I've been hearing a number of my Documentum customers say that they will be (or are considering) using SharePoint for front-end web publishing and Documentum as a repository. I must say that, at first, I was surprised. Documentum enthusiasts talking Microsoft? Blasphemy? Of course not. ECM buyers are simply trying to please their often Documentum-frustrated, Windows-friendly users and, at last, there's a new kid on the block that promises to help them do so.
Now I don't yet know much about the new kid; but he does look nice. Sharepoint's presentation layer is attractive, even comforting; after all, it looks like the interface I face, the interface my 70-year-old father faces, and the interface my eleven-year-old niece sees when she does her homework. Sure, ECM users take on far more complicated tasks than any of the aforementioned, but who can blame them for wanting to do it with the same Microsoft-ease available to the individual consumer?
Too much turkey? Then turn on the teli, or its internet-enabled counterpart, anyway. If you work with EMC, Documentum, Captiva, or with a competitor product, here's a little clip that's interesting, entertaining and informative. And, oh, you needn't bother covering your vulcan ears...
Is SharePoint really ready to play in the Regulatory ECM sector of Life Sciences firms? That was the question that played in my head as I drove down to Princeton last week to attend FCG's Trends 2007 conference.
For those of you who may be unaware, I've served Documentum customers since the early 1990's and Documentum's earliest adopters were Life Sciences (though back then we called them Pharmaceutical and Medical Technology) firms and aerospace firms such as Boeing. And though OpenText occasionally infringed on what I considered to be "Documentum territory", for better or worse, Documentum owned the market.
The word from EMC's Momentum conference in Monaco (Monaco! someone tell me, why didn't I go) is that Documentum is now a platformthat supports business applications that increase efficiency in areas that are collaborative, trans-active, interactive, or archiving related.
According to Balaji Yelamanchili, senior vice president and co-general manager of content management and archiving (how about getting a simpler title?) at EMC, the plan is to introduce four solution frameworks that consist of reusable templates that EMC partners and customers will use to develop applications on EMC's ECM platform.
Are you still writing memos, making phone calls, and sending messages via e-mail? I admit it; I am. Mostly because I like hearing people's reactions to things that I say, and I like hearing their tone of voice when they speak and frankly, I like having someone's less divided attention.
