Abstract: A system and method for centralized backup and recovery of enterprise content management systems comprises a plurality of distributed heterogeneous content systems comprising distributed content servers having storage areas for managed content. Backup comprises querying the content servers associated with the distributed content systems to determine the host names, directory locations, and directory file structures of the storage areas, and launching coordinated backup processes on each of the distributed servers to backup in a particular order full text index files, databases containing metadata related to the files in storage areas, and storage area content. Backup and recovery is managed by a centralized backup/recovery server application that invokes backup and recovery client processes on the distributed remote content servers.