TSG talked with a 20+ year Documentum client yesterday about the future of Documentum. Like many Documentum customers, the client had postponed any decision about future plans for their system until there was a clear understanding of what OpenText would do with Documentum. With OpenText Enterprise World complete, this post will present our TSG thoughts on making future decisions about Documentum with an 80’s Clash theme – Should I stay or should I go?
Documentum Customer – If I go, there will be trouble
The majority of long-time Documentum customers, while far from thrilled with Documentum over the last 10+ years, have stayed on Documentum due to the perceived trouble of leaving. Stay reasons typically include:
- If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – Building and moving content, integrations and processes built on Documentum can be a costly and difficult process. Client’s desire to move to a new platform (or often even upgrade their existing platform) can be difficult, expensive and not always justified. Most of the Documentum customers we talk to are still on Webtop, an interface that was introduced years ago and hasn’t been invested in significantly for over a decade.
- It’s already paid for – Moving to a Documentum replacement product (or Documentum interface, or any part of the Documentum infrastructure) would require additional funds and ongoing maintenance. In a “do more with less” environment for clients, the desire to move or upgrade existing software and infrastructure faces difficult budgeting and purchase decisions.
- A lack of easy alternatives – Moving from Documentum to something new requires explaining to upper management why another vendor is better than Documentum. We have been posting that newer alternatives like Alfresco can provide attractive alternatives to Documentum, Gartner and other analysts continue to promote bigger is better when it comes to ECM alternatives. (or are they biased?) Is moving from Documentum to an even older OpenText or IBM/FileNet platform really an alternative and worth the trouble?
In a risk-adverse environment, the easy decision is to stay with Documentum and optimistically hope that OpenText reignites growth within the Documentum platform.
Documentum Customer– and If I stay it will be double
Back in 2015 when we began posting actively that Documentum should be sold (given the Dell purchase of EMC), we mentioned three specific things that a buyer would need to bring to the Documentum customer base for the purchase to be good thing for Documentum customers:
- Documentum engineering and consulting would need to survive the layoffs and the next six+ months in limbo as they await a buyer. (note: This was before the OpenText purchase was announced as EMC had announced Documentum was for sale without having a buyer).
- The buyer would have to want to invest in Documentum’s future rather than just milk the existing revenue stream.
- The buyer would need to bring others positives (existing clients, funding, technology) to Documentum to continue to evolve the product.
Given six months after the OpenText Purchase of Documentum was finalized, here are our thoughts on OpenText and their results versus these three goals:
- Keeping engineering and consulting – From talking to multiple ex-Documentum employees, while there was a slow trickle of people leaving after the deal closed 6 months ago, 2 months ago there was a “bloodbath” at ECD where ECD was cut by OpenText to the bone across all areas particularly focused on long-time Documentum resources. We would imagine that InfoArchive and Leap would be better protected but, for long-time Documentum customers, the cuts and attrition directly affect OpenText’s ability to invest in the core components of Documentum.
- Invest in Documentum – From our keynote review of OpenText Enterprise World 2017, we couldn’t find any evidence that OpenText would be investing in Documentum (or even the OpenText repository) but was focused on other initiatives around Analytics and Cloud. Without the resources with Documentum skills, how can OpenText invest? We would anticipate that any “investment” is really to upsell opportunities like a shared interface or add-ons. Word on the street is that Content Transformation Services will be replaced (again) by Blazon with possibly the same fate for InputAccel.
- Bring other positives – We initially thought OpenText had potential to be a good purchaser based on a knowledge of ECM, leverage a similar sales staff and other good ECM skills. Based on the keynote and feedback from customers, unless there is an interest in the additional OpenText products, OpenText’s plethora of products are a detriment to Documentum customers, particularly when it comes to the cloud and partnering with Cloud infrastructure leaders like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
Given the above, it isn’t hard to predict that staying over the long-term will be more risky (double) than leaving to a more modern platform. To address the biggest reasons typically people stay:
- If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – True but, for many clients, if it does break,can it be fixed? Particularly if the development was done by employees or Documentum consultants that are no longer available? Also, what is the definition of broken – can an bad interface continue to work but no longer serve its core purpose well?
