Day 2 – EMC World 2010

Case management and xCP is the theme

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I wasn’t quite sure of the theme of this year’s Momentum track at EMC World.  As we get into Day 2, most of us here agree that xCP is the dominant theme tied to Case Management.

Roadmap Updates and EMC Investments

This morning more emerged in regards to details around the roadmap for some of the Information Access suite of products.   Based on our thoughts, we would anticipate the following priorities:

1. xCP 2.0 (TaskSpace/BPM/Forms) and SAP Integration
2. FatWire Integration
3. Centerstage
4. SharePoint
5. Media Workspace
6. My Documentum

The above being said, what’s missing, or what are the items that will not get investment going forward?

• Webtop – as stated in the Roadmap, Webtop is expected to survive in 6.6, 6.7 and 7 but that ongoing investment is focused on Centerstage.  Releases of Webtop will continue, but will mostly encompass platform certifications and bug fixes.  Quote from the Roadmap presentation focused on Webtop users starting to think about deploying solutions to CenterStage “in about a year”.
• DAMtop – similar to Webtop – moving to Media Workspace which utilizes an Adobe Flex interface.
• Web Publisher – again, not going to expect a significant investment as recommending moving to FatWire.  One follow – Interactive Deployment Services (formerly Site Caching Services) will continue to be supported.
• Documentum Compliance Manager (DCM) – as with Webtop, the focus was moving away from Webtop and DCM.  Many of the capabilities of DCM (example – e-signature) will be moved into Documentum Foundation Services (DFS) Web Services layer available for custom applications.  During the roadmap, the presenter suggested either writing custom applications or moving to EMC CSC/FCG partnership with FCG.
• WDK – Not really said but we would anticipate with DAMtop, Webtop, Webpublisher going away, WDK will continue to move to more DFS.

But what do I do today?

This is where customers are struggling.  Centerstage is not there yet in regards to a Webtop replacement and has been pretty late in regards to updates. (example – still does not include folder browsing).  xCP 2.0 seems to be the significant release as the 1.5 is still on WDK and moving to DFS.  While we love the concept of Case Management as it relates to what we have been developing for clients with HPI, many clients don’t fit into the Case Management scenario and are concerned about licensing costs as Webtop licenses don’t translate to xCP.

Bottom-line, clients will continue to develop/release Webtop for the next year but should be looking forward to how to implement future releases, whether that turns out to be CenterStage, xCP or other applications.  One helpful post relates to our current clients still on 5.3 and trying to upgrade to 6.5

We recommend clients consider tasks/interfaces linked to Webtop but essentially capable of running outside or tied to other applications.  Search is an excellent example of applications that clients have deployed and easily moved between platforms and applications.