Documentum CenterStage – A five year plan?

I just got off the phone with a life-sciences client that finished a briefing for Documentum in regards to their eRoom environment.  Announced a couple of years ago, CenterStage was to be the replacement for eRoom and eventually Webtop.    The client was curious in regards to purchasing additional eRoom licenses, as to whether these licenses would be translated into CenterStage licenses. 

Background on CenterStage

CenterStage was initially unveiled in beta at EMC World 2008 as a “SharePoint Killer”.  EMC did not use those exact words but many saw it as competition to SharePoint.  From what we have seen, CenterStage has not really evolved or been adopted by a significant client base.  At EMC World 2010, TSG stated that

• CenterStage is still lacking document management functionality that Webtop provides (example – full repository browse).  Clients should wait for a software development kit (related post) and additional functionality before considering moving Webtop applications to CenterStage.
• CenterStage could 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.

(All EMC World thoughts are here in this post ).  The Documentum product roadmap talked about

• 1.1 Release in Q4 of 2010
• Repository Services (Webtop Functionality) in Q2/Q3 of 2011 (this would be version 1.2?)

As of the date of this post, the 1.1 release is still not available.    At EMC World during the roadmap presentation, Documentum was suggesting that:

“Webtop – if focus of your Webtop-based solution is enterprise library, collaboration, or EDM, consider Centerstage v1.2”

 CenterStage – A 5 Year Plan?

Our client is currently looking to purchase more eRoom licenses.  One very valid concern is whether these licenses will upgrade to CenterStage.  When prodded by the client, EMC responded that the client might want to start looking at CenterStage in “2-3 years” with the idea of moving to CenterStage in “5 years”.  Obviously this took the client somewhat by surprise.

As we (TSG) have mentioned in numerous posts, we have always been somewhat concerned about the direction and investment in CenterStage.  While this 5 year quote is obviously just a rumor, we do have a number of EMC representatives that read this blog and are happy to post any unfiltered correction to the above statement.  As it relates to current Documentum clients:

• Webtop – we still don’t see it going away very soon.  We think this is a good thing as it allows clients to better plan around Webtop still being supported.
• eRoom – same could be said for eRoom.

As a rumor-mill post, please feel free to comment if anything said in this post disagrees or confirms your own discussions with EMC.