• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
TSB Alfresco Cobrand White tagline

Technology Services Group

  • Home
  • Products
    • Alfresco Enterprise Viewer
    • OpenContent Search
    • OpenContent Case
    • OpenContent Forms
    • OpenMigrate
    • OpenContent Web Services
    • OpenCapture
    • OpenOverlay
  • Solutions
    • Alfresco Content Accelerator for Claims Management
      • Claims Demo Series
    • Alfresco Content Accelerator for Policy & Procedure Management
      • Compliance Demo Series
    • OpenContent Accounts Payable
    • OpenContent Contract Management
    • OpenContent Batch Records
    • OpenContent Government
    • OpenContent Corporate Forms
    • OpenContent Construction Management
    • OpenContent Digital Archive
    • OpenContent Human Resources
    • OpenContent Patient Records
  • Platforms
    • Alfresco Consulting
      • Alfresco Case Study – Canadian Museum of Human Rights
      • Alfresco Case Study – New York Philharmonic
      • Alfresco Case Study – New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association
      • Alfresco Case Study – American Society for Clinical Pathology
      • Alfresco Case Study – American Association of Insurance Services
      • Alfresco Case Study – United Cerebral Palsy
    • HBase
    • DynamoDB
    • OpenText & Documentum Consulting
      • Upgrades – A Well Documented Approach
      • Life Science Solutions
        • Life Sciences Project Sampling
    • Veeva Consulting
    • Ephesoft
    • Workshare
  • Case Studies
    • White Papers
    • 11 Billion Document Migration
    • Learning Zone
    • Digital Asset Collection – Canadian Museum of Human Rights
    • Digital Archive and Retrieval – ASCP
    • Digital Archives – New York Philharmonic
    • Insurance Claim Processing – New York Property Insurance
    • Policy Forms Management with Machine Learning – AAIS
    • Liferay and Alfresco Portal – United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Chicago
  • About
    • Contact Us
  • Blog

Documentum Content Server 6.7 – Primary Support Ending April 30, 2015 – What should clients do?

You are here: Home / Documentum / D2 / Documentum Content Server 6.7 – Primary Support Ending April 30, 2015 – What should clients do?

April 23, 2015

At EMC World 2014, Rick Devenuti shared 13 minutes into his keynote  that only 25% of Documentum customers had upgraded to the Content Server 7.x after over 18 months of 7.x being available.  While Rick spun this news to the positive, we had been posting since 2013 that many of our clients were hesitant to upgrade despite at Documentum 6 to Documentum 7 was nothing like the upgrade clients experienced for previous releases.

While Rick Devenuti has recently left IIG (now ECD), for the clients that are still on Documentum Content Server 6.7 (still significantly more than 50%), this post will present our recommendations regarding extended support, content server upgrade as well as other upgrade issues.

Documentum Standard Support Versus Extended Support

The support dates for current and recent past versions for Documentum Content Server are as follows:

Content Server Version Primary Support Extended Support
6.7 SPX 30 April 2015 30 April 2018
7.1 30 Nov 2017 30 Nov 2020
7.2 28 Feb 2019 28 Feb 2022

As presented above, all standard support for Documentum 6.7 Content Server ends at the end of April 2015.  As a result of these fast approaching end dates, most clients that haven’t begun upgrade efforts will opt to pay for extended support.   Some concerns about extended support include:

  • The typical 20-25% annual support costs can raise an additional 5-10% for extended support, causing IT departments to incur higher support costs.
  • While extended support is provided, many of our clients have found support weak as, when issues occur, Documentum support can too often insist on an upgrade rather than addressing the issue.
  • As versions age, Documentum support engineers have less and less knowledge of the release resulting in less support at a higher price tag.

For clients that haven’t upgraded to the 7.1/7.2 Content Server, we would recommend begin planning to upgrade Documentum and associated components in 2015 to avoid paying more for extended support. With multiple components, servers and integrations, there are numerous approaches to upgrading a Documentum platform and each client will have unique constraints.

Upgrading the Content Server (but not the front-end interface)

In talking to clients about upgrading to D7, many are rightfully concerned about upgrading their entire Documentum stack.  Most of the Documentum clients we know who aren’t on D7 are also still on Webtop.  As we have mentioned in this post multiple times, D2 and xCP have not been as successful as Documentum would like in replacing Webtop.  In looking at Webtop migrations, many clients have noted that Webtop is “good enough” as mentioned in this post in 2013.

Documentum has been saying since 2011 that they are “not investing” or “stabilizing” Webtop, we would recommend that clients consider keeping Webtop and simply upgrading the back-end content server to D7.  Some advantages of this approach include:

  • Not paying for extended support
  • Performance and stability improvements associated with D7
  • Simplifying installation, patching, deployment and support activities
  • Minimal user interruption (depending on the upgrade approach) as the interface and taxonomy will not be changing (as it would if moving to D2 or xCP)
  • No impact to user interface
  • New Documentum REST web services which may not be of much use to existing environments, but could provide benefits down the road with new application integrations.

