which I am attending), Open Text unveiled Livelink ECM 10. Livelink ECM 10 is Open Text’s strongest move yet into supplying the tools necessary for enterprise customers to build Collaborative Business Environments that will make their knowledge workers more productive.
In compliance with the One Environment Rule (simply put, users remain in one overarching environment for their work), Livelink ECM 10 seems to have been designed from the ground up to ensure that content management is not treated as a function that is separate and distinct from other Collaborative Business Knowledge tools.
The advances present in Livelink ECM 10 lead a path towards Enterprise Transparency. Enterprise Transparency, in the ECM world, represents the change of content management from a static process to a dynamic process that can be leveraged for business advantage by providing knowledge workers centralized tools from which they can make their decisions.
Features include Enterprise Library Services, which include integrated archival, metadata management, enterprise records management, and search capabilities. Users can also manage the metadata and lifecycle of content stored in enterprise applications from Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle, among others, as well as business content stored in Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, e-mail, file systems, and other repositories. Knowledge workers can access business content in ERP systems, such as customer information, from Microsoft Office Outlook, providing a unified view of structured and unstructured business content.
Livelink ECM 10 allows companies to build and deploy solutions on any Basic Content Services offering such as SharePoint Portal Server 2003, while managing the enterprise-wide retention of the mission-critical business content with Enterprise Library Services.
Open Text didn’t forget the knowledge worker’s interface to his work. Livelink ECM 10 features a new rich client interface, and offers seamless access to business content from Microsoft desktop tools such as Outlook 2003, Office 2003, and Internet Explorer.
Finally, to make it easier for customers to integrate their content with Livelink, Open Text is providing published Web services APIs for Enterprise Library Services and Livelink Content Services.