Analysis by Mark Gilbert and Regina Casonato
Gartner Cool Vendors
Why Cool
As SharePoint has gained popularity, the issues concerning how to best organize
information are becoming more critical to ensure success with SharePoint itself, as well as the growing number of applications that are being built on it. Adding useful metadata to SharePoint content and creating a taxonomy for managing content is a critical, yet time-consuming, step needed for effective governance before widespread deployment of SharePoint. MatchPoint offers a solution to this problem. Based on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Topic Maps standard, MatchPoint automatically generates a taxonomy of all SharePoint content according to company and users' classification preferences. All content and its metadata are automatically added to the SharePoint index and, therefore, searchable by users and can be leveraged by applications and Web parts developed on top of SharePoint. The metadata and the model are administered centrally in Microsoft SQL Server. MatchPoint's functionality is available via Web services and as an API in SharePoint. MatchPoint can, therefore, enable faster and more flexible deployment of SharePoint-based applications by bringing greater consistency to metadata, resulting in better data quality and the potential for faster and more consistent application development.
Who Should Care
Enterprises with large volumes of poorly described content and plans to migrate a substantial portion to SharePoint. Knowledge managers, project leaders, SharePoint developers and information architects.
"Cool vendors" in content management appeal to IT and business buyers by addressing their needs to help people relate better to information by making the information itself smarter, even as they also explore combinations of cloud computing and supplements for improved overall content management.
This year as much as last, the cool vendors in content management are largely influenced by Microsoft Office SharePoint Server's (MOSS's) gravitational pull. And, although enterprise content management (ECM) is commonly perceived as being a mature marketplace, innovation continues in all areas - including open source and Web channel.
Key Findings
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Open source continues to demand respect in content management. Several vendors are emerging that focus on open-source software (OSS), even as they add new twists such as a .NET foundation.
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The influence of Microsoft's SharePoint is clearly being recognized here, but some of the vendors have chosen to compete directly, rather than embrace and extend it.
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Firms in heavily regulated industries that have invested in SharePoint as a key part of their content management infrastructure still need to meet regulatory and document control requirements. Those require supplements.
Recommendations
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Enterprises should focus on content strategy before deploying more technology. Creating a taxonomy for managing content is a critical, yet time-consuming, step needed for effective content governance before widespread deployment of SharePoint.
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Enterprises should plan for content to be delivered partly depending on explicit settings configured by employees themselves. The end-user experience cannot continue to be a point of failure.
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Movement toward cloud hosting and hybrid content architectures is obvious. Understand vendor plans to build extensible architectures that allow third parties to build and deliver content applications as add-ons.
About the Gartner Cool Vendor Selection Process:
Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. The Gartner listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to identify interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Each year, Gartner identifies a Cool Vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: innovative-enabling users to do things they couldn't do before; impactful-have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); and intriguing- have caught our interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.
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