Documentum News & Articles

Once upon a time ago, Enterprise Content Management Systems (ECM) solutions were groovy. They seemed to be the key that opened the door to the land of opportunity. 

It can’t be easy to call on customers who have a bone (or two) to pick with you. But EMC IIG (a.k.a. Documentum) President Rick Devenuti has spent the last five years doing exactly that … listening to their complaints, apologizing that his predecessor ignored their needs, promising to address their concerns, and asking for their patience while he built solutions that would not only meet their needs but also delight them. 

This week in the realm of Document Management, Microsoft finally cleared up one of the big questions surrounding Office -- the subscription model and where it is going in the future. In other news, EMC is holding its annual show and hosted a lot of interesting developments with Documentum, while NetDocuments opens an app store and dtSearch upgraded.

Documentum migrations and integrations of yesteryear were a major pain in the ass. They took months to perform, they were often problematic, and to say they were pricey is an understatement -- not only did they take the business offline, but they often required months of high-cost consulting.

Someone needs to have a talk with EMC boss Joe Tucci. They need to tell him to take a break from strategizing about the integration of companies in his Pivotal Initiative portfolio, pluck Socialcast from EMC’s offspring company VMware, and move it into EMC ‘s Information Intelligence Group (Documentum).

He needs to do this NOW. There won’t be a better time.

For a long time Documentum was known as the 800-pound gorilla of the Enterprise Content Management world, a force to be reckoned with, but not exactly sexy or sleek.  

Rick Devenuti stepped into a mess when he first took the helm at EMC’s Information Intelligence Group (IIG), commonly known as Documentum (2010). When I asked him if he knew what he had gotten himself into, he gave a theoretical response, “Does anybody ever know?”

"Where Information Lives" has been EMC’s tagline for years and years. It’s always conjured up images of storage devices for me. But not anymore.

Content management end users of yesteryear too often felt like children being forced to eat their liver -- they knew it was good for them (or for the Enterprise), but they would do anything they could to avoid it … even if it kept their CEO out of jail.

EMC’s Information Intelligence Group (IIG) (formerly known as Documentum) promises to make “the largest product launch in IIG’s History” at its Momentum Europe Conference on Tuesday. Content Management enthusiasts, CM industry analysts, and the Documentum Community at large, are all waiting, eyes and ears open, to see and hear what it (they) will be.

Quiet enough week with the long weekend, but even still a few bones to pick at. Box has upgraded the administrative functions making it easier to use, IGC has upgraded Brava for Documentum, Nuance has also upgraded its PDF converter, while Enolsoft has released a PDF Converter for Mac.

Old school Documentum certainly had its problems. Time to value was slow, Webtop often presented more challenges than happy users, and some managers were asked to question whether they were getting enough bang for the enterprise buck.

If you use Documentum for your enterprise content management platform -- or SharePoint, Alfresco, Oracle, or maybe a mix of these -- then you might be interested in having a look at Generis CARA. CARA is a browser-based document management interface that works with both CMIS and repository specific extensions and it's a pretty slick tool. Let's take a look.

If you think that Documentum has left its best days behind, there’s now reason to reconsider. Though the slumbering ECM industry giant might have been caught resting on its laurels for a wee bit too long, it has now come back to life with the passion and the energy of a newcomer who has something to prove.