As Published In March/April 2005

Manage Your Content
By Jeff Spicer

Is your most valuable resource remaining untapped?

Years ago as a college student, I had a part-time job in the records room of a law office. "Records" was managed by a woman named Rita who enforced record and file policies in a consistent, somewhat intimidating manner. When attorneys and clerks requested files, only Rita and we part-time assistants were allowed to retrieve them from the lengths of shelves that rolled back and forth in tracks on the floor. Rita's policies covered who was allowed to check out documents and for what length of time, and provided strict guidelines for the manner in which documents could be updated.

Rita took seriously not just the tracking and safety of the files and other documents, but also their history. The inside cover of each file contained a complete account of that file, including the creation date, the creator, check in/check out history, sensitivity level, and so on. Reading the history of a particular file was occasionally as interesting as reading the file itself; which isn't saying much because this was, after all, a law office.

Times have changed, and now that documents and files such as those Rita managed are routinely put online, managing files in such a manual way seems as outdated as typing up order forms in triplicate on an IBM Selectric. But the policies and standards that Rita enforced are every bit as relevant today, if not more so. Records retention and auditing regulations have been strengthened in many countries around the world, making content management critical to most businesses. And of course, sensitive records such as those Rita managed must be kept secure.

Security and adherence to government regulations are just part of the content management story; bigger considerations are simply the amount of content itself and the many forms it takes. Just consider the number of content types an average worker uses in a day—e-mail, voice mail, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDFs, and so forth. This content, called unstructured, makes up an estimated 80 percent of content in a business today. Now, consider the many places that content can be stored—on e-mail servers, file servers, individual desktop machines, and so forth—and one begins to understand the challenge in harnessing content and really making it work for the business. Not only is this content critical to your business; it also has the potential to help transform various processes and aspects of your business. This content could be considered one of your most valuable assets, but without the tools to manage it, its potential remains virtually untapped.

Oracle and content management

Content management isn't new. There have been solutions around for years, but most were originally developed to support content specialists in highly regulated document production processes, or they were for use at a department level. Oracle decided to do something about content management and released Oracle Files, available on its own or as part of Oracle Collaboration Suite, with the broader business user population in mind.

Oracle Files is a content management system built to take advantage of the Oracle database. It stores content in the Oracle database, while providing multiple interfaces for your users, giving them the same experience as using a file server.

Next Steps READ more about Oracle Files DOWNLOAD Oracle Collaboration Suite

Oracle Files has been around for several versions, but Oracle Files 10g, announced last year, is more full-featured and has been getting the attention of the tech press. The new release has features that administrators will want to take a look at, including new policy-based document management functionality such as fine-grained security, automatic versioning, enforced attribution, and event-driven workflows.

With these features, administrators can configure Oracle Files 10g to conform to corporate document retention policy by automatically retaining or disposing of documents. For example, a company's compliance officer can enforce the company's retention policy electronically. Documents with certain attributes can be indefinitely retained, while documents with other attributes can be disposed of periodically.

There's much more to Oracle Files and Oracle Collaboration Suite, and in this issue of Oracle Magazine, author David Kelly speaks with Oracle customers who are using Oracle Files and Oracle Collaboration Suite to build flexible content management systems that not only help these businesses get a handle on their content but are enticing enough so that end users willingly make use of them.