The update takes Documentum’s ECM platform – all of its products – from version 5.2 to version 5.3, and ties the software together into a completely unified architecture.
Yes it’s a point release, but it does show that EMC is doing a good job of integrating what it has in Documentum, and that makes the product more competitive, said Joshua Duhl, research director at IDC. Meta Group’s senior vice president Andy Warzecha said: They’ve pulled together disparate products that needed to be integrated. It’s good stuff.
Documentum acquisitions in the run up to its purchase by EMC were only part of a wave of consolidation in the enterprise content management sector. Documentum’s major rivals include FileNet Corp, Open Text, and IBM. Although FileNet is not faced with any integration work, IBM has some to do, Open Text has an awful lot ahead of it, Duhl said. But Open Text have got a good track record of this, he said.
Duhl said that among the updates associated with the integration, Documentum’s software includes a significantly redesigned user interface. It’s much more integrated with everyday office tools, he said. It allows people to do sophisticated project management and do them in a very seamless way.
But Documentum confirmed that the release does not further the integration of its software with either EMC’s core storage management software, or its Legato backup and archiving software. Over the next year or so you’ll see all this software begin to come together, promised Luvor Ptacek, director of product marketing at EMC.
That integration across EMC’s broader portfolio, bringing together APIs, user interfaces and repositories is a big challenge. It’s not easy to integrate three product lines, Warzecha said. That integration is where the rubber will hit the road. But even before that happens, EMC still hasn’t linked Documentum into a broader vision of storage management, he said.
