I was at a Documentum client this week that is reviewing their ECM strategy as part of planning for 2012 and 2013. Given a somewhat difficult relationship with EMC due to a contentious software audit, the client wanted to review alternatives and consider a Documentum migration to a new ECM system as an alternative to the Documentum upgrade. For this post I will share some of the discussion of Documentum Alternatives as well as thoughts on ECM disruptors, Alfresco and SharePoint.
Upgrade Documentum or move to a different platform?
Like many other Documentum clients, our client is currently on Documentum 5.3 despite Documentum 6.7 being recently released. The client has delayed the Documentum upgrade due to a number of factors:
- Difficulty of upgrading Webtop – Due to a large number of required business customizations, all of these customizations would have to be redone in the new 6.x environment which would make the effort and risk of the upgrade high.
- Funding of Upgrades – From the business side, the business is not getting any new functionality with a Documentum uprade and views the upgrade as expensive and risky, given the potential to interrupt business. In an environment of “doing more with less”, we have seen many clients skip Documentum releases to save money and reduce risk.
- A smart enhancement approach – Rather than tie any enhancements to the upgrade project, the client has developed multiple business enhancements on the current 5.3 platform that will make either an upgrade or a migration easier including an SOA approach. See related post for additional detail. In this manner, the business users are getting something while IT is gradually reducing the cost while increasing the flexibility of either an upgrade or a migration.
We should note that we have seen many positives with the 6.7 release (specifically better performance with xPlore) but typically business users do not see new or necessary functionality that drives business users to upgrade.
ECM Disruptors – Alfresco or SharePoint – Why not Oracle, IBM…..
The term disruptor comes from the successful business books “The Innovators Dilemma” and the “The Innovators Solution”. In looking at innovation, the book discusses that, most of the time, innovators with one technology, based on the mechanism of profit-maximizing resource allocation, can have a very difficult time moving to the next technology and will be “disrupted” by newcomers. For early ECM, many of us remember FileNet innovation with their image solutions, Optical Jukeboxes and prioritized scanners as the leader in image processing. Documentum innovated around document management with different tools and a different target audience.
As ECM continues to mature and moves to more and more of a commodity, it is difficult to see the enterprise software business model from Oracle, IBM or a host of other solutions as anything that would disrupt Documentum enough to justify a move from the Documentum platform. Approaching a cost-conscious business and saying “I know I just spent X millions on Documentum, but I want to spend another X million on (Oracle, IBM…)” To make the move, clients need to have a true disruptor in regards to either technology or long term cost of ownership.
No Cost of Purchase – Commodity Pricing
SharePoint and Alfresco both have a significant advantage as a disruptor over traditional ECM vendors as commodities in regards to purchase price:
- SharePoint – typically has been purchased already within the organization and can be viewed as a “free” alternative.
- Alfresco Enterprise – has a commercial open source business model and does not charge for software purchase, only for software maintenance.
The business model of bundling (Microsoft) as well as commercial open source (Alfresco) disrupts the traditional software purchasing model of Documentum, Oracle and IBM. You might just say, “Well, Documentum could just price cheaper”. An overall enterprise software business model based on revenue goals, sales commissions, maintenance agreements and previous software sales and relationships with customers would make pricing changes extremely difficult.
While neither Alfresco or SharePoint could really be called “free” software, the biggest disruptor for existing Documentum clients is that the costs can be really compared going forward. Some examples of cost items include:
- Maintenance – Alfresco maintenance costs are less than Documentum. SharePoint purchase and maintenance costs may already be paid for as part of a enterprise agreement.
- Development – for those with significant customizations in Documentum, the cost of redeveloping those functions in a new platform might actually compare favorably with redeveloping those customizations on the new release of Documentum. On a side note from the Documentum roadmap discussion, clients looking to develop on Webtop or other platforms should review the long-term viability of those platforms given announcements at EMC World.
- Hardware – typically hardware is being refreshed as part of the upgrade and would involve a migration to the new hardware or virtual environment removing the cost of procuring new hardware for a new ECM solution.
Summary
On the whole, we were advising the client not to “boil the ocean” but to really focus on either Documentum, SharePoint or Alfresco and a long term strategy based on a variety of factors and consider a hybrid solution that gradually evolves over time. Most clients are already running SharePoint. Moving selective content to SharePoint or bringing up an Alfresco repository for other content should be a way to gradually reduce Documentum’s footprint if that is the way the client determines to proceed.
