Oracle ECM vs UCM — What’s the difference?

I’m starting to see Oracle ECM get mixed with Oracle UCM more these days when people talk about Oracle’s Content Management offering(s). Sometimes I wonder if this kind of confusion isn’t premeditated by marketing managers, but that’s another story.

So, here’s the scoop (and though I say this confidently, I find myself compelled to disclaim that this is the scoop as I understand it, and as Oracle is using these terms as of the date of publication).

For starters:

• ECM stands for Enterprise Content Management
• UCM stands for Universal Content Management

“Oracle Content Management” offerings are also referred to as “Oracle Enterprise Content Management” offerings. In addition to this, there is also a specific suite of products called “Oracle ECM Suite” which is comprised of the following Oracle products:

• Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM)
• Oracle Universal Records Management (URM)
• Oracle Imaging and Process Management (I/PM)
• Oracle Information Rights Management

In summary, Oracle UCM is a product within Oracle ECM Suite, which is offered within Oracle’s overall Enterprise Content Management solution stack.

Perhaps an easy way to remember this is by recalling the unintuitive nature of including something named “Universal” *inside* something named “Enterprise”. As it turns out, Oracle UCM itself is quite a powerful product with many capabilities that you can read more about below.

[learn_more caption=”Click here to learn more”]
To drill slightly deeper into Oracle UCM, the following content management challenges are generally addressed with the UCM product:

• Document management
• Web content management
• Digital asset management
• Records and retention management
• Portal integrations
• Microsoft SharePoint integration
• Content and usage tracking
• Categorization
• Content conversion and transformation
• Document capture and scanning integration

[/learn_more]