EMC Corp., IBM and Microsoft Corp. have joined up with a variety of software vendors to create a Web services interface that will allow applications to interoperate with multiple enterprise content management (ECM) systems.
The companies said the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification aims to reduce the IT burden around multiple vendor content management environments. The creation of the CMIS was established in late 2006 by software providers like Alfresco Software, Open Text, Oracle and SAP.
“Today's businesses are driven by information,” Jeff Teper, corporate vice-president of the Office Business Platform, Office SharePoint Server Group at Microsoft, said in a release. “When companies operate in silos, with information scattered throughout the enterprise, it becomes extremely difficult for customers to realize its full value. By working together, we believe we can enable customers to maximize the use of critical business assets.”
The specification will also aim to benefit independent software vendors by allowing them to create specialized applications that can run over a multitude of content management systems. The three companies hope the specification will eventually save customers time and money in integrating their ECM solutions.