This post will present final thoughts on the Momentum component of EMC World, the Documentum roadmap as well as the announcements on Leap, the new name for the Project Horizon initiative.
Summary of Posts
We posted the following throughtout the week:
- Vision and Roadmap – EMC Documentum Platform
- Momentum – ECD Keynote – Rohit Ghai
- What’s on the Horizon for Project Horizon (Leap): New Apps and Services
- ECD Roadmap and Vision
EMC/Dell Keynote – Thoughts on the EMC and Dell Merger – Would Documentum be better away from EMC?
While there was short Documentum roadmap presentation at 8:30 on the first day, the EMC conference really began with the EMC/Dell Keynote at 10. The keynote featured EMC CEO Joe Tucci (on a hoverboard?) as well as a keynote by Michael Dell himself. Of importance to Documentum customers is that it has been fairly widespread that EMC will be selling off Documentum to help fund some of the debt of the Dell/EMC merger. While Michael Dell talked about the combined company and market power, the remainder of the keynote focused on different storage solutions coming from EMC as well as the Virtustream purchase as a cloud hosting provider (focused on SAP).
As “disruption” was a theme for the later Enterprise Content Division (ECD – Division that includes Documentum) presentations around the new Leap cloud-based offering, it was difficult to sit in the EMC/Dell keynote and not see disruption coming for both Dell and EMC.
Most analysts are saying that the cloud is disrupting company data centers and hardware vendors with significant disruption ahead for expensive storage vendors like EMC. As EMC spoke on about newest flash storage and components that would fit better in racks, it was hard not to look around at the 10,000 attendees and wonder, with disruption from the cloud, “are these people going to have jobs in 10 years?”. (Hopefully the 1,100 from the Momentum space will).
As it ties back to the sale of Documentum, I came away thinking it would be a very beneficial for Documentum to get away from EMC. Disruption is coming for the ECM space via the cloud and whether it is with open source like Alfresco or Hadoop or hosting providers like Amazon, Microsoft or Google, we are pretty confident it will not be coming from hardware vendors turned hosting providers like EMC/Dell. The Innovators Dilemma makes it tough to see a company as successful as EMC selling hardware to data centers being able to offer better and cheaper options in the cloud. EMC just doesn’t have the momentum or brand to disrupt Amazon, Microsoft or Google. Documentum would benefit from being able to leverage and adapt to the leaders in the cloud environment (Amazon, Open Source) rather than being stuck to the Dell/EMC infrastructure and components (VMWare, Pivotal, Cloud Foundry, etc.)
Momentum Keynote – Project Horizon turns into Leap
The big theme at Momentum this year was the announcement of Leap, the new cloud based interfaces from the ECD division that allow connectivity to Documentum. From an overview, ECD was focused on three major areas:
- People – Content Simple and easy to use (Leap)
- Business – Make better information driven decisions (Documentum)
- IT – Consolidate Infrastructure & leverage all content (InfoArchive)
From Rohit’s Keynote, the bulk of the presentation focused on the reasons for Leap as well as some pretty slick demonstrations. The components of Leap will include:
- Courier – Content Exchange without the chaos
- Snap – Enterprise-class capture made for everyone
- Concert – Collaborative document authoring with control
- Express – Anywhere, anytime access to your content
- Focus – Document reader designed for mobile
Courier and Snap are being beta tested through June with Concert, Express and Focus expected by the end of the year.
Pricing will play a big part in determining the success of Leap so republishing the pricing notes from the Documentum roadmap below.
Courier Pricing
- $25/user/month
- Up to 500 open exchanges
- Unlimited external users
- API for integration
- Export files
- Separate approver and contributor views
- Audit and tracking
There is an “Ultimate” package that allows more than 500 exchanges along with customer success manager and phone support along with Professional Services.
Snap Pricing Essentials ($75/user/month)
- Up to 100K pages per year
- Searchable PDF’s, barcodes, repository export
- Manual classification and extraction
- Form & doctype design services
- Community support
Snap Pricing Plus (150/user/month)
- Up to 1 M pages per year
- All Essential features
- Real-time advanced recognition including automatic classification and data extraction
- 10 Templates designed for you as a service
- Phone Support
Snap Pricing Ultimate (Custom quote/user/month)
- More than 1 M pages per year
- All features of Plus
- Designated Customer Success Manager
- Custom number of templates designed for you per year
- Professional services available for additional fee
Premium support options available for additional fee. ECD announced a “loyalty program” for existing customers but no specifics were given.
Overall, I was impressed with the demos. The design seems very clean and thought out. Adding capabilities to Documentum and connectivity with Webtop, D2, xCP and Captiva will be appreciated by clients that don’t want to be forced to move their existing infrastructure and interfaces. We do have some concerns about the underlying technologies, particularly the Cloud Foundry/Pivotal and xDB components and potential impact of a Documentum sale by EMC on those components and hosting options. Concerns will play out over the next 6 months.
Documentum in Maintenance Mode
One thing that was apparent throughout the event was Documentum and existing interfaces (Webtop, D2, xCP) moving into more of a maintenance mode. Some examples included:
- Rohit’s quote that Documentum was “feature complete” during the keynote.
- Subsequent article in CMSWire that “No one is asking for more features or functions”
- Documentum Roadmap that focused on releases that will make Documentum easier to upgrade.
When comparing roadmaps from 2015 to 2016, we couldn’t help but notice the Documentum Bedrock release (7.3) that last year was targeted for 1st quarter 2016 has slipped to 4th quarter 2016. This represents a slip of almost 1 year from last year’s plan.