Lastly, we considered sharing a technical evaluation (list requirements, scoring/grading). The results of this type of review can be so biased and subject to interpretation that we decided to hold it for now as this post was already pretty long. If you are interested in some related posts here – view our Documentum to Alfresco Migration series of postings or any of the various SharePoint postings.
Coming Disruptors – Software as a Service and the Cloud
We would predict that SAAS (Software as a Service) will be the next disruptor for the EMC community. Best example right now is Google Docs although many other vendors (Box.net) are making plays but hard to see some of the core ECM users giving up control at this point in time. For traditional ECM clients, the desire (and trust) to have all of their documents stored offsite is a detractor from this type of solution but the cost model that avoids hardware and reduces support is a clear disruptor.
Let me know your thoughts and comments.
John says
For several years the notion of Sharepoint (SP) and Alfresco (Af) disrupting the ECM market has been tossed around. At this point, my view is that they aren’t. This is because SP, Af, and DCTM address different spaces, needs, and technical competencies. IOW, I do not think they are exactly interchangeable.
SP permits a company to continue using and building their .NET and C# expertise. To use Af or DCTM can be viewed negatively due to areas of expertise and biases. At the end of the day, it means getting other trained people in position to use those technologies. SP is part of many companies’ Microsoft contract, so the additional cost (short term) to enter into the SP arena is low. While it is not as rich as Documentum or (arguably) flexible as Af, it is there, it ties into the MS Office environment, and that sits well with the vast majority of folks in a company.
Af is not going to often appeal to enterprise, but has a solid home in non-profit, government, or other such low budget institutions. I think it is a great option, but to be a viable enterprise solution it needs to offer the “top shelf” feel that other “enterprise-y” solutions do. I am by no means saying that there is a quality gap, it is all about perception. If I have an enterprise piece of software and a free piece of software that do 100% exactly the same thing, companies feel more secure with the former. This has regularly frustrated me, but I’ve learned that’s the way it is.
DCTM has the ability to address far more complicated taxonomies or implementations than SP or Af can. This is its strength and it is losing other niches to the other two. However, I don’t think this is so much disruption as it is balancing the playing field and learning where to market to strengths. EMC needs to pay attention to that detail and market DCTM’s strength, not try to go head-to-head with the others.
There is a right tool for a job. To use one where another should be used amounts to clever selling and a disappointed client.
As for SaaS there is a key issue (or two) that needs to be resolved before it can truly be viable: who owns the data and how easily can it be extracted from the SaaS solution and moved into another. The willingness of a small company v. a big company to trust cloud/SaaS differs widely. However there is an opportunity for “private clouds” (see EMC’s effort in-house) to get cloud-like, SaaS-like environments without relinquishing control or security of one’s sensitive data or applications.
Those are my two cents.
TSG Dave says
John,
Thanks for your post. Some thoughts.
While I agree that SharePoint, Alfresco or Documentum are not interchangable, the point of the article was that, as ECM becomes more of a commodity, the differences are less and less making SharePoint or Alfresco’s pricing model one evaluation point that, in my opinion, is already disrupting Documentum.
Completely agree on the point in regards to Microsoft, .Net, C# and SharePoint. Would think that Java shops lean toward Alfresco over SharePoint for applications that would require development. We don’t have many .Net shops that leverage Documentum.
Disagree with Alfresco not appealing to the enteprise but agree that getting the perception through to users that open source is enterprise capable is a sticking poing. We have multiple clients that see it as an enterprise option as robust as Documentum. It is probably a perception thing. We had John Newton present to some Documentum users at our client briefing and it helped them understand the open source model and why it could fit.
Will take a pass on the complicated taxonomies or implementations. Not sure one is “better” than the other as that ties to your point in regards to the right tool for the right job. Saying which one is “right” has alot to do with your implementaiton and support resources. We see this all the time with which Documentum products (XCP, DFS, DFC, Webtop, MyDocumentum…..) – it takes careful analysis to determine which one is “right” and more than one may fit.
Agree with SAAS point on data ownership and moving data around as it ties to my control point.
