EMC World 2012 – Rick Devenuti Keynote – Purchase of Syncplicity – Monday – May 21, 2012

One of the more telling presentations of EMC World is the IIG Keynote by Rick Devenuti.  Typically the overall theme of the conference is presented with all of the presentations later building or supporting the theme.  The biggest announcement this year was EMC’s purchase of Syncplicity but that wasn’t until the end of the keynote.  This post will present some of the relevant points as well as our take and thoughts.

Theme is End User Solutions with Consulting

Coming up with the theme was a stretch by trying to combine things we heard over the first day.  Not as easy to determine as Case Management was so dominant two years ago.  Read more and where we developed the “End User Solution” thought as well as the ties to consulting.

Rick did mention that around 950 to 1000 of the overall 15,000 attendees are here for Momentum, which is up from last year.

Rick presented the four dominant priorities:

• New End User
• Cloud
• Pervasive Governance
• Transform your business

Rick stated that “we haven’t been focused on the end user”.  Rick mentioned several times in the presentation tension between end user needs and an organizations desire for compliance and governance.  Clearly the mobile iPad/iPhone application is positioned for new user.  Not sure whether a D2 purchase falls into new user, cloud, pervasive or transform category.  As with last year, some of these themes have to tie into EMC World (Cloud/Transform as well as GreenPlum) but the new end user and pervasive governance are good goals for IIG.

In looking over 2011’s keynote , we would have to say that this year’s keynote was much more focused.  If you read last year’s post, you might see items that didn’t get traction this year:

• Alliance with CISCO (didn’t go anywhere)
• Alliance with Box.net (Syncplicity is competing software)
• REST API and Development Environments (didn’t quite happen….yet)
• VCUBE? – no mention this year

This year, not as much alliance and more pragmatic.  That being said, last year we saw the mobile demo as well as some CISCO integration in Jeetu’s presentation.  No demos this year.

Documentum D2 4.0

Rick focused on the interface and configuration capabilities of D2.  Rick stated the excitement part of the D2 purchase was X3 which is the base D2 4.0.  It gives us (TSG) hope that the soon to be released D2 4.0 would be a robust and stable release given the time in development.  Some D2 points from Rick included:

• Complete new step forward
• Widgets – 3rd party gadgets
• Configurable workspaces.
• Ability to quickly react to customer’s requests.

Documentum Mobile – 1.2

Small discussion on Documentum Mobile.  It will include write, push notifications – iPhone and iPad – solutions that sit on Documentum mobile can be protected.  More in other presentations later (no demo this year – was a significant part of keynote last year when it was new).

John O’Melia – Vice President of IIG Services

Rick brought John up on the stage.  This is the first time with have seen such a focus on the services component during a keynote.  John talked about business results across all the IIG lines of service.   Customer support would include skill based routing.  Education would include video training.

The bulk of John’s presentation was around consulting and accelerating our “solution journey”.  John mentioned that they had started solution journey 3 years ago.  Focus on customers with similar business challenges and ways solutions could take the risk out of the project.  John’s focus was on repeatable frameworks, but in a back and forth with Rick, was coyly pushed to make them products, supported by IIG.   In January of this year – EPFM (Engineering, Plant and Facilities Management), Enterprise Records Management became true products and available on demand.

Life Sciences – Coming Back

Big push by Rick/John that IIG was “coming back” to life sciences.  D2 grew up in life science industry.  (Our information is it was only in Europe – no significant life sciences clients in the states before the EMC purchase).  We would agree that a focused on configuration approach would help reduce validation efforts for changes.  IIG is building a suite of life sciences solutions.  Announcing first solution will be a Quality and Manufacturing Solution.  Later would be focused on electronic submission and another for electronic master file.  Look for more information later as we see demos in the Momentum Zone and Genius Lab.

Side Note – what about the preferred solution from CSC – FirstDocs?  As we mentioned two years ago, EMC was pushing it as the DCM replacement.

More on Solutions

Solutions not just building blocks, IIG will be focused on 5 verticals

• Public Sector
• Energy
• Financial Services
• Life Sciences
• Healthcare

This is a classic consulting alignment.  Software development, particularly an infrastructure company, doesn’t necessarily follow an vertical approach.  All the major consulting firms (Accenture is my experience) divide into vertical solutions to be able to apply business knowledge for more value.

CapGemini – Nick James

Rick brought up Nick James from CapGemini (another keynote first) to discuss how CapGemini had worked with IIG to help Public Sector clients transform their business.  Some discussion about case as a services, why they partnered with IIG to produce end to end business solutions.

Syncplicity Purchase

From the discussions, it appears the Syncplicity purchase was in process for a year.  It is hard to evaluate at this point in time as it seems to be a Box.Net/DropBox competitor.  Look for more in later posts.

Summary

Overall it was an interesting keynote by Rick.  Some thoughts:

• Supports our thoughts around 2012 being the coming out for D2
• Not as much mobile and xCP as past presentations
• Real focus on consulting solutions and the end user (hence our thoughts on the theme)

We are slightly concerned that the push for solutions and verticals, particularly IIG/EMC consulting, is more of a revenue push than a focus on end-user satisfaction, something we mentioned as part of our review of IIG revenues and the D2 purchase itself.  As we mentioned with SDF, the solutions that become products but only with consulting engagements IIG are difficult to evaluate.  In regards to coming back to Life Sciences, D2 will help but we would see it as a stretch given DCM, FCG/CSC, eSubmissions along with EMC’s client relationship history.

What was missing?

• No more SharePoint Discussion – as we mentioned previously in our posts, seeing SharePoint less and less these days.
• What happened to D7?  Perhaps D2 and other focus pushed this off?

For early morning readers, I will be skipping the VMWare keynote and working in the Momentum Lounge – drop me a note at inquiry@tsgrp.com if you would like to connect real-time for discussion of any of the above topics.