Document management outfit Documentum Inc, which is looking to raise close to $21m from its initial public offering, has come out with Version 3 of its Documentum Enterprise Document Management System. DEDM 3.0 is based on Oracle Corp’s Oracle7 7.1 and 7.2 databases – with support for Sybase Inc’s System 11 in the pipeline – and is used for managing very large, complex and line-of-business documents as they move through an organization. The Documentum product is targeted at the enterprise document management market and brings together several data types that employ re-usable object-based document components and store business and process rules. Version 3.0 includes process- controlled replication of enterprise information, access control lists with context-driven security, a cross-system programming language called Docbasic, and an enhanced user interface. The Pleasanton, California-based company characterizes its product as a virtual document management system rather than just a document management system. Born as a subsidiary of Xerox Corp, Documentum is headed by former Cadence Design Systems Inc president Geoffrey Miller and is targeting vertical markets. It claims that it has got over half of the top 40 pharmaceutical companies using its products, and that the document management market is divided into three sectors: the ad hoc, unstructured and administrative business covered by the Lotus Notes market; transaction processing systems occupied by the likes of FileNet Corp and IBM Corp’s ImagePlus with software built around image processing systems and the large numbers of users for complex, high margin software, in which Documentum places itself. Release 3.0 clients are up under Solaris, HP-UX, Mac OS and Windows, server on Solaris, HP-UX and Windows NT. AIX will follow. Prices range from $500 to $1,500 per user.
