Forrester Wave Report: AI-driven innovation reshapes enterprise content platforms

A new Forrester Wave report evaluates 12 leading content platform vendors, identifying four Leaders, five Strong Performers, and three Contenders in the rapidly evolving enterprise content management market.

Market evolution and current landscape: The enterprise content management industry has transformed significantly, now centered on AI-enabled cloud content platforms that go beyond basic document management.

• Content platforms have become fundamental components of digital workplaces, integrating with productivity suites and enterprise applications
• Technical leaders seek flexible, extensible platforms for developing content-rich applications
• The evaluation covered 12 key vendors across 24 criteria through detailed questionnaires, demonstrations, and customer feedback

AI-driven innovation highlights: Artificial Intelligence, particularly generative AI, is reshaping how organizations create, manage, and govern content.

• Vendors are making substantial investments in generative AI capabilities
• Large language models and agentic AI continue to drive rapid development
• Pricing models are evolving to make AI capabilities more accessible to users
• Intelligent data extraction enables automated metadata tagging and workflow processing
• Document generation capabilities are expanding through AI integration

Industry-specific solutions: Vertical expertise has become a crucial differentiator in the content platform market.

• Many vendors offer pre-configured applications designed for specific industries
• Solution templates and accelerators enable quick deployment with minimal custom development
• Industry-focused vendors invest in meeting sector-specific compliance and regulatory requirements

Pricing and deployment considerations: The market shows a trend toward simplified but less transparent pricing models.

• Most vendors use per-user/per-month subscription models with tiered capability levels
• Few vendors publish pricing for their subscription bundles
• Self-hosted options may include additional pricing based on API calls, storage volumes, or usage parameters

AI implementation strategy: The effective use of generative AI in content platforms requires careful consideration of context and security.

• Most evaluated vendors employ retrieval augmented generation (RAG) architecture
• RAG protects corporate content from exposure to public AI models
• AI assistants can be configured to work within specific contexts like customer cases or project folders
• Existing access controls and permission structures are maintained

Future implications and considerations: The content platform market continues to evolve rapidly, with AI capabilities becoming increasingly sophisticated and specialized.

• Organizations must carefully evaluate vendors based on their specific industry requirements and use cases
• The trend toward opaque pricing models suggests the need for detailed requirement planning before vendor selection
• The integration of AI capabilities while maintaining security and context will likely remain a key differentiator