Editorial

By Richard N. Stover, Publisher

The Document Management Industry is alive and growing! AIIM is alive and healthy! Long live this industry! But wait! This industry like everything is changing! So we can't rest on our laurels. That's the message that was clear from this year's AIIM Conference and Show in Anaheim.

First, the implementation of document management software products is proceeding at a fast pace. One vendor (Lotus Domino.doc) is reporting big wins among the Global 1000s with 30,000 seats at GM, 22,000 seats at Texas Instruments and 80,000 seats at Proctor & Gamble, all in 1998! Others like FileNET are winning in smaller numbers across a spectrum of vertical markets: manufacturing including discrete and process (primarily petrochemical), insurance, utilities (including telecommunications), and banking.

Secondly, specialization in one or more vertical market solutions is important to the success of vendors in this industry. That was evident at the show with many vendors like Bantec demonstrating solutions for banking (there was even one user organization, Chase Manhattan, demonstrating a series of banking solutions), while others covered insurance, public sector, healthcare and manufacturing. We have chosen to recognize companies who achieve significant market shares of a given market segment because we believe this trend to be significant for our industry. Our first award goes to FileNET for their achievements in the insurance market (see page ?? for more details).

In addition to the software solution sellers, many large consulting/integration firms like KPMG that specialize in specific market applications, were either exhibiting separately or in a software solution seller's booth as a partner. This specialization in the vertical markets will continue to drive the more successful market players who should be even more evident at future AIIM shows. The challenge for AIIM is to provide the incentive for such players to attend what may be perceived as a horizontal show (Documentum - a strong vertical market player, Altris, Cimage and others did not exhibit this year except in partners' booths including Microsoft and Staffware). (An older trend, partnering continues to be rampant with Kodak/Eastman, Microsoft and others competing to see who can have the most in their booths.)

One industry trend not evident at AIIM this year, is the growing presence of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors garnering the dollar resources of many G 1000 companies to build an infrastructure for managing the information assets. SAP is the most dominant company in this space and around the AIIM show floor you saw some companies like FileNET demonstrating a partnership with SAP. We believe this trend to be so strong for the document management software companies that we are beginning an Enterprise Resource Management section in Document Management Magazine, staring with this issue. We intend to show you the significance of this trend as we continue the publishing of this magazine. Until next time...