14 DAY TRIAL // The Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification is the child of Microsoft, EMC and IBM, and the three companies reveled that they aim to receive standardization from the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). At the heart of the initiative is the need to ensure that business applications will be able to tap multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories produced by different vendors, all from user-oriented Web Services and Web 2.0 interfaces.
“The real winner in today’s announcement is the customer. Today’s businesses are driven by information. 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 asset,” explained Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of the Office Business Platform, Office SharePoint Server Group at Microsoft.
Melissa Webster, program vice president, Content & Digital Media Technologies at IDC indicated that the CMIS specification is welcome as it would enable organizations struggling to centralize data from multiple content management products across their IT infrastructure. It is the specific nature of dispersed repositories that has catalyzed the need for a common standard. Razmik Abnous, vice president and chief technology officer, Content Management and Archiving Division at EMC, highlighted the increasing need for interoperability in the space of Enterprise Content Management Systems. IBM, EMC and Microsoft have put together a common standard designed to take advantage of SOA principles and Web 2.0 interfaces which now needs OASIS approval.
“We applaud EMC, IBM, and Microsoft for reaching this milestone and for choosing to take the next step and advance this important work through an open standards process,” added Laurent Liscia, executive director of OASIS. “We look forward to furthering the evolution of CMIS from specification to standard and to promoting the broadest possible industry adoption through education and implementation efforts.”