Lastly, and most importantly, Documentum Support for the area that really needs support – the content server, as Webtop rarely generates a support call.

One benefit to upgrading the Content Server first is that it is the simplest approach with the lowest number of moving parts. From our experience, when clients upgrade their software, it often causes them to evaluate other items such as a hardware refresh, database upgrade, browser compatibility, and integration with other components (Publishing Tools, Viewers, etc.).  These other dependencies and potential upgrades (especially new hardware) can significantly increase the complexity and timeline of the upgrade process. By limiting the first step of an upgrade to just the content server, the questions regarding the rest of the stack and related components can be delayed to reduce complexity.

If undertaking this approach a few things to remember is that moving to a phased approach may require additional testing. For example, you would want to test your Webtop customizations when upgrading your backend and then again when upgrading your front end. The amount of testing and related documentation will be dependent upon items such as technical implementation, risk/impact of failure, and company testing policies.

Documentum Webtop 6.7 – Upgrade?

While Documentum has mentioned for years that they are “not investing” in Webtop, they have kept it current and continue to support it.  As stated back in the EMC community December, 2014, Webtop 6.8 is available.  Some significant points:

  • Email Improvements – See our post about email issues back in 2012.
  • Security Enhancements
  • Updated client and browser support

Webtop 6.8 Extension of Support

  • Primary support extended to the end of 2018
  • Secondary support extended to the end of 2021

Webtop 6.7 Support

  • Primary support ends as currently scheduled – April 2015
  • Secondary support ends as currently scheduled – April 2018
  • 1st year of secondary 6.7 support surcharge waived (charged at primary support rate)

Given the announcement of Webtop 6.7 secondary support being waived for a year, we are pretty convinced that many clients are still on Webtop 6.7.

We are recommending that clients test Webtop 6.8 to determine if it meets their needs.

Summary

Content Server 6.7 clients should be planning for the upgrade to the Documentum 7 platform, but consider a stepped approach leaving their existing Webtop environment in place to reduce complexity and risk.  A future blog will discuss considerations to upgrading Webtop to newer modern interfaces.

Filed Under: D2, D6.7, D7, Documentum, Migrations, News, Webtop, xCP

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Documentum – EMC World 2015 – What’s New, What’s Next: Documentum Platform Roadmap – Patrick Walsh | TSG Blog says:
    May 5, 2015 at 1:38 am

    […] of the backend.   We talked about it before but have always recommend to clients to consider upgrading the repository outside of the interface.   Patrick presented how the following front-ends can all run on the 7.2 […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Search

Related Posts

  • Enterprise Content Management Predictions – 2015
  • Documentum – EMC World 2013 – Momentum – Day 1 – EMC Documentum 7.0 Roadmap
  • Documentum – EMC World 2013 Momentum – Day 1 – Rick Devenuti Keynote
  • Documentum – EMC World 2015 – Overall ECD Product Vision and Roadmap – Ahson Ahmad and Mark Arbour
  • Documentum – Momentum EMC World 2014 Recap – Some bunts, hits as well as some swings
  • Documentum – Momentum – EMC World 2014 – Vision Strategy and Roadmap Presentation
  • Documentum – EMC World 2013 – Momentum – Early Predictions
  • EMC World 2012 – May 23rd – What’s Next? ECM Documentum Family Roadmap – Aaron Aubrecht
  • Documentum Webtop 5.3 running on Documentum Content Server 6.x
  • EMC World 2016 – Day 2 – ECD Roadmap and Vision

Recent Posts

  • Alfresco Content Accelerator and Alfresco Enterprise Viewer – Improving User Collaboration Efficiency
  • Alfresco Content Accelerator – Document Notification Distribution Lists
  • Alfresco Webinar – Productivity Anywhere: How modern claim and policy document processing can help the new work-from-home normal succeed
  • Alfresco – Viewing Annotations on Versions
  • Alfresco Content Accelerator – Collaboration Enhancements
stacks-of-paper

11 BILLION DOCUMENT
BENCHMARK
OVERVIEW

Learn how TSG was able to leverage DynamoDB, S3, ElasticSearch & AWS to successfully migrate 11 Billion documents.

Download White Paper

Footer

Search

Contact

22 West Washington St
5th Floor
Chicago, IL 60602

inquiry@tsgrp.com

312.372.7777

Copyright © 2023 · Technology Services Group, Inc. · Log in

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Please accept this site's cookies, but you can opt-out if you wish. Privacy Policy ACCEPT | Cookie settings
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT