SharePoint's Rivals Aren't Giving GroundSharePoint's Rivals Aren't Giving Ground

IBM: It sells portal, collaboration, and content management software separately--and quite successfully. With FileNet and Content Manager, it has the largest content management market share, and WebSphere still tops the portal charts. IBM says Lotus' new social networking software and Quickr collaboration tools more than doubled its base in the second quarter, including a large accounting firm licensing more than 150,000 seats.

EMC: Its content management and archiving division is on pace for $860 million this year, outpacing market growth. The new Documentum ECM 6.5 adds comments, threaded discussions, community workspaces, wikis, and blogs. Strengths include industries such as pharmaceuticals, and niches of regulatory compliance and archiving. Other products include Captiva and Document Sciences.

ORACLE: It sells portal (WebCenter), ECM (Universal Content Management), and collaboration (Beehive) separately. Beehive, released in September, is its latest stab at collaboration, with messaging, calendars, workspaces, Web conferencing, and mobile services. It touts security, scalability, and auditability.

ALFRESCO: Watch out for startups like this 3-year-old open source company, founded by John Newton, who started Documentum. Its goal is to "commoditize content management," says Newton, bringing it to knowledge workers who've never used it. More than 70,000 Alfresco community members can contribute code. It's cheaper than the competition and integrates with Office thanks to use of Microsoft's own protocols.

Illustration by Sek Leung

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