Documentum – What’s Next Updated for 2010

Back in 2007, we started offering a presentation for clients, “What’s Next for Documentum?”  The presentation focused on what mature Documentum clients are doing “next”.  Typically, mature customers:

• have an existing production install of Documentum
• have implemented tools “out of the  box” with some or extensive customizations
• have had some success
• ….and are looking for “What do I do Next?”

This post will share new, innovative or just different items we see our clients doing or considering for Documentum as well as links to other posts that depict their choices.

Documentum Upgrade – When?

When to upgrade is a difficult decision for many clients.  Many existing Documentum clients are on paid support (version 5.3 or before) this year given reduced budgets, the cost of the upgrade, the effort of the upgrade combined with the difficulty of upgrading their application that either is unsupported or would require re-write to leverage the new Documentum interface.

For an overall upgrade understanding – try our Documentum Upgrade Planning Guide.

Look throughout blog.tsgrp.com for many posts including upgrade alternatives, extends versus modifies in 6.5, understanding the impact of WDK development, migration, clone or in-place upgrade, high volume server, common upgrade questions, and upgrading your application now to make upgrading Documentum easier later

External Users – Extending capabilities beyond the firewall

We have seen a push to add additional third parties or external users to Documentum.  Typically this would be a related party responsible for creating of Documents.  Interfaces are somewhat different in that, while they can create/approve documents, the interface should limit the third party from only seeing documents or completing a limited set of functions.

SharePoint – 2010 increases pressure on Documentum

SharePoint continues to be a major influence at the bulk of our clients.  SharePoint users can be very vocal in their desire to “dump Documentum”.   Clients struggle with wanting to satisfy SharePoint users but understand that a typical SharePoint environment focuses on collaboration with collaboration being very different from the current Documentum installation.  Providing the scale, image and records management and maintaining indexing consistency are all requirements of most ECM systems and something that SharePoint 2007 can’t always accomplish.  As Microsoft releases SharePoint 2010 with more robust ECM features, we would anticipate that this pressure would increase.

Look throughout blog.tsgrp.com for many posts including  SharePoint Myths, SharePoint – Adding ECM Structure and Active Wizard/SharePoint Integration.  Also, look for OpenMigrate to have continued support for a SharePoint source as well as the upcoming release to support an SharePoint target.

Documentum Software Audit – Managing Licenses

While this is not new in 2010, we but have steadily seen an increase in EMC Software Audits since 2005 with a big increase in the 4^th quarter of 2009.  Clients are getting better at documenting system usage and working with their sales reps to actively manage their license and maintenance costs.

Article – Preparing for the Documentum Software Audit

Consumer Interface – Continued Focus

Multiple clients are continuing to look to push content out of Documentum for consumers.  Whether tied to fault tolerance, performance, upgrade prep or licensing, many have developed strategies to push released content either with SCS or OpenMigrate to an external DataBase and file store.

WhitePaper available here

Non Webtop Interfaces – Less Training – better Performance

Similar to the consumer interface, we are seeing more “non-Webtop” interfaces begin to proliferate at clients.  Initially this was focused on image, workflow or improving Documentum search within Webtop.  Recently, typical Webtop installations are looking to move certain users, like the consumers mentioned above, off of Documentum Webtop.  This could involve just approvers (both internal and external) or offering a simpler author interface.

TSG’s HPI Solution for this approach

Lucene – FAST/Verity Replacement and DSS

Many clients are tired of “waiting for Documentum Search Services (DSS)” and have begun to deploy Lucene internally for either a cached consumer repository or Documentum itself.

Documentum Search – Lucene, FAST, Verity, Google and upcoming DSS

Look for a post here on one client’s comparison of FAST to Lucene given their content and search scenarios.

CenterStage, Cloud, CMIS, Fatwire – what do these mean?

We have seen clients considering CenterStage, utilizing the cloud (ex: Amazon EC2), the upcoming CMIS specification as well as concern about recent Fatwire alliance.  Most of our clients are taking a “wait and see” approach given the economy and some concern about being early adopters rather than followers.  We’ve seen this same approach with the upgrade decision as well.

Other “what’s next” items include of Adobe Flex to create a better user interface, form and workflow enhancements, browser based annotation services and other items that will be posted here In the coming months .  If you are looking for our 2007 “What’s Next” presentation, a Screencam with sound is still available on our site.