In this paper we will provide a step-by-step description on what it means to evolve the architecture of a traditional content management system into an Enterprise Content Management (ECMS) system, explain the differences of both systems and motivate that this transformation is necessary. By analyzing business scenarios in the realm of different content management domains, we will explain why today’s content management systems struggle when it comes to satisfy the need for performance, scalability and business resilience. Using the system design of IBM DB2 Content Manager as reference point we will outline and discuss some of the new key technical challenges found when promoting ondemand ECM services and look at their affordability. By detailing a few representative use cases we will perform a problem analysis, and an attempt will be made to present an enhanced ECM system design that makes use of a component ‚virtualization’ approach in order to allow for a dynamic services infrastructure to be setup and which capitalizes on proven peer-peer and grid technology.