Rich, Tailored ContentRich, Tailored Content

Content management stands to get more innovative in the near future. IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle plan to enhance their repository and library-database services to accommodate rich content such as images, video, and sound as early as next year. The step will let content-management application vendors focus their development resources on creating products that not only support rich-content access but are tailored to vertical industries or other specific customer needs.

Software vendors "could focus on building out content-centric apps, addressing business needs better than they do now," says Kyle McNabb, a Forrester Research analyst.

IBM shares the vision of beefed-up content management. The company already has a version of Content Manager Runtime edition inside WebSphere Portal 5.1, and it could be embedded within third-party applications as soon as next year, says Theresa O'Neil, director of marketing for Content Manager, IBM's content-management software platform.

Oracle already has a repository as part of its Content Management Software Developer's Kit, which supports rich media such as video and voice, but Rich Buchheim, senior director of product development, says Oracle wants a higher level of support. "We expect to add macro support like records management, versioning, and workflow" for rich content. High-level support for third-party content-management application vendors could take up to three years, he warns.

Some application vendors appear ready for a repository service partner sooner rather than later. Interwoven Inc., whose framework lets customers create and deploy Web sites quickly, has taken note of vendors' heavy investments in databases and repositories, says Kevin Cochrane, VP of Web content management at Interwoven. "We'll leverage existing infrastructure," Cochran says, "and we expect to build best-of-breed content for vertical industries."

An example of future industry-specific content-management apps can be seen in a prototype created by Vizible Corp. that ties together fire, police, public works, and traffic information in a single view. Vizible expects to leverage infrastructure vendors' repositories for the final product and other industry-specific content-management apps. Anthony Gallo, chief technology officer and founder of Vizible, says, "Moving ahead, we'll engage partners for the different vertical industries."