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Enterprise content buying--the new landscape.

Article Excerpt
It is not news that the global economy is in a major crisis: a recession. We see it when we turn on our televisions, access the internet, or read a newspaper or our favorite weekly magazine. It is affecting everyone in some manner. We personally, or people we know, have lost jobs, retirement accounts, and homes.

All the TV pundits keep asking if we have hit bottom, wondering when the economy will start to turn around, when we will come out of it. As a result, we are all spending less, in the budgets that we manage at work as well as at home.

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The use of content and data, a major expense item for many companies, is no exception. Usage and spend levels for data and content are under close scrutiny, being reviewed by many levels of management. It can be said without any reservation that many companies are reviewing and reducing their spend levels for content.

I was recently at Information Today, Inc.'s Buying & Selling eContent conference, where our company facilitated an Enterprise Content Buyers' forum. The objective of the forum was to sit down with enterprise content buyers and sellers and licensing experts to identify and discuss the challenges and opportunities that exist in the current marketplace and, more specifically, to focus on the impact of the recession and what has changed in the last 12-18 months. The 30 forum participants, who all had their own points of view of what was and what was not working, were in agreement on one point, namely that the content marketplace is in a state of flux and going through difficult times.

The New Focus on Content

One concern was immediately identified: During the past year, there has been an increased focus on content, primarily regarding the cost and management thereof. While this has always been an area of interest and a part of most companies' annual expense review processes, the focus is much more intense as...

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