New research from Oracle and IDG suggests that firms are failing to capitalise on unstructured content. Well, with Stellent now added to its acquisitions mountain, Oracle would say that, wouldn’t it? But the data is interesting nonetheless.

According to the report, two-thirds of “senior IT decision makers” in Western Europe think they have the unstructured data issue managed, or are on the right tracks to cracking the problem. The flip side of that is that 60 per cent say they can’t make business decisions based on unstructured data because it is either too hard to find or because it is sitting among other, irrelevant data.

The average organisation surveyed had 4.28 ECMs in place (!) with many, unsurprisingly, seeking to consolidate. Oracle suggests that this “raises the question as to whether European organisations actually understand that unstructured content is an enterprise-wide issue that requires a strategic enterprise-wide solution”.

That’s a dodgy conclusion. The proliferation of ECMs (and ERPs, databases, BI systems etc) might be better accounted for by the crazy growth patterns and the pace of change in modern technology-driven business. When Oracle itself came along with client/server databases, few smart companies said “sorry, we’ve already standardised on DB2 on the mainframe”.

One other data point is worth examination: 63 per cent of European enterprises “consider email as the primary source for managing unstructured content, with 86 per cent admitting that email is used as the primary source for sharing content”.

That’s refreshingly open but it’s not as “surprising” as Oracle suggests that email is often a vehicle for decision making. The fact that many of us use email as out primary means not only of communications but also for knowledge management, contact information and much else is as much an indictment of ECM usability as anything else.

This research is clearly Oracle positioning itself as the company capable of making ECM palatable for mainstream businesses who are dissatisfied by the big incumbents. Fair enough, the more ECM matters get an airing the better.

But it also suggests to me that ECM is still in its infancy. Alfresco’s John Newton is fitting ECM with social networking integrations to reflect his belief that ECM users will move from being 10 per cent of the orgainsation to over half of users. This Oracle data backs up the hunch that ECM might have to change fast to fit in with the way users want to work, rather than asking users to adapt to what software designers say is right.