EMC World 2010 – Day 1

This year marks my 15^th Momentum/EMC World.  For the next couple of posts, we will focus on some of the TSG team’s impressions of the sessions we attend.  Look for additional posts from others with their thoughts.

Overall Impressions

Overall – Documentum user attendance is lower in years past (they mentioned 1,000 at a keynote).  Thoughts related to attendance include:

• Client Presentations – One thing lacking when compared to previous Momentums is the obvious reduction of user presentations.  In the past, users were encouraged to present in return for free admission.  Most of the presentations have been from EMC product managers.
• Expo – EMC has done a great job segmenting the Documentum related products/vendors in one corner and with special “Momentum” carpeting.  This is much better than 2 years ago when booths were spread all over the expo.
• Still called Momentum – we like the continuity of calling our track Momentum as it ties back to the first Documentum user conference in 1996.
• Smaller Number of Momentum Tracks – less “tracks” this year in regard to number of presentations including user, “Birds of a Feather” and other typical presentations.
• Momentum Lounge/Party Event – All of us like the lounge/happy hours just for the Documentum group down the hall from the sessions.

One thing missing, what is the big theme?   Some thoughts as to what it could be:

• Journey to the Private Cloud? – this is the overall theme of EMC World but not really relevant to the Documentum space.
• Not called Documentum or Content Management & Archiving (CMA) anymore.  Mark Lewis’ keynote this afternoon introduced the group name has evolved to the Information Intelligence Group (IIG).  A brief overview is included below:
  • Intelligent Information Governance – EMC SourceOne
    • Archiving
    • Compliance/Records Management
    • Search and Discovery
• Intelligent Case Management – see our later post in regards to xCP.
• Intelligent Information Access – focus on access from a variety of different alternatives including Desktop, Offline, Explorer, Outlook, SharePoint and CenterStage.
• Intelligent Enterprise Capture – Captiva
• Intelligent Customer Communications – Document Sciences and Fatwire
• Government – every year we see EMC focus on an industry/application.  In years past it would clearly be insurance (BPM, Taskspace, Whitney insurance demo) but this year we are betting on Government given the government infrastructure spend.
• SAP – Mark Lewis announced partnerships with SAP as well as Informatica.  The internal rumor mill would say this is the first step in SAP eventually buying the Information Intelligence Group from EMC as it doesn’t fit the infrastructure play of EMC and VMWare.  Just a rumor but an interesting announcement and partnership.