We saw similar signs in other parts of the Documentum overall ECD roadmap presentation when it came to D2 and xCP. For convenience, roadmap items reprinted below:
D2 Roadmap Items
D2 4.5 “Hawk”
- Improved content discovery via facets
- Multi-document support in workflows
- Improved content transfer
- Rest API to extend
- Solution Packaging
D2 “Goblin” (Q4 2016)
- Java-free client
- Leap Express Mobile Support
- Docker Support
xCP Roadmap
xCP 2.3 (Moonbow – Q3 2016)
- Cabinets, Documentum Permissions
- Java-free content transfer
- New Border and Accordion Layouts
- New editable data grid
- Enhanced result list and button widget
- DQL query with preview
Similar to the above, the Webtop interface continues to be supported with minor tweaks (including removal of the Java applet for content transfer as well).
Overall, not a very impressive update for the repository or the interfaces. Most existing clients will probably welcome the stability but will new clients want to buy-in to Documentum with interfaces that are old and showing their age? Hence the move to Leap as the new interfaces with connectivity to Documentum.
Thoughts on the Roadmaps/Strategy
When originally discussed in 2014 or 2015, Project Horizon was to be:
The underlying platform of an ECM repository that is being built out in micro services architecture. We needed to decide between being a platform or a solution company. Project Horizon offers a combination of an application and a service with many services aggregated together. Platform will be constructed as applications and services with the ability of solutions built on top to weave together the solutions. Foundational capability with Cloud Foundery, foundation services that any of these applications and services can use. Bridge capability in a pseudo public cloud (not multi-tenant).
Clearly the solution has evolved from one that could replace the Documentum to one that will integrate. This approach is consistent with the past in that:
- D2 and xCP didn’t replace Webtop
- InfoArchive didn’t replace Documentum
- Leap isn’t replacing Webtop, D2, xCP or Documentum
In all cases, ECD isn’t replacing existing capabilities but adding more (with additional charges). One difference with Leap is that there will be a “Loyalty Program” that will give some type of discount to existing customers.
What about Solutions?
Starting in 2012 and continued in 2013 was a focus on solutions. Solutions took a backseat to Leap this year but we expect to see Leap start to move into solutions as well. Solutions are a mix of products and services and something that was very apparent in 2013 but has faded in the roadmaps. Thoughts on the verticals ECD has focused on:
- Life Sciences – probably the most compelling. ECD heavily recommitted to Life Sciences back in 2013. New partnership introduced with Parexcel to allow Parexel to host ECD solutions. Very complete submission product. Based on D2 – public cloud option with Leap will be interesting to see for validated systems.
- Energy – seems like a mishmash of products brought over with the Trinity Purchase as well as offerings from consulting. The Supplier Portal was to be the first step in Project Horizon but there seem to be big differences between Leap (design/interface) and the Supplier portal.
- Public Sector – it’s our understanding that this is based on partner offerings. Did not get a chance to sit in presentations.
- Financial Services – also based on partner offerings.
- Healthcare – it’s our understanding that this is mostly InfoArchive for older medical records.
Summary – Documentum 2016 – Moving Forward?
As Documentum moves through the Dell/EMC merger, most clients are taking a “wait and see” approach. Some thoughts post EMC World:
- Documentum would definately be better off without EMC. With the exception of InfoArchive, Documentum hasn’t gotten the traction from the EMC relationships and sales team to help sell Documentum. Documentum hasn’t benefited from being in the EMC family as compared with VMWare. EMC, focused on the data center, along with VMWare will eventually be disrupted by the cloud. Away from EMC, Documentum could offer different hosting options (Amazon, Microsoft, Google….) that they can’t currently promote now, given EMC’s hosting capabilities and focus on the data center.
- Documentum will be sold off, who buys it will determine much of the future. Lots of questions regarding who the buyer is will determine the future of Documentum. As we have mentioned here, each potential acquirer could be good or bad depending on your need from Documentum.
- If Documentum is sold off, will InfoArchive and consulting be included? In regards to the sale of Documentum, does a sale include the InfoArchive product that EMC reps have been able to sell? Does it include consulting resources? Does it just include the Documentum brand and technology? Initial thoughts were that it would be all of ECD but, during multiple discussions, others have hinted that it just might be only Documentum. How will the solutions be affected if consulting is not included? Could the two be split for different sales? Lots of open questions.
- ECD Revenues – how much is Documentum software related? – One interesting discussion about the content of the blog was in regards to our posts on ECD 2015 earnings and 1st quarter 2016 ECD earnings. Internally, ECD has a perception that they are growing, particularly with InfoArchive and the Life Sciences Solutions but reported revenues continue to go down across the division quarter on quarter and year after year based on the public announcements from EMC. It is worthy of a debate that both are right but it is hard to measure just how much is Documentum versus other revenue sources from ECD that may, or may not, be included in the sale.
- 1100 Momentum attendees, 80% first time EMC World attendees – I was struck by how many new faces as well as the lack of previous attendees at Momentum. Is this good or bad? I would say that the previous attendee numbers are slightly skewed as I met multiple people at lunch that were from a company that owns Documentum (or Captiva, DocSciences….) – so they had Momentum tags, but were attending just for EMC (VMWare for example). 1,100 attendees is impressive compared to previous shows and the keynote did appear full.
- Leap is cloud and new – An interesting approach and slick user interface has us interested in trying Leap but….
- Documentum, xCP, Webtop, D2 will stay old –the existing interfaces and repository will only marginally change or be improved. Clients considering moving to a new D2 or xCP should consider other alternatives rather invest in an old technology stack.
With one last sad note we are probably concluding our attendance at EMC World (if the sale goes through). It would be good to try a different hotel than the Venetian if the Documentum conferences continue.
Let us know any of your thoughts below
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