Third wave products, are innovative solutions that do document management in new and interesting ways. This section is provided in order to make it easy to find out about those products, learn about the vendors that have created them, and find the solution providers that sell them, and the customers that use them. This, section will grow over time, so check back often.
Document Management Software as a technology genre has undergone numerous waves of innovation. The first wave of solutions was highly proprietary, limited in functionality and offered a minimal set of true management features. Embraced by the (then) technology mainstream vendors the software often required their own specialized hardware in order to even run.
The second wave of innovation (nineties to present) brought all of the functionality of the first wave to the standard Microsoft computing environment. Instead of having to install specialized, proprietary workstations, servers and storage devices, the standard computing environment could be employed as the document management computing platform of choice. Second generation vendors typically used the same approaches in pricing, modular architecture and features and functionality of Generation 1 players. While Generation 2 solutions are typically less expensive than Generation 1, they often require lengthy implementation cycles, customization of features and capabilities and detailed project plans in order to succeed.
The third wave is centered around the web, and modern collaborative architectures like SOA, SaaS, SharePoint, .NET and Open architectures, and even Open Source (more on that at another time). Many of the products listed here are modern builds, from the ground up instead of reworking elements around a core platform that was developed in Generation 1 or Generation 2. For the most part they use software development tools and technology infrastructures of today as opposed to making yesterday fit into today.
Centered around the web typically means (at a minimum) fully featured "thin clients" that run inside a browser instead of being a dedicated desktop application, and pricing models that encourage the wide-spread use of document management as a web based facility for the enterprise, as opposed to a discrete solution for a particular niche application.
We have created this page to assist those of you who are looking to upgrade your legacy ECM solution, or perhaps are looking for your first solution and would like to examine some state of the art alternatives. As we said above this section will grow as we learn about new products, solution providers and services we will email our membership to keep you up to date.
What are your Thoughts, use our free RFI (Request for Information) Service?
Our analysts want to hear from you....
Technology and the application of technology in your business has many facets. There is a lot more to know than just what an acronym may mean. We want to hear about it directly from you.
Do you have a question regarding the topic above? Let us know.
Do you have an example of the above technology in action? This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
