Total Cost of Ownership for Enterprise Content Management

Executive Overview
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is traditionally thought of as very expensive to license and
extremely costly to roll-out and scale. Additionally, it often requires expensive hardware and
supporting software in the underlying stack.
For a long time, the ECM industry was dependent upon a model based on high cost and complexity,
with the vendor controlling the customer through proprietary power. ECM pricing models are often as
complex as the product offering, with literally thousands of options for customers to consider when
pricing a product configuration. Customers are not clear on what extras are required to deliver a
working system, what fair value is based on usage, or what rights they have regarding software use.
As a result, it is difficult for customers to understand and control the total cost of ownership of ECM.
These hidden extras pricing models continue because they are an important source of revenue for
some enterprise software companies. However, the lack of transparency on true pricing has major
implications when an audit occurs.
Fortunately, there is now an alternative. The most scalable collaboration sites and websites in the
world now run on open source software. These Web 2.0 sites have commoditized the scaling process
and changed the way content is both accessed and mashed-up. In short, given their requirements,
they would not be affordable or economical without open source. They have changed the economic
landscape of both ECM and Reliability, Availability and Scalability (RAS). Open Source allows
companies to do more with less and have a solution that focuses on:

·   Lower Cost  A low cost, subscription model with minimal upfront investment that can be
   driven out of operating expense as opposed to capital expense;
·  Greater Simplicity  Rapid deployment to deliver immediate business value; and
·  Greater Customer Choice  Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by reusing existing
   hardware, software and skills. No lock-in to one ECM vendor or one stack which means when a vendor    tries to dramatically increase maintenance fees, organizations have a choice to go elsewhere.

The ECM Pricing Problem

Unfortunately, most ECM pricing models dictate multiple, complex pricing methods based on user, type of usage, intranet, extranet, website or compliance requirements. These models are typified by per user pricing  which is often called Client Access Licenses (CALs). In this model, companies are tied into paying the same cost for the employee who uses the software for one hour a year as the one who makes use of it for 24 hours a day. Firms will pay multiple times for a single user to use different software just to access or edit different content formats (such as Word and CAD files). There is often confusion with SharePoint pricing regarding the difference between Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) and the extra cost of support and maintenance. WSS 3.0 is freely available with Windows server 2003. MOSS adds extra functionality, but at a significant extra cost. Many of the advanced features users require are only available in MOSS, which can add hundreds of dollars per user to a company's budget. Furthermore, MOSS is available in  Standard and  Enterprise  editions and is also available as a hosted offering. It is important to understand the differences between each of these products to avoid incurring the entire cost of Microsofts CAL (Client Access License) model.

Methodology Used

This white paper will review publicly available pricing information and look at the cost of a typical basic
system with the ability to offer:
   · Office Integration;
   · Collaboration;
   · Content Management;
   · Workflow or Business Process Management;
   · Transformation/Rendition Management (Word to PDF, Flash etc.); and,
   · Search.

The analysis of ECM vendors pricing is conducted for a basic 100 and 1000 user configurations. For the sake of transparency, the product part numbers are shown for each vendor along with the pricing calculation. The URL for the price list used in the calculations is detailed in the Appendix. In the majority of cases, the analysis is based on publicly available pricing from the GSA Advantage website (see Appendix for more details).

EMC/Documentum

EMC/Documentum has over 1,032 options to choose from, with a pricing model that charges:
   · For the content server;
   · Per user pricing;
   · Extra cost depending which client is being used (e.g. Collaboration or Office);
   · Extra cost for process management;
   · Extra cost for content transformation; and,
   · Extra cost to annotate a PDF.

OpenText
OpenText has over 3,000 options to choose from on the publicly available list, with a pricing model
that charges based on the following combinations:
· For the content server;
· Pricing per module as a percentage of main product pricing;
· Pricing per module, per server; and,
· Lower pricing for read-only users and higher pricing for full-named users.

SharePoint
It is important to be aware that SharePoint only runs on a Microsoft stack, thus creating a long-term
vendor lock-in with Microsoft. Some industry commentators have speculated that SharePoint is the
next operating system from Microsoft, and it certainly seems to be the cornerstone of Microsofts
business-focused applications. A typical Microsoft stack includes:
   · Internet Explorer;
   · SharePoint Portal;
   · MS-Office;
   · SharePoint Designer;
   · Web Parts, ASP.NET, C# API;
   · .NET;
   · SQL Server ;
   · Internet Information Server (IIS) v6.0 and higher;
   · Windows Server 2003 and higher.

Therefore, an organizations existing investment in non-Microsoft skills, software, and hardware
cannot be leveraged. So, for an implementation of SharePoint this means:
· No Linux, Unix;
· No Oracle, DB2, MySQL;
· No J2EE , JBoss, BEA Web Logic (Oracle), WebSphere (IBM);
· No PHP, Java, Adobe;
· No DreamWeaver;
· No Microsoft Office on a Mac, no Open Office;
· None of a companys existing portals;
· No Adobe Flex; and,
· Less functionality when using browers such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.
It is also worth noting that SharePoint stores content in the database as a binary large object (BLOB).
Apart from imposing a performance penalty, this also prevents companies from using the free SQL
Server edition for all but the most trivial content applications (as it has a 4GB limit).

It should be noted that on this page it states:

"To be licensed for the Enterprise Edition functionality of Office SharePoint Server 2007, both theStandard and Enterprise client access licenses are required."

Alfresco
Alfresco has a simple price list for simple configuration:
  · All products are included in one subscription  Document Management, Collaboration, Web
    Content Management, and others not under comparison here  Records Management, Image
    Management; and,
 ·  All required components are included in the same subscription (Business Process
    Management, Workflow, and Transformation Services).
    The subscription is based on fair usage  per CPU:
  · There is no per User/CALs pricing; and,
  · There is no extra charge depending on which client is being used (e.g. Collaboration or Office).

ECM Stack Costs
A typical ECM system runs on top of a stack consisting of an:
  · Application Server;
  · Database; and,
  · Operating System.

Some ECM systems require an application server to be purchased, some bundle it and some do not require it. Some systems force companies to use one stack; some give them the freedom of choice.

Red Hat Application Stack
As has been previously mentioned, a typical ECM system runs on top of a stack consisting of an
application server, database and operating system. With respect to Red Hat, a complete stack known
as the Red Hat Application Stack can be purchased and consists of the following elements:
  · Apache HTTP Server;
  · JBoss Application Server;
  · JBoss Hibernate;
  · MySQL and PostgresSQL;
  · Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Alternatively, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and a database MySQL can be purchased separately.