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If there is one claim to fame that Xerox has over pretty much every other player in the content management space, it's that its history working with enterprise content goes back for decades.

"Xerox has been in the document management business since day one," said Colman Murphy, product manager for DocuShare. Even before DocuShare was introduced as a product in 1997, the software was used to help the five research centers at Xerox store and share information. From the start it has tried to remain true to its claims of ease of use and deployment.

Xerox unveiled DocuShare 5.0 last week, and alongside of it an enterprise-level product called DocuShare CPX, which goes above and beyond what 5.0 has to offer. Murphy told Intranet Journal the split in DocuShare's family tree is a reaction to what Xerox sees as a split in the enterprise content management (ECM) space.

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Enterprise content is divided between day-to-day content and high-value content. Day-to-day content consists of correspondence, marketing and sales literature, and administrative documents. It is low in value but high in volume. High-value content consists of business-critical documents like mortgage or insurance applications.

DocuShare 5.0 and CPX share the same back end. That enterprise content platform consists of content management services, collaboration services, content transformation, and security and compliance. In DocuShare 5.0, that platform manifests itself in features for document management, ad-hoc collaboration, content review and approval, Web publishing and delivery, and desktop application integration.

Version 5.0 is now scalable to thousands of users and millions of documents out of the box. Federated search across DocuShare 5.0 and CPX is also available. There are guest access levels for Web publishing and delivery, and a Microsoft Outlook client.

The My DocuShare view from Xerox DocuShare 5.0.

DocuShare CPX offers everything in DocuShare 5.0 and more. A knowledge network engine breaks documents into XML components, and an XDBQuery API offers content retrieval. CPX has direct integration with Microsoft Office applications. Content-centric collaboration consists of support for wikis, blogs, and dynamic documents (HTML files with multiple contributors). Asynchronous collaboration options include comments, routing notifications, and RSS feeds. WebEx integration supports real-time collaboration.

Content rules in CPX automate the content process and can be created or modified without the involvement of the IT staff. CPX includes certified records management, as well as the ability to render documents as PDFs or XML files.

"I think we have a product that is unique for such a broad audience," Murphy said. And Xerox has worked to stay loyal to DocuShare's ease of use even as more features are added. DocuShare products support all major browsers and operating systems. Murphy told of one government contractor with 5,000 DocuShare users ranging from interns to rocket scientists.

On top of the shared backend of DocuShare 5.0 and CPX, Xerox plans to sell customizations for 5.0 through Xerox agents and VARs. Rich enterprise applications built on CPX will be available through Xerox Global Services and independent software vendors. DocuShare 5.0 is available as a complete out-of-the-box system starting at $4,500. DocuShare CPX starts at $45,000. Customers will be allowed to mix and match DocuShare 5.0 and CPX seats to meet their needs.

A project space in Xerox DocuShare CPX.

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