IBM Updates Content-Management Offering

IBM Updates Content-Management Offering

Source: CMPnet

IBM debuted new releases of its content-management and records-management applications Tuesday, with enhancements the vendor says provide the performance and availability needed as content management evolves into a critical task within many companies.

Content management is used to organize and manage unstructured data such as documents, E-mail, and images. Such content makes up 85% of all digitized information. Businesses are increasingly storing and managing such content in centralized systems to cut costs associated with managing and storing hard-copy documents, and to make those documents more available to improve customer service. Records-retention legislation, such as regulations mandating that financial services firms retain E-mails and instant messages, and regulations governing the health-care industry, are also spurring demand.

Genesys Health System, a 412-bed hospital in Grand Blanc, Mich., is managing digitized patient charts and medical records using applications from BlueWare Inc. that are built on top of IBM Content Manager and other IBM system software. The system was installed in 2001 and is now used by 260 physicians to access some 90,000 documents every month, says CIO David Holland. “What we wanted, as a goal, was to make anything that was in the (patient) charts digitally available to the clinicians,” he says.

Content Manager 8.2 works with applications from Siebel Systems Inc. and PeopleSoft Inc. That lets companies provide call-center workers using Siebel apps with access to digitized customer records, for example. The new release offers a number of resource-management enhancements, including new replication and LAN-caching capabilities, that improve the software’s availability. Version 8.2 is also more tightly integrated with IBM’s WebSphere portal to make it easier to publish content. The new release will support AIX, Sun Microsystems, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and zSeries and eServers platforms. It will be generally available on April 30, priced at $24,000 per server.

Records Manager 2.1, which is used to set records-management and maintenance policies such as retention periods for E-mail and electronic documents, offers improved programming interfaces for adding record-keeping policies to existing business applications. The new software can also use bar codes to tie electronic records to physical records such as paper documents or files. The software will be available on March 31, priced at $24,000 per server and $250 per concurrent user.

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