First and second place in the latest Forrester report went to Microsoft and OpenText, our platforms of choice when it comes to designing our proven client solutions.
What does the report say?
• Microsoft has accelerated its investment in its Microsoft 365 cloud content platform with significant enhancements to collaboration, communication, and compliance capabilities. As a dominant content and collaboration platform in large enterprises, it continues to fill historical feature gaps that previously required third-party tools.
Microsoft has improved its narrative for non-IT experts (e.g. Viva). Its push into AI- and ML-driven knowledge management and insights extraction is ambitious but risks lukewarm results unless its clients take metadata and information architecture seriously.
Microsoft 365 has strong end-to-end collaboration capabilities, including integration with its own cloud authoring and productivity tools. It now has a strong foundation for automated document categorization with AI and ML and knowledge graph tools, launched as Viva Topics and SharePoint.
Microsoft 365 has room for improvement in its process automation and other transactional content services capabilities. Reference customers report some dissatisfaction with workflow modeling and the early nature of its AI-infused capabilities. The fast pace of feature updates can cause frustration with clients who want to test and learn before they adopt.
Choose Microsoft 365 when requirements demand an enterprise-wide investment in a cloud-first employee experience and a common content, collaboration, and communication platform with adequate governance and compliance capabilities built into its top-tier bundles.
• OpenText delivers a comprehensive set of content services but with a complex portfolio. OpenText Extended ECM is the flagship content platform that includes a comprehensive set of content services. However, several advanced or newer capabilities require separate licensing and investment, such as Magellan for AI and AppWorks for low-code design and development. This can confuse buyers.
OpenText’s product strategy has a strong focus on integration with essential employee productivity and enterprise applications. Its transition to cloud has been a multiyear journey, offering a mix of software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps along with public and private cloud deployment options for Extended ECM. Its next-generation, cloud-native SaaS offering, Core Content, built on its OT2 platform, was launched in April 2021. Extended ECM excels in core content services such as records management and applications.
Source: Forrester Wave ™: Content Platforms, Q2 2021, 14 June 2021, © 2021 Forrester Research, Inc.