EMC will report its fourth quarter results in less than two weeks and the big question on our minds is whether EMC CEO Joe Tucci and/or EMC CFO David Goulden will say anything about Documentum, Captiva, DocSciences or any of IIG's (Information Intelligence Group's) products.
They should, even if IIG's bottom line hasn't yet begun to grow.
I say this because after years of doing everything but telling its non-Government, non-Insurance/Financial, and non-Energy Enterprise Content Management customers to get lost, IIG is finally introducing offerings that might delight a larger portion of its install base. Not only that, but the end-user (which EMC calls the "new user") is in IIG's line of sight again..
Yes, boys and girls, IIG is finally acting more like a software company that has something to offer its customers, in its own right, rather than an ugly step-child of a hardware/storage company that happens to sell software.
Hooray for IIG president Rick Devenuti; he's gotten a lot done since he took charge in October of 2010.
His team has delivered:
- Documentum Mobile- an iPad app which had been promised in May of 2008 as an iPhone app
- Documentum/Box.net connection which facilitates secure content collaboration on the Cloud
- EMC Documentum D2 a fully configurable web application designed to create and apply various processes related to Enterprise Content Management (ECM), from creation to publishing including workflow management.
- Documentum/Cisco Enterprise Collaboration platform
- Documentum OnDemand- cloud based Documentum, Captiva and DocSciences
Not only that, but at least for now, EMC is continuing to support, update, and improve Documentum Compliance Manager (DCM). In 2009 EMC and CSC had led many to believe that they'd prefer that their customers look towards CSC's FirstDoc to provide DCM functionalities. What a mistake. Not only did this send DCM customers shopping for DCM-like products, but several also decided to reevaluate their ECM selections while they were at it, and while the jury is still out with some of them, there are at least two instances when the companies decided to ditch Documentum as its overall ECM.
The big question on ECM Industry watchers' minds at the moment is whether Documentum's overhaul will help IIG retain the customers that it already (or still) has, and whether it will help them win new business. Five or six years ago the answer would have been an easy "yes", customers would have been delighted.
Today, IIG is going to have to fight for the business and it has some worthy opponents.
And, though this might have been devastating news 18 months ago when IIG was behind the curve in social, mobile, and quick start functionalities, Devenuti and his team have now brought Documentum up to speed, and if their soon-to-emerge cloud offering is better than everyone else's, they might even look like a leader again.
Impressed by your optimism which you haven't been quick to leverage. I don't think much has changed when it comes to practicalities. I think the future is very much wait an see.
On the other hand, I don't think Documentum ever really lost the short list. They may have had issues closing, but they were still very capable when most of their competition was floundering the same way.
Regardless,myou make great points and EMC is very much worth watching in 2012.
-Pie
Posted by: twitter.com/piewords | 01/16/2012 at 10:44 PM
Pie-
The reason I'm optimistic is this: When a customer looks for an ECM solution, certain functionalities must be present otherwise the end-user (who most often sponsors and pays for projects) isn't willing to consider the vendor.
Documentum now has all the "must-have's" for a Q1 2012 ECM vendor AND case management solutions which can leverage insights gained from Big Data. The latter, at least as of now, could be a huge differentiator.
Posted by: Brilliant Leap | 01/17/2012 at 01:13 AM