With all the excitement over mega-mergers and corporate governance mandates, some of the smaller companies in enterprise content management probably haven't had their fair share of publicity in the past few years. That's certainly true of Nuxeo, which remains one of the best-kept secrets in ECM.

Why so quiet? Well, Nuxeo has its roots in France and, in part, you can blame the media (OK, people like me) obsession with north American companies and the ups and downs of firms with huge revenue streams. In part, it's also probably because Nuxeo's platform is built on open source and open-source outfits tend to do things by stealth. Anyhow, whether it likes it or not, Nuxeo is due some attention.

The company has just released an update to its core Java-based ECM, adding a couple of features such as new search capabilities and stronger data import/export, but the real story about Nuxeo is its customer base that  reads like a Who's Who?  of French business and government.  The company has a London office and is striving to go beyond its local market -- it's worth getting to know.