That's Not My Name

That's Not My Name is the refrain of a fun little song byt the TingTings  I hear it playing in clubs (those that feature SPIN bikes, treadmills and dumbbells NOT golf clubs or booze). I have a feeling that if EMC's CMA division could sing, Joe Tucci would have it blare out that refrain every time someone refers to it as Documentum.

Why am I saying this? Here's a list of tweets from EMC World:

Joe Tucci wants us to stop using the Documentum branding, and focus on the EMC brand. Did someone forget to tell Mark Lewis? #emcworld

at cma aka artist formerly known as documentum bash at #emcworld with karin, jerry, geoff

Tucci is trying not to say Documentum. Winding-down the branding. EMC and VMware only. But doc management and archiving important

The intros are over. Time to see if #EMC has learned how to keep the #Documentum / CMA people from feeling cut-off. #emcworld

Now, does Documentum de-branding matter? To many well-established Documentum professionals I think it might; after all, they've spent years building their expertise with the technology and it has only recently become pervasive enough that it's no longer mistaken for some  specialized form of documentation. "Documentum" has only recently won its own place on drop-down menus on professional and career-related sites as well, and I doubt that most professionals who identify with the term "Documentum" identify as comfortably with the term "EMC" or "EMC CMA"

On an enterprise level Documentum is most often seen as a product/platform in its own right though users clearly recognize that licensing fees are payable to EMC.

Wikipedia says that: Documentum is an enterprise content management platform, now delivered by EMC Corporation, as well as the name of the software company that originally developed the technology. EMC acquired Documentum for $1.7 billion in December, 2003. The Documentum platform is part of EMC's content management and archiving business unit, one of EMC's four operating divisions. (Maybe someone at EMC wants to correct this last part?)

So is there anything wrong with thinking about Documentum as an ECM platform which may, or may not, have anything to do with the rest of the EMC stack? Surely EMC sales and marketing pros are savvy enough to sell the value-add and ease of interoperability achieved when used with other EMC products.

Now, after writing the above, I did a little more due diligence and watched a video interview with Mark Lewis who seems to say that calling Documentum, "Documentum" is ok; as long as it's clear that Documentum isn't a brand. He says that EMC is the brand. And though I think the reporter in this interview did a great job, I wish she had asked a few follow-up questions:

1. Is EMC a brand of Enterprise Content Management System or is Documentum?
2. Is Cheerios a brand of cereal or is General Mills?
3. If you sent your kid to the store to buy Cheerios would you even bother mentioning General Mills?

General Mills seems to be ok with Cheerios being its own brand, here's what the say on their site:

General Mills markets some of the best loved, most trusted brands in the world. From Betty Crocker and Pillsbury to Cheerios and Green Giant, our brands are consistently category leaders.

So, come on Joe,  if Cheerios can be its own brand, can't Documentum be a brand as well?

What do you think? Reply here OR there's a poll on LinkedIn.

Comments

[Jim]

I think EMC has already lost the value in the Documentum brand. They may as well drop the name and call it EMC ECM or some other anonymous string of letters. As cheaper alternatives erode the advantages of Documentum EMC will have nothing to justify the price point of the licenses.

[shiningarts]

It is all about whether the product is expandable or invaluably marketable. We are witnessing this with VMWare and Data Domain (data de-duplication software company). Joe Tucci has just written an open letter ( http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=19456 ) to the employees of Data Domain to woo them in which he claims "Our plan is to keep the people and products of Data Domain intact and operate your company as a product division within EMC."

I think names like “Documentum” and loads of other software brands will eventually be shelved. That’s sad to me, because I have been associated with and working with Documentum for more than a decade. However, the industry is consolidating in a big way now. I feel sorry for new companies like Alfresco and the like because the industry is already past its prime as far as generating significant interest in the marketplace. The balkanized small CMS vendors that are not acquired yet probably won’t survive, if you ask me. Ultimately, ECM or CMS market will be absorbed into either archiving/storage or socialized software such as Google’s Wave, Facebook, or whatever comes along next.

Unlike the ECM enthusiasts, I don’t believe there has been any real market for ECM because, despite all of the wonderful benefits ECM brings, it is expendable in the eyes of purchasing managers. I think they view it as more or less hype. Unlike storage, social software, mobile device, database, or operating system, ECM is not an absolute necessity. In a leaner meaner marketplace, the frills are what gets cut. Whether we like or not, the names we all loved such as Documentum or, in some extents, SAP will eventually retired or sunset, absorbed into one of many commoditized software stacks.

Ironically, the only place Documentum was needed was in the vertical spaces like pharmaceuticals, where Documentum originally launched, and even there, it is even fading away. Well, I may need to be satisfied as becoming an IT guy for my wife’s law firm someday. However, it is good to reflect on what we have been through and what we will be becoming in this ever changing technological atmosphere, which reminds us that everything is subject to change and nothing is as static and unmovable as you might imagine.

[Ali]

The Documentum brand is dead, since EMC has been messing with it for so long. At this point, all it is seems to be a cash cow for EMC - to fund their other brands like Source One. Sometimes, watching the way EMC seems to deal with Documentum, it feels like they are getting out of the ECM business - they are surely not competing in it.

[shiningarts]

I wouldn't declare Documentum dead yet. It may be on a respirator for the time being because the CMS market as a whole right now is on a ventilator. It has been squeezed from all sides and it isn't clear what the CMS is all about anymore. However, let us be fair to EMC in what they are trying to accomplish here. They are on a mission to fulfill a grand ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) strategy, one which, like the Holy Grail, may be unattainable. I am not sure they have technological resources yet to go after that strategy completely. Source One -- not sure they needed any change from Documentum since they are in the major leagues as far as cash reserve is concerned -- is one of the EMC's attempts to satisfy the ILM vision as its first step since ILM is one of Joe's marble toys. The jury is out on this one, however. To credit to EMC, when they acquired Documentum in 2004, they didn't treat Documentum badly considering what happened with the merger of Legato, which happened at about the same time. They spent almost the same amount as the Documentum acquisition into CMA family, but do we hear the Legato name anymore? Documentum was allowed to keep its identity and the Documentum employees that were incorporated into EMC were transitioned with relative grace into the new system. As we are looking forward into a technological evolution, EMC is focusing on so-called cloud computing. They might have some substance in this endeavor because they control the premiere virtualization software company, VMWare, out right. But, realistically, I am not sure whether EMC can pull it off by itself or whether EMC may need to be swallowed yet by another big fish to grapple the task. Ironically, the Documentum name could potentially out-live the name of EMC because Documentum is an identifiable product with a clear application in a specific niche, whereas EMC is a conglomerate. There could conceivably be the classic scenario in which medium-sized fish (EMC) gobbles up the shrimps (Documentum), and is, in turn, swallowed by a bigger whale (yet-to-be-identified). You may appreciate this theory if you are a student of food chain concept aka ILM (Ingestion Lifecycle Management - Proven Professional Progression according to the mother nature!).