Documentum and Momentum EMC World 2010 Recap

First off, a couple of clarifications

1. The Content Management and Archiving (CMA) group of products (that included Documentum, Captiva…) has been changed to the Information Intelligence Group (IIG).   We (TSG) are just going to stick with “Documentum” to keep things simple and relevant to our reader base.  (Plus we save on having to explain the acronyms in every post).
2. When we refer to Momentum, we are referring to the Documentum track at EMC World.

Some telling stats from Documentum/Momentum Track at EMC World 2010

• 91 – Total Number of Presentations
• 27 –  Presentations that referenced DFS, xCP or Case Management
• 10 – Presentations that referenced Sharepoint
• 5 – Presentations that referenced CenterStatge
• 1 – Presentation that referenced “the Cloud”
• 0 – Presentations that referenced Webtop

Particularly interesting was the first day, Monday, where out of 16 presentations, 7 were focused on xCP not including the Mark Lewis keynote that was heavily focused on Case Management.  We should mention that Webtop was referenced in the roadmap sessions but not in the title or summaries of any presentations.  Also, these are probably a conservative number in regards to the xCP sessions as we didn’t count Captiva or Doc Sciences that will be part of the xCP bundle. 

Quick thoughts

• While the theme for EMC was “Journey to the Private Cloud”, the theme for Documentum was xCP (combination of BPM, TaskSpace, FormBuilder Tools) for Case Management.  See our post from Day two.
• Documentum is moving away from the WDK and like tools.  Specifically
  • Webtop/DAMtop/WebPublisher/DCM will be supported for “some” time but Documentum made it clear that they were no longer investing in these products.
  • xCP, currently WDK based, will be moving to DFS with 2.0 slated for release in January.
  • CenterStage is not WDK based but does not have all the functionality of Webtop or a software development kit.  See Day three thoughts.

 xCP – TSG Thoughts

• Clients should consider xCP for new development as opposed to Webtop or other WDK platforms as Documentum is no longer “investing” in WDK based platforms.
• Clients should be aware that xCP version 2.0 (presented in the roadmap as Q2 or Q3 2011) which will be based on DFS as this is a substantial re-write of the WDK based product.
• Clients should review license agreements when upgrading from Webtop to xCP as, in the past, the underlying tools of xCP have required separate licenses.  Clients should also push for how the new xCP bundle will be priced and licensed.
• Clients should ask Documentum for BPM references and conduct extensive testing of the new release of xCP as the underlying tools (BPM, Forms Builder, TaskSpace) have not been as broadly adopted as Webtop within the Documentum community.

Webtop/DAMtop/DCM –  TSG Thoughts

• WDK Products will continue to be supported through Documentum 7 (D7).
• DCM functionality will be included in the DFS layer (electronic signature, watermark…) and there is not a plan for an investment in DCM past 6.5.
• Clients should factor in reduced support after D7 in their upgrade and migration plans.
• Clients should consider add-ons that will run outside of Webtop to preserve their investment and user experience.
• Clients should continue to push Documentum on definition of “support” for Webtop.

CenterStage – TSG Thoughts

• Centerstage is still lacking document management functionality that Webtop provides (example – full repository browse).  Clients should wait for a software development kit and additional functionality before considering moving Webtop applications to CenterStage.
• Centerstage should be used for collaboration but still lacks key functionality that eRoom and SharePoint already provide.  (example data tables….)
• Centerstage has not compared well to SharePoint in regards to user adoption and wealth of add-ons (even from Documentum) in regards to additional functionality.

Sharepoint – TSG Thoughts

• Documentum has embraced SharePoint offering multiple solutions for SharePoint connectivity.
• My Documentum for SharePoint should be considered for SharePoint connectivity.
• Clients should also consider integrated approaches as My Documentum approaches can only be configured OOTB and do not have a software development kit.

Conclusion

Overall, we welcome the Documentum push for Case Management as a we (TSG) have been seeing these types of solutions on Documentum for our financial services clients as well as manufacturing and other clients for years.  What we haven’t seen in our client base is the widespread adoption of BPM/ TaskSpace/ Forms as our clients have often picked other tools and an integrated approach for Case Management.  While the idea of a suite with templates makes good application development sense and from a support perspective,  we (TSG) are somewhat skeptical about whether Documentum can pull it off for their existing Webtop client base but applaud the effort.  Look for future posts in regards to our experience with Case Management and integrated/best of bread approaches in future posts.

In regards to the “death of Webtop” – we are fairly confident that Webtop will be around for another couple of years.  Those that remember Workspace all know how long it took for all clients (although a couple of clients are still using it) to move to the new platforms.

Lastly, given the number of EMC Software Audits and that the 6.6 release of Documentum will include license management, clients should be very upfront with Documentum as it relates to licensing model and if Webtop/DAMtop/DCM licenses will transfer to other products as they plan their upgrades and migration efforts.