March 20, 2006
Xerox Offers Software For Document and Web Content Management
Xerox has developed a significant new version of its document-management software, providing a single
database for both transaction-oriented business processes and individual and group content management. The software is now Web-based and supports collaboration as well as the management of blogs and wikis.
Today, the company is rolling out two new products—DocuShare CPX and DocuShare 5.0—which will share a common repository and workflow engine. That is significant, says Colman Murphy, Xerox's product manager for its DocuShare line.
"Whether it's for basic content services for day-to- day documents, or whether it's for transaction kinds of process, it's the same file store, same database, same records management and workflow engine, so you can get a lot of continuity between the two applications," Murphy says.
Xerox has offered DocuShare since 1997, but has yet to achieve the market penetration of EMC's Documentum or FileNet, though it has made strong inroads in many large corporations and public-sector organizations.
"Xerox is an unsung hero in content management," says IDC analyst Melissa Webster. "They haven't gotten a lot of visibility, but their technology is feature-rich and easy to deploy."
DocuShare 5.0 offers basic document management, ad-hoc collaboration, content review and approval, Web publishing, and desktop-application integration. DocuShare CPX includes all of that plus what Xerox is calling a Knowledge Network Engine, developed in collaboration with NASA Ames Research Center. The Knowledge Network Engine allows for the reuse of the XML components, allowing information to be reused in other files or applications. The engine also supports XDBQuery API (a query-based content retrieval methodology) and integration with desktop applications, such as Microsoft Office.
DocuShare 5.0 also adds support for various forms of collaboration, including Web conferencing (through WebEx Communication) and for blogs and wikis. For the latter, the software creates approvals, permissions and auditing, allowing organizations to be sure policies aren't breached when content is shared. In addition, the software includes support for process-management automation, which lets managers establish rules.
The DocuShare CPX release supports records management to classify documents in compliance with various regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.
Mark Waters, CEO of Xerox partner WaterWare Internet Services, recently received a beta version of the new software and liked what he saw.
"It scales better now," Waters says. "I like the direction they are going in."
The software will be available next month; prices start at $4,500 for a 20-user license for DocuShare 5.0 and $45,000 for a 100-seat version of DocuShare CPX.
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