Prior to SharePoint 2007, if you wanted web content management from MS, you bought Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS). The document management capabilities in the Microsoft integrated ECM solution can help organizations consolidate diverse content from multiple file shares and personal drives into a centrally managed repository with consistent categorization. Integrated search capabilities can then help people find and share this information. IT organizations can also protect the content in this centrally managed repository from unauthorized access.
Integrated collaboration capabilities, such as automated workflow, help people work better together to create, review, and approve documents in a more structured way. That way, they no longer have to rely solely on e-mail to share documents. Mobile workers can also use these documents offline when they are not connected to the network.
The Microsoft ECM solution provides capabilities to manage the entire lifecycle of unstructured content from creation to expiration on a single unified platform. These capabilities include document management, records management, Web content management, and forms solutions.
The Microsoft ECM has two controls that are extremely useful. Displaying document content within MCMS from documents managed in SPS is a very helpful integration point as MCMS does not provide any document management functionality and moreover, SPS implements document and asset workflow. Document content can be displayed inline or in an attachment. This functionality can useful for managing images and other assets as well.