IBM brings latest content management offerings to the Middle East

IBM is delivering the industry's only content and information integration platform to leverage information across diverse repositories, providing a single view of business critical information.

As a result of years of research, IBM has become a major player in this field. The company also added to its broad portfolio of more than 160 industry-specific content management solutions. New offerings for the banking and life sciences industries will help enable its customers in the region to leverage their data and meet changing regulatory compliance demands.

"IBM has put an enormous amount of investment in research and development over the past years-our commitment to the industry is supreme. With the announcement today, we're further enabling our Middle East customers to leverage all types of data with simplified and unified management of both structured and unstructured content," said Bashar Kilani, Manager of Software Group, IBM Middle East, Egypt and Pakistan. "IBM is enabling the power of content management software to be seamlessly applied across the entire IT environment and linked to common end-user applications to enrich business transactions."

IBM's new software unleashes the improved performance and integration of Project Cinnamon, part of the company's industry-leading effort to improve the speed and efficiency with which XML documents are processed. The technology also delivers automated indexing and searching capabilities, providing better control over structured and unstructured data repositories and making it easier for end users to store and manage content.

IBM's enhanced content management portfolio includes:

IBM DB2 Content Manager 8.3 -- with significant enhancements to its robust content management platform, workflow capabilities help clients easily automate processes by providing graphical tools to end users. High-performance document routing integrates with workflow capabilities to help streamline business processes. Complete automation of the capture and management of XML documents is also enabled in a common content repository. To help streamline compliance efforts, IBM is the first company to automate records control of content through integration with DB2 Records Manager. This integration helps ensure automatic, consistent and accurate records declaration and classification across all forms of business content. Other enhancements include expanded integration with Web Services including support for Microsoft .NET environments and new rich media streaming technology.

IBM DB2 Document Manager 8.3 -- new records management integration provides simplified, automated document lifecycle management. Additional enhancements include expanded language support, improved usability and productivity features including keyboard accessibility and search enhancements, as well as new security measures through single sign-on capabilities between Content Manager and Document Manager. Together with IBM DB2 Records Manager 4.1.1, the software supports government and corporate industry standards. Document Manager 8.3 is also integrated with standard office and CAD applications, enabling end users to simply save documents as corporate records.

IBM DB2 CommonStore 8.3 -- a comprehensive solution for archive and retention management of e-mails, attachments and messaging system content. Records management integration allows end users to easily save e-mail messages and attachments as records, either manually or automatically. IBM DB2 CommonStore 8.3 also manages, retains and disposes of messaging system content to help comply with regulatory, legal and corporate policy requirements. Improved full text indexing, full text searching and retrieval capabilities provide access to all content, message body and attachments from either native client interfaces or archive repository interfaces. Single instance archiving ensures that only one copy of a document is kept in the archive, regardless of how many times the same document was archived by different users. Extended storage platform support helps leverage the most appropriate storage device depending on the lifecycle value of the content.

Integrated solutions for life sciences and banking industries

IBM Corporate Information Asset Manager helps life sciences and pharmaceutical firms identify data that needs to be archived, retrieved or deleted throughout the lifecycle of a medical device or pharmaceutical. The solution leverages IBM DB2 Records Manager and helps automate and manage stringent compliance requirements in the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries.
IBM Account Opening Solution for the Banking Industry helps banks speed up and improve service in the business-critical process of opening up new checking, savings and loan accounts. By eliminating paperwork and redundancies, the solution helps improve collaboration among bank personnel by creating a single repository for all customer information. It is also designed to automate account decision-making processes and reduce application processing costs. These solutions complement existing IBM content management-based solutions designed specifically for the banking, finance, insurance, government and life sciences industries.

Planned availability for DB2 Content Manager 8.3, DB2 Document Manager 8.3 and DB2 CommonStore 8.3 is March 25, 2005. IBM DB2 Content Management is available through IBM and through IBM Business Partners.