Solution Providers Bullish On DRM Potential

Microsoft insiders acknowledged that the company hopes to get its DRM server, code-named Tungsten, to beta this summer and in final form by year's end. (See related story.) IBM is reworking its existing Electronic Media Management System into J2EE format, where it will work more modularly within the company's software line. Janet Perna, general manager of IBM Software's data management group, said the new, more modular EMMS will become a WebSphere application and continue to work well with the company's Content Management server. (See related story.)

So what will DRM, which in theory lets the owners or authors of content retain control over that content even as it is forwarded around the Internet, mean for solution providers?

"DRM is near and dear to my heart," said Ken Winell, CEO of Econium, a Totowa, N.J.-based solution provider specializing in collaborative applications.

"Customers are starting to think of ways to leverage DRM," he said. "In contract negotiations, a system could be set up that lets them only view the documents for a certain period of time. Or there could be presentation controls to make sure everyone's looking at the same set of slides."

In that example, a true DRM solution could save a lot of needless e-mailing of contract versions around the office.

John Dubois, CTO of Cutting Edge Strategies, an Austin, Texas, solution provider, concurred. There is a pressing need for DRM standards and technology in legal, biotech, pharmaceutical industries, or any area in which "multiple groups with intellectual property are combining efforts to provide a complete solution," Dubois said.

Companies need to think of DRM as a natural extension of their existing IP protection policies--an "intelligent extension" to their firewall to keep folks in and out based on what their role is and what the content is, said one East Coast solution provider who requested anonymity.

"Second, they want to get paid for their work. %85 That's really what Xerox was trying to do with ContentGuard years ago. It was the right idea but was mismarketed," the solution provider said.

ContentGuard pioneered the idea that an author can set access rights to his or her own content that would, for example, let a recipient forward that content but also require the final recipient to register or pay to view it. Or, DRM technologies could allow technologists within a company, as opposed to marketers, to view relevant portions of a document or file.

Microsoft bought an undisclosed minority stake ContentGuard, which is still majority-owned by Xerox, in April 2000. All three companies are pushing the Extensible Rights Markup Language, (XRML), a digital rights language for trusted content and services

Both IBM and Microsoft expect to have their DRM offerings out in the next calendar year. Other players such as Documentum, who want to parlay their years of document management and workflow expertise, could become a factor in DRM. And smaller companies such as Authentica and Alchemedia could play a role as well, said Joshua Duhl, contributing analyst at IDC. Adobe, with its PDF and Acrobat expertise, could also be a wild card in DRM, he said.

Duhl recently revised his market estimates for DRM downward to $700 million in 2006 from just over $1 billion, given the current state of the economy.

Solution providers and integrators may need to educate corporate IT buyers as to the value of DRM. Most CIOs and their staffs still think of DRM solely in terms of music, Duhl said.

IT professionals should take a look at the consumer world to get a hint of what DRM could offer, solution providers said. "I tell clients to look at Movielink.com and rent a movie for a great example of DRM at its best. It lets you download the movie and view it for 24 hours. But [the viewing capability expires in 30 days once you start viewing," said Econium's Winell.

To extrapolate such talents to the enterprise would mean that an automaker buying from smaller parts shops could set up the system to only see the latest gear for its current models. "DRM also helps with vendor management," Winell said. "There's no loyalty in consulting. If I win a project, great, but two years later if a competitor wins, my rights are turned off."