• 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 bought by OpenText – what do OpenText customers think?

You are here: Home / Documentum / Documentum bought by OpenText – what do OpenText customers think?

September 29, 2016

While most of the focus in regards to the announcement this month of the purchase of Documentum by OpenText has been on what will happen to the Documentum customers, we got some insight from this week’s ARMA conference in regards to OpenText client thoughts.  This post will share our thoughts as well as present some of our insights based on our previous analysis.

OpenText Customers – What does the Documentum purchase mean to them?

From a quick look at the OpenText press releases, OpenText has been on a buying spree

  • April 18th, 2016 – OpenText Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Certain Customer Experience Software Assets of HP Inc.
  • April 27th, 2016 – OpenText to Acquire ANX
  • June 20th, 2016 – OpenText Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Customer Communications Management and other Assets of HP Inc.
  • July 20th , 2016 – OpenText Buys Recommind, Inc.
  • September 12, 2016 – OpenText Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Dell EMC’s Enterprise Content Division, including Documentum

OpenText customers have to look at the above and think, “What does this mean to me?”.  For those committed to the OpenText ECM repository, how can buying Documentum be a good thing?  The concept of the enterprise suite for ECM makes sense when clients have access to a variety of tools for different functions that offer consistency and easy integration.  Documentum was a competitive product for the core repository rather than an additive product to the ECM suite (like when OpenText purchased Brava in 2015 for annotations).  The purchases of different companies could be seen as a distraction for ECM customers that want innovation around and in the OpenText repository.  Other feedback included:

  • Similar to Documentum, there hasn’t been much innovation in the core product over the last three years.
  • From the press release as well as the supporting presentation, there is no mention of the benefit for existing OpenText customers.
  • As we have said after our OpenText migration experience, we would have to say, from a core repository perspective, Documentum is better.

While some were worried that they might be forced to migrate to a single repository (Documentum or OpenText), as we said in our detailed analysis of the purchase, we think the probability that the two repositories would be combined is extremely remote as introducing a new repository could lead clients to considering non-OpenText solutions and would not benefit OpenText financially.  A variety of other reasons including all the Documentum or OpenText solutions having to be ported as well would make the merging into one repository cost prohibited and risky.  Similar to the history of FileNet/IBM and a variety of ECM products, we would expect OpenText to continue supporting both repositories going forward.

 OpenText Customers and Software Audits

One disturbing discussion involved OpenText clients going through recent software audits from OpenText.  In the Documentum customer base, we saw very aggressive audits starting in 2006 and continuing through 2013 or so.  See our posts from 2009 below:

  • Preparing for the Documentum Software Audit – quick tips and thoughts
  • Preparing for the Documentum Software Audit Part II: Understanding Audit Query Results

For the Documentum client base that went through the software audit, it was a difficult process from a relationship perspective and too often we saw sales sacrificing the relationship for a short-term win.  Documentum eventually gave up the practice but by then much of the damage to the relationship was done.

Summary

For OpenText clients, the purchase of Documentum/ECD can’t be viewed as a positive.  The purchase, combined with all the other purchases, doesn’t necessarily add innovation or additional capabilities to what they already own and could be seen as a distraction.  Like Documentum customers, the true costs or benefits of the purchase will take a year or more to determine the impact.

Let us know your thoughts below:

Filed Under: Documentum, Open Text

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

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

Primary Sidebar

Search

Related Posts

  • Documentum – Do More with OpenContent and OpenAnnotate
  • ECM 2.0 – One-Step vs. Two-Step Migrations
  • ECM Sales Myths for 2019
  • Documentum Futures – OpenText versus Doculabs
  • Documentum 6.7 and ADTS Extended Support Ending on April 30th, 2018
  • Documentum – How to make it better – 2018 Blog Series
  • Alfresco and Amazon Web Services – Disrupting Legacy Content Services – Alfresco Day London – Keynote
  • Alfresco – The Importance of being Cloud Native compared to Legacy ECM vendors
  • Moving off of Documentum – OpenText Marketing goes on the defensive
  • Documentum – What is the business case to replace it?

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