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• Consolidation at the top end of the market
• Vendors focusing on document management are thriving
• Non-traditional options (open source/cloud) continue to disrupt both markets
• SharePoint 2010 will be remain a strong contender and competitor — but typically not a replacement system

Just as importantly, the ECM market is strong and continues to grow, with dozens of viable supplier options targeting specific business problems. Pick up the full report.

IBM Upgrades BPM software

IBM (news, site) has just announced a number of new products that will considerably expand its capabilities in the business process management space.

The enhancements span its Software Group and Global Business Services and provide industry-specific templates to help clients in banking, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications and industrial product lifecycle management accelerate their BPM projects.

The new offerings are based on industry standards and can be can be customized to meet an individual client's unique business needs. Enhancements include:

• Expanded BPM suite: Includes IBM WebSphere Lombardi Edition which provides visibility and real-time control to help process owners react immediately to changing business conditions.
• Enhancements to WebSphere Dynamic Process Edition: New feature packs providing enhanced functionality and new capabilities to enable increased productivity and smarter insight.
• IBM BPM Blueprint: New web-based offering designed to help employees, partners and suppliers participate in communicating and improving business processes, ideas and initiatives.
• IBM ILOG Business Rules Management System : New easier and more comprehensive rule authoring to automate decision-making processes.

In the first-quarter of 2010, IBM reported double-digit revenue growth in its business process management and integration software portfolio.

Federal Records Safe?

Nearly 80 percent of federal agencies are at significant risk of improperly destroying records, according to a report from the National Archives and Records Administration.

Of 224 agencies that conducted self-assessments at the NARA's request, 36 percent were found to be at high risk and 43 percent at moderate risk.

Of particular concern, the report said, is e-mail records management, where NARA found nearly half of respondents at high risk. Policies for managing records that are transferred or stored via e-mail are often either nonexistent or poorly communicated to employees, the report found.

Judged at higher risk are those agencies that may not be creating and managing records effectively or keeping them around long enough, the report states. This can be damaging to those agencies' operations, diminish accountability and reduce access to historically important records, according to NARA.

Agencies at high risk include the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis; U.S. European Command; the Navy; the Homeland Security Department's Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration.

If you want a full copy of the report download it here.

Data Breach Costs Rise

The average cost of a data breach globally stood at US $3.43 million last year, the equivalent of US $142 per compromised customer record. However, costs varied between regions, from US $204 per lost record in the U.S. down to US $98 per record in the UK.

A total of 133 organizations, located in five countries — Australia, France, Germany, UK and U.S. — participated in the research, which was undertaken during 2009 by information management researcher Ponemon Institute(news, site) and the PGP Corporation

The average costs of a data breach in all five countries were:

The report shows that costs incurred in countries with data breach notification laws were significantly higher than in countries where no such legislation exists. If you want to find out more, go to the Ponemon blog.

ACS Gives Xerox Medicare

For those wondering what the recent acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services by  Xerox (news, site) will bring to the document management giant, then the signing of a ten-year, US$ 1.6 billion contract to manage California's Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) should explain it.

ACS will assume operations of the current MMIS and implement enhancements to improve operational efficiency and allow for greater control across Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program.

It will also provide complete fiscal intermediary services, including provider claims payment, provider and stakeholder relations and training, beneficiary relationship services, telephone service centers, security and privacy protections and more.