EMC World 2016 – Vision and Road Maps – EMC Documentum Platform

Began EMC World on Monday morning at 8:30 with Patrick Walsh and Tara Shaw presentation on the Documentum road map.  Had to miss the Documentum 7.3 technical session but hoping to capture that content from one of our clients (very similar – thanks Mark!!).  This post will present thoughts on the session.

Patrick and Tara are product managers for Documentum platform.  If you have questions, ideas or suggestions, you can email them at the alias documentumplatform@emc.com (ideas or sessions).

The three main themes (I think we will hear more about this in the Keynote later today) are:

• People – Content is simply available and easy to use (Project Horizon)
• Business – Make better information-driven decisions (Documentum)
• IT – Consolidate infrastructure and leverage all content (InfoArchive)

In looking at the overall ECD roadmap, the top 5 areas of client concern are:

1. Effort and Risk of Upgrades/Patches
2. Total Cost of Ownership
3. New User Engagement (Project Horizon)
4. Trust and Security
5. Analytics (Documentum and InfoArchive)

Making Upgrades Faster – Documentum 7.3 “Bedrock” and Docker

Issue #1 to address – Forced re-indexing and database changes are time consuming

Patrick offered a stateless Documentum –

• Point and run Content Server
• Binary upgrades
• No forced changes to database
• Eliminates downtime from reindexing

Able to bring in Bedrock server without any changes to database or repository.

Makes upgrades easier (and faster).  Has the ability to just run “Bedrock” against existing database and content repository due to everything due to Documentum in a Docker Container.

• Portable Production Ready Images
• Continuous delivery of upgrades and patches to production
• Faster Rollback

Documentum Application Containers

• Developer – All in One container for Functional Investigation
• Service Images – Individual services containers for Agile Expansion and Load balancing
• Stateless Documentum – External Content, Database & Isolated Configuration for Fast Patching and Upgrades

Different Containers for Content Store could be more containers for xCP or other customizations.

Docker is Linux based (no support for Microsoft right now).

How to migrate to Docker environment.

• Add content server – Docker container – can operate alongside existing Documentum
• Deploy extra Docker containers to manage high volumes
• Migrate to Docker by turning off original non-Docker instances

How many people are looking at Docker (only 1 out of 60 in room)

Hot upgrades to D7.3+  (Bedrock – Feldspar…)

• Can run Bedrock on Docbase 7.2 and also have it work on a Docbase Bedrock.
• Run new version along side old version in Production

TSG Note – While Documentum has made it easier to upgrade, most clients are still struggling with why they should upgrade.  From discussions:

Reasons to upgrade:

• Avoid extended support costs
• Avoid having to step through successive upgrades to get to final

Not a huge “we want this new thing” around the Documentum repository upgrade.

Addressing Infrastructure Costs

Commercial Database, Commercial Operating System, Commercial Application Server

• Bedrock certified Open Source Server Stack – (Tomcat, CentOS, Postgres) to reduce costs of database and operating systems.

Maximizing solution support

• Standard Support (4 years) 1,2,3,4
• Extended Support (3 years) 5,6,7

Solution life can sometimes extend over the standard support.

Simship and Simcert with Bedrock – Ship all products at the same time with the Bedrock platform to allows maximum return

Summing up TCO Expectations

• Stateless Documentum
• Docker Images
• Open Source Server Stack
• SimCert

Documentum APIs

Documentum API Landscape

• DFS
• CMIS
• REST
• xCP Rest
• D2 Rest

As well as continued support of Documentum Foundation Classes (DFC).

CMIS 1.1

• Browser Binding
• Bulk Updates
• Append to Stream

Awkward question – “How many using CMIS today?” (0 out of 60)

New Documentum REST Services

Search

• Saved Searches
• Search Templates
• Advanced Structured Search with Facets

User Group Management

• User Preferences
• Access Control
• SAML 2.0

Other

• Value assistance
• Lightwieight SysObjects
• Aspects
• Virtural Document (read-only)

Under Investigation

• Retention
• Workflow
• Transformation
• Collaboration Comment Services

Summary

In thinking (and talking to clients) about the Documentum platform, we would say the presentation, as well as the areas above might miss a “make the platform better” component but most were happy with a stability component.  In comparing with other ECM tools or previous roadmaps (2013 when Documentum 7 was released comes to mind), 3 years after 7.x was released, 7.3 announcement seems very minor with still no Documentum 8 on the roadmap.  We would state that the platform is in a support mode with new effort focused on Leap and InfoArchive.  For example, we would have loved to have seen a roadmap on xPlore updates (currently on Lucene 4.0 – Lucene 6.0 has been released and has several advantages and improvements.)

Let us know your thoughts below: