The Four Leading Content Management Vendors Remain at the Top, But IDC Reveals a Shift in the Ranks

IDC: The same four vendors that led the content management market two years ago still lead it today, although their individual rankings have changed. The study, which presents vendor shares for over 50 worldwide content management vendors, reveals that EMC's acquisition of Captiva catapulted the company into the top spot. FileNet, IBM, and Open Text rank second, third, and fourth, respectively. The study also finds that these top four vendors collectively account for over 37% of the total market, and the top ten players account for over 55%.

The content management market grew nearly 10% in 2005, considerably outperforming the software industry as a whole. Although growth slowed somewhat for some of the leading vendors as they worked to consolidate their many acquisitions, we continued to see strong demand for content management solutions. Many of the pure-play vendors that are addressing content management, capture and image management, Web content management, records management, and digital asset management posted extremely strong growth in 2005.

Although the content management market has continued to consolidate, the study reveals that many organizations still lack content management systems or are relying on homegrown solutions that are ripe for replacement. The market is still in the early days of next-generation content applications, and cites ample opportunity for smaller, innovative players to grow at an accelerated rate.

As the content management market continues to mature, enterprises will increasingly seek out solutions that integrate with their IT infrastructure and enterprise applications. IDC expects to see growth in content-centric applications that are built atop the platforms of the leading content management vendors, or atop the content management and records management services of Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle.

The study, Worldwide Content Management Software 2005 Vendor Shares Publ 20060808