Daniel Chalef

Optaros Open Source Document Management Magic Quadrant and Gartner ECM Quadrant Thoughts

Bruno von Rotz and colleagues at Optaros recently put together an interesting webinar exploring the open source document management space. They produced a nifty magic quadrant and KnowledgeTree isn’t doing too badly, considering that the KnowledgeTree application’s primary goal isn’t to solve large enterprise document management challenges. We’re still committed to helping the very large number of smaller organizations and work-teams manage collaboration, control and compliance challenges.

SMB and departmental applications need:

• to be easy to install: KnowledgeTree has a single-click installer for both Windows and Linux (see a previous post with some 3rd-party commentary on how easy it is compared to another well known open source DM player);
• easy to purchase: clear indication of pricing on promotional material, particularly on your website and clearly defined product offering with no surprises (your customer needn’t have a BS to work out what it is going to cost them);
• easy to use: clear, well constructed user interface, significant amount of documentation written at an appropriate level (quick start guides, full user manuals, wikis, API documentation) and available within the application, in a downloadable form, and online.
• meet SMB and departmental functional requirements and at the right price: you’re never going to be able to have every single piece of functionality that all of your customers desire, but you can find a middle ground between functionality and price-point that satisfies a very significant number of your customers who are your primary market segment.

Along somewhat similar lines to the Optaros quadrant, Alan Pelze-Sharpe, an analyst at CMSWatch, comments on the 2007 Gartner ECM Magic Quadrant and the absence of KnowledgeTree and its open source contemporaries in his recent De-mystifying the Gartner ECM Magic Quadrant article. Is open source content management still the elephant in the parlour?