Welcome to the Jungle

Oracle IPM 11g is the latest version of the venerable Image and Process Management product but the product has a long history.  IPM was developed by Optika in the late 90s with the name eMedia as a workflow enabled replacement for an imaging solution named FilePower.  The eMedia brand was phased out at version 2.0 and replaced with the Acorde name.  We still have some clients who are successfully running Acorde installations to this day.

Optika was bought out by a company called Stellent and the product went through another rebranding phase this time as Imaging and Business Process Management (IBPM).  It was at this time the version was bumped up from Acorde 4.0 to Stellent IBPM 7.5 to bring the product in line with Stellent’s overall product versioning.

Finally Oracle buys Stellent and brings the Stellent Content Server and IBPM products under their umbrella.  Content Server turns into Universal Content Management and IBPM turns into Oracle Image and Process Management 10gR3.

So we’ve finally arrived at IPM.  A key thing to remember that during this period of development and rebranding is that the product remained essentially the same.  It operated on the same principles and was architected in the same manner.  Not to say there weren’t improvements between eMedia 1.0 and IPM 10gR3 but these improvements embodied natural evolution of the product.

This is true no longer; IPM 11g has changed the game.

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