A virtualization approach to scalable enterprise content management

In this dissertation we present an approach for the implementation of a scalable content management system that is based on the virtualization of the repository. It allows to dynamically scale-out the repository on multiple machines in order to adjust the system to the current load. This is an important precondition when offering a content management system as a service in a cloud to customers of different and changing sizes. As an example we will look at e-mail archiving. In personal and especially in business life one is daily confronted with a huge amount of information. They have to be processed and archived according to their importance. Yet, their importance may change over time. Information classified as not very important when it arrives may become essential in the future. Thus an effective and efficient management of all information is necessary. Information can be in different forms from highly structured over semi-structured to completely unstructured information. According to different sources the semistructured and unstructured information makes up between 80% and 85% percent of all business information. Examples are text documents, e-mails and short messages exchanged between colleagues, business partners, suppliers and customers. The appropriate management of this information is very important. It has to support the typical use cases as well as huge and changing volumes of information, and it has to be cost-efficient. Moreover, in a globalized world the information has to be accessible from anywhere on the world at any time. E-mails have become a very important tool for the transportation of information within and between enterprises. Often the e-mails with their information remain in the e-mail system. Thus the e-mail system has become an important pool of information and also of knowledge. Furthermore, by analyzing sets of e-mails for a topic from different users it is often possible to determine how a process evolved and why a specific decision was made. This makes the e-mail system also a very important tool for the post-mortem analysis of an incident. The data volumes an e-mail system has to deal with are very high. Thus setting up an e-mail system is a challenging task and requires accurate planning. Yet, in today’s dynamic business environment the requirements may change quickly. Once the emails are locked into an inappropriate system it will be very expensive to migrate