- It’s already paid for – yes but at 25% maintenance, it gets repurchased every 4 years and that doesn’t include some of the other expensive software and hardware components in the stack.
- A lack of easy alternatives – As an Alfresco partner, we struggle when clients say “but Gartner says bigger is better”. We don’t agree and have had multiple customers that have benefited from a Documentum migration to Alfresco. Alfresco is 10 years old, profitable with both Documentum and OpenText roots and solely focused on ECM, how can that not be an easy alternative?
Documentum Customer – So you gotta let me know, should I cool it or should I blow?
In a presentation earlier in the year, OpenText presented to Documentum clients, one slide said:
Your (Documentum) investment is safe. OpenText will protect Documentum Customers’ investment with innovation and continued full support for both Documentum and OpenText Content Suite. Current roadmaps and commitments remain stable and will be delivered
For those that follow this blog post, TSG had mentioned a CMSWire report over a year ago that EMC wasn’t investing in Documentum and was focused on Leap as yet another new interface (to add to Webtop, D2 and xCP). We would predict that OpenText will continue with that roadmap or additional interfaces that “add” additional revenue streams.
Given that the Documentum purchase was very much for the customers and the maintenance revenue stream, OpenText is never going to say that Documentum is not supported or would force a migration. While actions speak loader than words, we would recommend Documentum customers watch the OpenText keynote to determine how many words relate to Documentum before deciding whether they should “cool it or should I blow”.
Let us know your thoughts below:
I do not want to advocate OpenText, but, technically, there is nothing wrong in their behaviour you have described. Well, they fired someone – in my opinion, it was a good move, because 90% of ECD staff are useless. Nothing was mentioned about Documentum future during OpenText World? Nothing wrong here – OpenText still has not hired Documentum lead 🙂
Interesting post, as usual Dave. I attended OpenText World and was disappointed that they did not do more to highlight not only Documentum, but also to reach out to their legacy Documentum clients both before and during the conference. Could be that they did but my company is too small to get attention. I wasn’t even aware of the conference until I asked an old friend what her take was on the acquisition.
I was also overwhelmed by the number of ECM products being showcased. I couldn’t get a clear picture of the key differences or even what was Documentum versus OpenText. Long term, I wonder what OpenText’s investors and Board of Directors are asking themselves. Does it make sense to have two R&D paths, two sales and marketing teams, and so on for two products that are essentially accomplishing the same thing. I asked this several times and the response I got back was that the right product for you really depends on your use cases. Sure, we all have unique requirements for workflows, compliance, security, and so on but at the end of the day aren’t we all just trying to effectively store and retrieve a lot of unstructured content?
I think the near-term strategy is to build cross-over interfaces to talk to either back-end ECM, longer term they’ll kill one off so they can focus their investment dollars. Maybe you could make the case that it’s analogous to a car company that like Honda that has a separate luxury division, Acura. However, while I don’t know much about OpenText’s software, I suspect they don’t consider themselves to be the Honda to Documentum’s Acura – or vice versa.
I was in Toronto and was underwhelmed by the lack of new ideas and innovation to the Documentum stack. Beyond LEAP and LEAP Express which seem to be new front ends to the same old product I didn’t see anything beyond minor, small roadmap enhancements. If you consider the multiple years of non-investment in Documentum from its various owners, they were ALREADY 2-3 years behind their competitors so the conference was just like returning from suspended animation but time has continued to progress in the outside world.
To Brian’s point- we are in a Big Pharma company and our customer handover experience was similar to yours; after the transaction we had no idea who the reps were and they didn’t know us. To be fair they were quite eager to establish contact at the conference and extend invites etc.
My overall read is that this sector is just so mature that there is no real growth to be had and the big SaaS vendors are cranking out releases so fast that the on-prem guys can’t keep up. Couple that with the notion that we in Life Sciences need to move past managing digitized versions of 20th century paper documents (in any form) and start managing information as individual blobs of information that might be used for various purposes. Call it structured authoring or whatever; if a system doesn’t deal at that level it’s a horse and buggy company circa 1903.