The Stellent ECM system gets rebundled, upgraded and integrated with Oracle Fusion Middleware and search offerings.

Doug Henschen, Executive Editor, Enterprise Apps

May 1, 2007

3 Min Read

Stellent sold enterprise content management (ECM) in an a la carte approach, but Oracle has bundled much more into Oracle Universal Content Management 10g, the first upgrade of the ECM system since Stellent was acquired last fall. Released April 30, Oracle Universal Content Management 10g includes the core Content Server (repository) as well as capabilities for managing Web sites, documents, digital assets and ad-hoc collaboration. Also included are new desktop, portal, and content integration capabilities as well as new search and storage options added by Oracle.

Universal Content Management previously integrated with Microsoft SharePoint for records management, but the upgrade lets users check in, search, browse folders and access SharePoint workflows directly from Oracle Universal Content Management. Content from SharePoint can then be "promoted" from SharePoint into the Universal repository for use across multiple Web sites, portals and business apps.

Universal Content Management continues to support BEA, IBM and Sun application servers and portals - the latter with JSR 168-compliant portlets that expose content management functionality - but the upgrade has also been integrated with Oracle Fusion Middleware components including the Oracle App Server, Oracle Portal Server and Oracle WebCenter Suite. Important to many firms, the product still does not require an application server if the customer has a smaller deployment.

Oracle is taking advantage of the Outside-In (Inso) viewing technology acquired in the purchase of Stellent - technology that lets you view scores of file formats without the native software - but it has also introduced "content refinery" services for automatically transforming files to PDF, TIF, HTML, and XML or other formats. The refinery architecture lets you plug in conversion engines and customize services. For example, you could use Framemaker to automatically convert files to PDF or you could create a service to automatically update Word 98 files to Word 2003.

Universal Content management continues to ship with an OEM version of the Verity (Autonomy) database, but new options for searching within the repository include native Oracle database search as well as a base license of Oracle Secure Enterprise Search. To extend beyond the repository, customers can upgrade/integrate to the full version of Oracle Secure Enterprise Search, Verity or FAST Search.

Expanding on storage options, the 10g upgrade includes a File Store Provider architecture said to offer granular control of how and where specific types of content are stored. Stellent deployments stored content to file systems, but both content and metadata can now be stored to a database. In addition, pre-built integrations are now available for NetApp and Fujitsu storage devices as well as EMC Centera.

Oracle Universal Content Management is available immediately and is priced at $100,000 per processor or $2,000 per named user. The product is also sold as a part of the Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite, which bundles Oracle Universal Content Management, Oracle Imaging and Process Management, and Oracle Universal Records Management at $150,000 per processor.

About the Author(s)

Doug Henschen

Executive Editor, Enterprise Apps

Doug Henschen is Executive Editor of InformationWeek, where he covers the intersection of enterprise applications with information management, business intelligence, big data and analytics. He previously served as editor in chief of Intelligent Enterprise, editor in chief of Transform Magazine, and Executive Editor at DM News. He has covered IT and data-driven marketing for more than 15 years.

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