Platform for Enterprise Content Management

SharePoint Server 2007 includes a variety of new and improved features for storing and organizing corporate documents, and managing the life cycle of corporate records. In addition, the product takes over the role of Microsoft’s Content Management Sever (CMS) 2002 Web content management product. Microsoft lumps these capabilities under the general heading of enterprise content management (ECM), positioning SharePoint Server 2007 to compete with ECM vendors such as EMC and IBM.

Low licensing costs and Office integration could give SharePoint Server 2007 an edge over those vendors, but organizations deploying SharePoint Server 2007 face a challenge familiar to customers of other ECM platforms: success depends on user acceptance and discipline, and solutions will be prone to failure if considered burdensome by users.

What Is Enterprise Content Management?

SharePoint Server 2007 provides the following ECM features:

• Prebuilt workflows and better document libraries for corporate document