I just attended the 11:30 session on Business Transformation for Life Sciences.   This post will discuss the session with our observations.

After taking a hiatus from developing industry-specific solutions for their customers and focusing on the platform, Documentum is looking to offer industry specific solutions for life sciences and other industries. For Life Sciences, they are looking to leverage the new D2 platform. I know many TSG clients – specifically in the Life Sciences industry – have been asking for this and it appears that Documentum is listening and trying to deliver. In addition to delivering a solution, they are offering professional services and end-to-end implementation including requirements gathering/program management, migration, and validation documentation (IQ, OQ, PQ).

The first solutions on which they are focusing are:

• Quality and Manufacturing Documentation (releasing this year)
• Submissions (early 2013?)
• Trial Master file (early 2013?)
• Lab Notebooks (Future)
• Drug Safety (Future)
• Others from partners???

They spoke at a high level about the Quality and Manufacturing solution. It will be 21 CFR Part 11 Compliant, include a taxonomy (Leverage the DIA EDM Reference), security model,  include “all” DCM functionality (auto numbering, auto linking, etc.), and be available to install on-premise as well as OnDemand (in their cloud offering). Integration with SharePoint and InputAccel are also available. The solution will be based on D2 3.1 and will also be available on the D2 4.0 platform that will be released later this year.

They also mentioned that they are looking at how to leverage Syncplicity (external collaboration) for these solutions. From our clients – I see more of a need for External Approval – so keeping an eye on if that functionality will be made available through Syncplicity in the future.

Pricing… from what we have heard, if you have DCM licenses talk to your sales representative about what this means to you. I popped in the tail end of another session where an attendee specifically asked about Webtop licenses and D2. The statement made by the presenter was that Webtop is still a product – separate from D2 (i.e. those licenses will most likely not convert to D2 or this specific Life Sciences offering).

The industry-specific solution sounds great. I know our life sciences clients will be intrigued about the offer of a validation package available. However, our clients that implemented DCM experienced a rough ride, so they may be skeptical of another solution from EMC.