With EMC World next week, I had an interesting discussion with a client regarding the future of Webtop with Documentum. As readers will know from last year’s EMC World post, Documentum announced last year that they would not be “investing in Webtop” in the future. For this post, I thought I would share some of that conversation as well as general thoughts on Documentum product development.
Product Manager and Product Development at Documentum
To truly understand why Documentum would say “not investing” in Webtop, you have to have an understanding of how Documentum, and most software companies, develop and enhance their products. TSG was lucky enough to have worked with a former Documentum product manager and got a unique insight into the process that, to our understanding, hasn’t changed considerably recently. Readers will not be surprised to learn that development efforts at Documentum are similar to development efforts within their own IT organizations in that:
- Product Managers need to ask for funding – Similar to our business cases, the product manager has to request funding for an effort – new release of Webtop, CenterStage, MyDocumentum…..
- Product Managers have to ask for staff – based on funding efforts, a product manager has to request staff to complete the development.
Similar to client efforts, issues can arise if:
- Product Managers change products resulting in inconsistency in product development and technology direction
- Funding is limited
- Staff is inconsistent (different developers assigned to different products per release/update)
- Timelines slip based on other needs or lack of funding
From the discussion above, it is easy to see how a product manager being told that Documentum’s future is xCP, would pass along to the client base that Documentum “is not investing in Webtop” as funding for that effort would be going to xCP. It is also easy to see how development for CenterStage could go in spurts and change technology direction with new staff and product managers.
Webtop Future
Many Documentum users, particularly those that have a heavy commitment to Webtop, were very concerned that Webtop would be discontinued and require a new purchase (xCP or CenterStage). Most Webtop users are not asking for new functionality rather to just make the upgrade easier or not so often. While there are no specific presentations on Webtop at EMC World, I would like to suggest to Documentum that instead of “not investing” they change their message to “stabilizing”. For Documentum users, stabilizing would be a good thing in that:
- They have a considerable investment on their own in Webtop solutions
- Have struggled with upgrades in the past that added new features but did not change the overall user experience
- Documentum still has a ways to go before either CenterStage or xCP can completely replace Webtop
A “stabilizing” message would not be that different from what we hear in regards to a Webtop for D7 when it arrives.
Conclusion
We (TSG) think, overall, a stabilized Webtop along with support from Documentum is better for our clients (and Documentum) than a completely redone D7 Webtop or forced migration to a new tool. Clients want minimal changes between 6.5 and 7 versions of Webtop and would like to decide to upgrade to xCP or CenterStage when there is a compelling business reason. As an example, many of our clients leveraged Workspace (circa 1995), particularly for DCM, well into the 2000’s when that product had been long discontinued. While Documentum did not really provide support, most clients had been using the stable version of Workspace for so long that support was not an issue. As Webtop gradually sunsets, xCP, CenterStage, CMIS or Open Source alternatives will move in to fill that gap when clients, and the business, justify the upgrade/migration effort.
Please let us know your thoughts below.
I definitely agree! We here are currently very tied into Webtop and a small change from D6.5 to 7 if any change at all would be very much to our liking.
As we progress years out, we may move away from Webtop, but not today, or tomorrow, or next year. Five years out, maybe.
If you look at the Webtop 6.7 release (which just came out this weekend), you will see that EMC has not really added many new features. There’s support for Office 2010, which is really for Application Connectors and support Java 2 security. The biggest feature added is usage tracking and reporting. This was added to most of the products in 6.7 release. That being said, hopefully these new features do not have a negative effect on the stability.
Thank you for a thoughtful post. As head of product management for Documentum XCP and the Platform (including Webtop) let me just clarify a few things:
1) It is true that we aren’t adding many new features to Webtop, but we continue to invest a lot of time and effort in quality, performance, and security improvements – in addition to the occasional new capability. So while the investment in new features may be less than in years past, overall investment is still fairly high.
2) We do recognize that Webtop is very widely deployed at many customers and still provides a lot of value. Our success is based on our customers success and we know Webtop is an important part of many deployments.
3) As Johnny Gee mentioned we just released Webtop 6.7 and we will release Webtop on the upcoming D7 platform version as well and continue to support it for many many years.
We are following a path that balances the needs of widely deployed clients like Webtop as well as some of our newer offerings. Come join us at EMC World and learn more about what is coming!
John – Thanks so much for the clarification. We really appreciate you taking the time to read and add to the discussion. The reply you left is exactly what we are hearing customers requesting in regards to Webtop futures. Looking forward to your roadmap discussion at Momentum/EMC World!!
Johnny – thanks for your input as well and the insight in the D6.7 Webtop release. Just to clarify – when I mentioned stablize Webtop I didn’t necessarily want to imply that the release was unstable, just another way of saying that the interface and development environment have stablized (and aren’t being changed) making upgrades easier. (Small clarification but I worry that someone might think I said Webtop or the upgrades were unstable).
Anhtuan – thanks for the client perspective. See you at EMC World!!!!