Not sure I would group the “private cloud” of EMC with SAAS. Hosted solutions are very different than Software As A Service. Salesforce.com is SAAS – putting up Documentum “on demand” is not the same thing.
My two cents – thanks again for the reply.
Lance Russell (@lancekrussell) says
Good blog Dave, and insightful comments John. We’re seeing similar evaluations and discussions with our clients at PointBridge. Full disclosure- we specialize in SharePoint-centric solutions, so our view is limited to those enterprises who are planning for or at least evaluating the possibility of moving to SharePoint, however that certainly gives us insight across many incumbent players. Here are some of the trends and issues we’re seeing, and a few perspectives and beliefs that we’ve been sharing with clients
1. In a market where IT human capital is the biggest scarcity- and will be for several years- consolidating platforms and leveraging those based on relatively more abundant skill-sets such as C#/.NET or Java is a smart move. We generally recommend picking one platform for ECM/WCM/BPM/Search as opposed to multiple specialized solutions that might require more varied skill-sets (not to mention integration challenges).
2. Even where clients are moving generally toward SharePoint for broad ECM strategies, we sometimes see DCTM remaining in place for records management. So, I agree with John that they don’t serve the same purpose, however there is no question SharePoint is taking share at a rapid pace, and that on the whole, a typical enterprise could probably move 80% of its content to SharePoint. That’s certainly disruptive. And for what it’s worth, we’re probably seeing more migrations from FileNet than any other legacy system.
3. Microsoft has a viable SaaS play here too. It’s called SharePoint Online and is part of the recently released Office 365 cloud suite. BTW, you can easily move content between SharePoint Online and your on-premises SharePoint environment. While SharePoint Online needs to continue to evolve to meet true enterprise DM/RM needs, my opinion is that cloud technology is not the barrier- it’s the (often unfounded) lack of client comfort with security and compliance concerns. It’s always amazing to me how many companies think they can secure their own data centers better than Microsoft, Google, EMC or IBM.
4. In general, we see taxonomies and classification systems that are far too complex, and feel that enterprises could do a better job of first considering the end-user perspective in this search-driven world. If enterprises put half as much time into IA as they put into scoring tools on criteria that are less relevant to users, I suspect we’d end up with far more usable systems, and much better ROI.
Gustavo Campos (@guscampos) says
Thoughtful comments of John and Dave.
Using my experience, I would add to what’s related to Documentum migration that these customization migrations aren’t too costly, at least if you are in 5.3 and later versions. We did some migration projects at low cost, like the migration of an 800-hour customization in 1,5 week.
Most of Webtop’s customizations just need some review, while more specialized customizations like ADTS plug-ins may take some extra time, since some products changed their architecture and 3rd party bundled applications in the last years.
IMHO you will spend more time retesting the whole application rather than rewriting customizations.
Regards,
Gustavo
TSG Dave says
Gustavo,
It really depends on how much customization the client has done. For the client I was mentioning, customizations are extensive. Also, in considering the migration, amount of content, other items in the stack (ex: database or moving from PDF Aqua to PDF Stamping Services) have major ramifications as well.
Agree with your point, particularly in regulated environments. Testing/Revalidation is a very expensive proposition as well.
Dave
Paras says
This is quite an interesting thread – however, my comments are focused on the SaaS aspects of ECM only.
My background is in Documentum.
Does Microsoft’s offerring of SharePoint Online as part of Office 365 Solution leave Documentum lagging behind in this space?? because to the best of my knowledge there is no clear published strategy from EMC on transforming Documentum for the SaaS market place **especially** for more sophisticated ECM solutions such as those that include Workflows, Forms, integrations & complex business rules etc. and that are not pure content management/archival type solutions.
I am not sure how sophisticated SharePoint Online is? whether its just an online archive or something better and **more importantly** how economical is it to run SharePoint in a multi-tenanted SaaS environment considering its architecture etc.? (May be some SharePoint experts can pitch in)
When compared to SalesForce’s architecture – Documentum’s architecture is in stark contrast. All of SalesForce – ALL the tenants – run off a single database with NOT that many tables – just a couple of REALLY REALLY big ones; where as with Documentum each new Repository is a new database with its own set of 200-300 tables.
Is SharePoint’s architecture closer to SalesForce or Documentum?