Although the recent announcement of the emerging Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standards promise to make Enterprise Content Management systems play nicely together, the process of selecting an ECM vendor is still a challenge, and isn't likely to become much easier anytime soon.Hoping to ease the pressure of the evaluation process, CMS Watch last week released The ECM Suites Report 2009, which provides detailed comparisons of ECM solutions from 30 different vendors.

While it seems that Microsoft SharePoint has been stealing most of the headlines in the ECM space of late, it's just one of many choices, as the report makes evident. Among the other ECM vendors and products covered by the report are Alfresco ECM, Oracle, Interwoven, Open Text LiveLink ECM Suite, SpringCM, and Xythos Enterprise Document Management Suite, as well as niche products such as Adobe LiveCycle ES and Salesforce.com Content.

The report's not cheap, but neither are bad decisions when it comes to ECM systems, and making the wrong choice can cause a significant impact across your enterprise. Fortunately, CMS Watch has historically done an exceptionally solid job in compiling their reports, and this appears to be no exception.

You can visit the CMS Watch site to check out the full list of vendors covered, the table of contents, as well as download a 45-page excerpt of the 400-page report to get a feeling for their analysis. For an enterprise engaged in any evaluation process for and ECM system, aggregated information like this can be indispensable.