EMC Corporation, the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today unveiled the results of an exclusive content management survey the company sponsored in conjunction with AIIM - the market’s leading authority on enterprise content management (ECM).

The survey, which polled more than 200 IT business professionals, reveals that today’s businesses and government organisations continue to struggle with management of “unstructured” information, which represents the majority of data collected and accessible to enterprises – including scanned images, Word files, spreadsheets, presentations and e-mail.  While 99 percent of respondents admitted that unstructured information played a significant role in driving their business processes, most identified major challenges if unstructured information was not readily available as part of those processes.

“Unstructured information drives numerous business processes – but all too often, organisations cannot leverage this information effectively, leading to inconsistent communications between functions, duplication of effort, poor decision-making, higher costs, and non-compliance with internal best practices,” said Carl Frappaolo, AIIM Vice President, Market Intelligence.  “Unfortunately, enterprise content management deployment today is a major challenge, as traditional ECM solutions require greater effort than many believe is reasonable or justifiable.”

Nearly half of respondents (47 percent) reported that today’s content management offerings require too much effort to implement, with integration of disparate technology components (37 percent) and integration with legacy systems (34 percent) accounting for the biggest delays in developing business solutions on top of ECM platforms.  Because of these integration challenges, half of respondents indicated that they wanted solutions built on top of an ECM platform. 

“Companies and government agencies today are demanding content-enabled solutions to help them more effectively incorporate unstructured content into critical business processes,” said Mark Lewis, President, Content Management and Archiving Division at EMC.  “At EMC, we are committed to investing in and providing solutions that directly address these customer challenges -- in a way not addressed by any other vendor in the market today.”

“Customers are looking for solutions built on top of scalable ECM platforms, such as EMC Documentum, that include pre-built integrations into complementary content management products, ECM platform-certified partner technologies, and a full range of professional services and partner offerings to complement industry and business process expertise,” said Balaji Yelamanchili, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Content Management and Archiving at EMC.  “By leveraging this strategic approach to content management, employees can make faster and better decisions, share information across functions, and ensure consistent communications among decision-makers.”

EMC’s Content-Enabled Solutions

EMC’s content-enabled solutions strategy is built on nearly two decades of commitment to providing the market’s premier enterprise content management solutions spanning multiple industries and government sectors.  The strategy leverages EMC’s worldwide partner community as a foundation, building on vertical industry offerings designed on top of EMC’s content management infrastructure. 

EMC’s content-enabled solutions are based on the award-winning EMC Documentum platform and enable customers to solve business and operational problems specific to their industry or business function.  Customers benefit from EMC’s vertical and process knowledge, backed by integrated, end-to-end solutions and a wide ranging partner support network.

To listen to a podcast about the AIIM survey and results, please visit http://software.edgeboss.net/download/software/aiimecmsurvey.mp3

About AIIM

AIIM isthe community that provides education, research, and best practices to help organisations find, control and optimise their information.

For over 60 years, AIIM has been the leading non-profit organisation focused on helping users to understand the challenges associated with managing their business information and processes. Today, AIIM is international in scope, independent, implementation-focused, and, as the representative of the entire industry - including users, suppliers, and the channel - acts as the industry's intermediary.  Complete information about AIIM is available at www.aiim.org.

About EMC

EMC Corporation is the world’s leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organisations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC’s products and services can be found at www.EMC.co.uk.

EMC and Documentum are registered trademarks of EMC Corporation and its subsidiaries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This release contains “forward-looking statements” as defined under the Federal Securities Laws.  Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iii) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (iv) risks associated with managing the growth of our business, including risks associated with acquisitions and investments and the challenges and costs of integration, restructuring and achieving anticipated synergies; (v) fluctuations in VMware, Inc.’s operating results and risks associated with trading of VMware stock; (vi) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures and new product introductions; (vii) the relative and varying rates of product price and component cost declines and the volume and mixture of product and services revenues; (viii) component and product quality and availability; (ix) the transition to new products, the uncertainty of customer acceptance of new product offerings and rapid technological and market change; (x) insufficient, excess or obsolete inventory; (xi) war or acts of terrorism; (xii) the ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (xiii) fluctuating currency exchange rates; and (xiv) other one-time events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in EMC’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.