Enterprise Content Management Systems can be difficult to define. Broadly speaking, Enterprise Content Management systems are used to capture, store and present content. The term Content Management System (CMS) is sometimes used to describe systems specifically created for website management. These systems can be considered to be a subset of Enterprise CMS and are more correctly referred to as Web CMS.

A Web CMS provides functionality for creating content and data driven web sites. The principal value of a Web CMS is that users require minimal computing expertise. A typical Web CMS will provide presentation, application and data layers using technologies such as HTML, PHP and MySQL. Users can add, modify and remove content as they see fit using simple WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) editing tools. Fonts and styles can be modified and multimedia content such as pictures and video can be added. This content is added using HTML by the background system but users require no programming knowledge.

Typically, a Web CMS breaks a web site into Sections, Categories and Articles. Sections can consist of one or more Categories while Categories can consist of one or more Articles. This makes Web CMS ideal for complex websites where content is frequently updated. Users can also apply templates so that their website has the same style in every web page. This is much less complex a task than using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Menus can also be added to the web site using the CMS.  The content and style of the website is typically stored in a database.

The above is a subset of the features offered by a Web CMS. There are both commercial and open source offerings in the marketplace. Joomla! (http://www.joomla.org) is an open source web site that has been used by organisations such as Hardvard University, Citibank and MTV to create Internet and Intranet sites. Similarly, Drupal (http://www.drupal.org)  is free software that can be used to create content-driven websites. Commerical offerings in this space include Terminal 4 (http://www.terminalfour.com/) and IBM Lotus Web Content Management (http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/webcontentmanagement/).

Web CMS is a well known subset of Enterprise CMS but Document Management Systems (DMS - discussed in the previous blog) can also be considered as a subset of Enterprise CMS. Thus, while a CMS may be a system that simply manages digital content it is clear that there are many facets to consider. At a high level, an Enterprise CMS can be seen as a system that manages the digital content, data and documents for the entire organisation. While this may be a simple definition, in actuality an Enterprise CMS may consists of a myriad of subsystems including Document Management, Records Management, Web Content Management, Digital Asset Management, Portal Content Management and Collaboration (including Web 2.0 collaboration - blogs, forums etc.). We have already considered Document, Records and Web Content Management.

Digital Asset Management refers to the capturing, cataloguing, storage and retrieval of digital assets. These assets have value to an organisation and are often in a multimedia format e.g. digital photos and music. Digital Asset Management can be subcategorised further into the management of brand assets such as logos and product images and library assets such as photo archives. Media Asset Management Systems helps you to organise, search for and retrieve media files while Production Asset Management Systems enables organisations to use media assets throughout the production process in areas such as digital media production. Digital Supply Chains enable the delivery of multimedia content such as video or music from the content provider to the final retailer. This latter system has been recognised as a key system for Apple's delivery of content to its iTunes store.

Enterprise Portals deliver content to different stakeholders in an organisations such as employees, investors and suppliers. Portal Management Systems enable collaboration by providing access to and the sharing of content and documents. Finally, Collaboration Systems (sometimes referred to as Groupware) enables teams and organisation members to share content and work with each other. The recent launch of Google Wave (http://wave.google.com) is just one example of such software. IBM's Lotus Notes (http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/) is probably the most well known product.

The advent of Web 2.0 has led to what's sometimes referred to as Social Software for creating content such as blogs or forums. When used for business, this social software is referred to as Enterprise 2.0 and includes not only collaboration tools for blogging and providing help wikis but also the creation of online communities and the management of the organisation's social network. There are many offerings for Enterprise 2.0 Social Software. IBM's Lotus Connections (http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/connections/) is just one of many examples. 

As we see here, there are many facets to consider and some vendors provide solutions for specifc categories of Enterprise Content Management. Other software vendors provide Enterprise Content Management Solutions that incorporate all these categories as subsystems and features of their product. Solutions such as Microsoft Sharepoint (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101747881033.aspx) and Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM - http://www.oracle.com/products/middleware/content-management/enterprise-content-management.html) provide not only web site content management but also the management of diverse content across the organisation. Alfresco (http://www.alfresco.com/) provide an open source solution for managing content across the enterprise.Alternatively, organisations can develop their own CMS using programming tools such as Java Server Pages (JSPs) and Servlets or Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP).

The question we will now consider is the role Enterprise Content Management Systems have for the management of data generated by smart objects. We will again roughly divide smart objects into smart meters, wireless sensors, GPS devices and RFID. In the case of smart meters, the data generated to measure consumption of a utility could be captured by Vertoda middleware and transferred to and presented by a Web Content Management System. Consumption data could also be used to drive energy efficiency if it is stored and presented on an Enterprise Portal so that every employee is aware of utility consumption within the organisation as well as the level of consumption in different locations and departments. Indeed, the data captured by smart meters and wireless sensors can be made available throughout the organisation by an Enterprise Content Management System. Smart Meter data is often used to drive 'Green' Policies and needs to be available to many interested stakeholders within the organisation while the data generated by Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can be used to improve monitoring and generate new products and services. Whether the data refers to the measurement of aspects of a physical environment or the detection of an element in that physical environment it will need to be made available to many different interested parties within an organisation. Enterprise Content Management Systems are the ideal mechanism for making these pools of data available while Collaboration Systems can make this data available for sharing by teams in areas such as environmental monitoring. GPS data can be used within the Supply Chain to keep track of the location of a delivery or by the Service Engineering department to monitor the location of a moving asset such as a truck. Again, this data can be used to support decision making and assessing the efficiency of operations and could be provided to an Intranet driven by a Web CMS or a Portal Management System to give finer granularity in the management of operations. Finally, RFID data would be used by Inventory Systems to keep track of goods and stock levels and can provide asset tracking content for a CMS.

Capturing the data from smart objects, transforming this data into meaningful information and making this information available to an Enterprise Content Management System is not a trivial task. Middleware is required to provide Enterprise CMS with this new pool of information. Vertoda Middleware performs these tasks and can be easily integrated with any type of commercial or open source CMS, thus providing organisations with information from smart networks that improves decision making and monitoring of for their core operations.