IBM Filenet versus SharePoint

Question

I am evaluating the design of a system which will use FileNet to store documents and may use SharePoint as the front end.

What I am wondering is: Why not just store the documents in SharePoint? What is it that makes FileNet such a better system?

Answer 1

Most likely they already bought FileNet and decided on it as the standard for records management, but also seperately decided on SharePoint as the standard portal.

SharePoint is indeed capable of storing all sorts of files, and there are no technical reasons against using it, but enterprise architecture typically involves a lot more than purely technical reasons.

According to https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787(v=office.16).aspx, Sharepoint 2016 supports up to 60 million items sizing 4TB in an actively used document collection, more if used in an archive type of system (low read/ access count) Older versions 2013-2010, etc. supported less.

SharePoint is useful as a collaborative tool for modifying word documents, excel sheets, etc. FileNet is more driven toward enterprise content management for large scale, and workflow based content processing and access.

Answer 2

I agree with Tom Clarkson's statement that the decision probably has little to do with technical feasability. However, there are actual technical reasons why you would use FileNet to store your documents instead of SharePoint.

For example, let's say that you have dozens of terabytes of TIF images. One of the most popular tools for managing this type of information is FileNet. Theoretically, Sharepoint could probably manage this amount of data, but it's probably not a good gamble. FileNet has been able to do this type of task for decades.

Also, the FileNet ecosystem is more mature than Sharepoint. FileNet has been around for decades, and if you can imagine it, some 3rd-party has written it to work with FileNet. The Sharepoint ecosystem is also very robust, but it just hasn't been around as long.

Here's another possibility. Your client might have invested a lot of money into the FileNet Records Manager tool to handle automated records management for most electronic content in your company. They may want to use the Records Manager tool to automatically manage the life cycle of the content that will be displayed by Sharepoint. Now, they could instead store this content inside of Sharepoint, but that might force them to purchase more software to manage document life cycles. It might just be cheaper for them to keep it in FileNet.

HTH!

Answer 3

SharePoint does a lot of things well. One thing it doesn't do all that well is manage many terabytes of documents. As others have said, without some volume information it's hard to say why that choice has been made. There are a large number of things that FileNet will do easily that would require you to build or buy additional software. Burning images to WORM media comes immediately to mind.

I'd be interested to hear how the project went (is going) and if you found a reason for the decision.