Tomorrow, one of the most anticipated films of the holiday season is coming to theaters: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I couldn’t help but think, “What if there was a way to find the most fantastic ECMs?” Well, there is! Each year, Gartner releases a report for different industries and puts the large players in those industries in what they call the magic quadrant. (Do you see what I’m doing here?) We will consider those in the magic quadrant to be fantastic ECMs.
The four categories in the magic quadrant are Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players. Leaders have a high ability to execute and have a complete vision for where they are going in the future. In the context of ECM, they have a strong presence in multiple regions, consistent financial performance, and good customer support. Leaders integrate with other business applications and repositories, and incorporate social, cloud, and mobile capabilities.
Challengers are defined as offering good functionality, but lacking in the vision of leaders. In the context of ECM, they utilize partnerships to fill out their suites. They may lack in geographical coverage, but they execute well despite their limitations.
Visionaries tend to show a strong understanding of the market and anticipate shifts in the market. They lead efforts relating to standards and new technologies. They may offer the essential components of ECM software natively and may support other components by leveraging the use of partnerships.
Niche Players typically focus on more specific categories of ECM technology. They are usually in the process of ramping up their ECM efforts, but struggle in the categories of completeness of vision and ability to execute. Their geographical limitations make them more of an ECM “boutique” that only serves certain industries.
We wanted to give a shout-out to our connectors and partners that made the list this year:
- Making the list as a Visionary was M-Files. As a matter of fact, M-Files was the only visionary named in this year’s magic quadrant.
- Microsoft and Alfresco both landed as Challengers on this year’s magic quadrant.
- And we are happy to be connected with 3 out of the 4 leaders of the ECM magic quadrant. IBM, Dell EMC (EMC Documentum), and OpenText all made the list of Leaders.
Congratulations to all of you for making the list of ECM systems on this year’s Gartner magic quadrant! Now you know who the fantastic ECMs are and where to find them!