Brilliant Leap

Finally, the choir admits that Documentum is losing marketshare

I've been ranting at EMC for more than three (3) years, writing big, long posts that say that Documentum is losing important customers. I first wrote about it in  April 2007 when ECM Managers in Pharma and Finance began asking me what I was hearing about Sharepoint. I wrote about it some more when  Documentum developers started to ask me if they should be learning to work with another ECM vendor's (Sharepoint, Alfresco?) software. 

Then I wrote about it again in July 2007 when industry analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe said it was a good time for Life Sciences firms to reassess  their ECM investments. In case anyone is not aware, the majority of the big Pharmas were (and, in fact still are) heavily invested in Documentum; but they're beginning to move away from it. Some of them have plans to move to Sharepoint; some have moved specific application areas to other ECM systems; and others are saying things like "We'll keep it as a repository for now." I have not spoken to a single Documentum client in the Life Sciences industry in the past 15 months that has indicated that they're planning to increase their Documentum footprint.

Now I've been a Documentum recruiter since the early 1990's ; I have a big database of Documentum corporate clients, professionals and end-users. I have typically been a big Documentum cheerleader because the community of Documentum professionals I have worked with (and continue to work with)  were so passionate about the "wins" the technology could deliver. Early on people saw that Electronic Document Management Systems (as they were called at the time, the "E" became "Enterprise" a few years later) might help take the drudgery out of drug submissions and clinical processes; they saw that it could be used for drug labeling and to help document important manufacturing data. If  patients reported adverse drug reactions, or if it was found that a "lot" of drugs had been contaminated, they could be tracked down quickly. Some visionary CIO's hoped to build "digital dashboards" using Documentum that would help scientists and researchers share information so that they might discover new therapies. In many ways these people believed that the systems they designed and the programs they coded would help save, or at least improve people's lives. According to EMC blogger Pie, Razmik Abnous said that:

Na na na na, Hey hey-ey Goodbye

Barb Mosher at CMS Wire writes that "EMC says they can't own and be experts in everything, so strategic partners are a critical element to their business strategy." She is alluding to EMC's announcement that they are partnering with Fatwire to "jointly offer solutions for Web experience and brand management."

Say ta-ta to Documentum's WCM offering and to Web Publisher.

Pie and the Big Men On Content have already discussed the benefits of this move from an EMC perspective. In summary, they say this: EMC's WCM offering stinks, Fatwire's rocks, so EMC is going to give up on trying to get its WCM offering right and will begin to offer Fatwire to its customers.

For Documentum customers (or future Documentum customers) who haven't yet invested their time and money into making WCM work for them, this sounds like a clear win. But what about those who use Web Publisher now?   It's predicted that EMC will be sunsetting it before the end of 2010, and though they'll continue to support the product for the next few years, they won't be updating it or its features. So, the bottom line is that current Web Publisher customers have some decisions to make.

Got an ECM Project to do? There's never been a better time....

Last week I went to Alfresco's Lunch and Learn in Manhattan and was pleasantly surprised to find the room filled to capacity. It had been snowing that morning; there were 90+ car crashes in the area and even the trains were running behind schedule. Despite all that, the ECM inquirers, end users, and geeks didn't let the weather keep stop them from trudging through midtown to see what the Open Source ECM vendor had to offer. I went because I wanted to learn about Alfresco's latest features (3.2 was released in January) and because it was a good opportunity  to say "hey" to a handful of folks that I knew would be in attendance.

What I found exceptional about this gathering (aside from the content) was the diversity of ECM/Document Management experience among those in attendance. On one end of the spectrum was Adam Storch of Microstrategies, who has been building ECM/DM solutions for over 17 years, (using the likes of  Alfresco, Interwoven, Documentum, FileNet, Sharepoint... should we count Lotus Notes?), on the other end was a woman who was just beginning to think about dipping her toe into ECM waters. "We have to start managing our content, so we're exploring the possibilities," she said. She went on to explain that she'd been talking to a number of different vendors. "Which one is best?" she asked.

"It depends on what you want to do and on who you ask," I told her.

I offered to introduce her to some ECM veterans sitting in the room, but she declined. "When people are presenting their solutions, they all sound wonderful," she said. "But I'd bet that getting the "walk" to match the "talk" is an entirely different thing," she added, noting that she had one chance to "get it right." 

As we went on talking, I thought about all the different people who I knew that could help her, and came to realize that I could ease her fears. ECM/DM technologies were no longer new. There are many people who have over a decade of experience; they know from trial and error what works and what doesn't; and they've developed methodologies which deliver time and time again. This wasn't true in the early to mid-1990s when having prior imaging experience, knowing how to spell Documentum, or how to program in Visual Basic in conjunction with Crystal Reports were often enough to win you a job. Back then, people were building solutions hoping that they'd not only meet the users' needs but that they'd actually work. This doesn't have to be the case any more.