Where you need a secure environment .Net does not do the business. MI5, CIA and others need a secure repository hence a Solaris ECM solution

Tom

Whilst I agree with our earstwhile host Pie, that MOSS2007 (aka Sharepoint) is absolutely not an ECM system, neither is it a collaboration system, it is in fact a good old fashioned ‘portal’. The other part of the Sharepoint family, WSS is fairly well focused on collaborative web sites, and MOSS adds to this for sure, but it a portal framework, hence WebParts !

I shall blog on this and link back here later

Craig Le Clair of Forrester wrote about the limits in even better detail this Spring.

I know that the Navy is not using SharePoint for ECM as a whole. They are using it for collaboration. They have ECM systems as well.

We can agree to disagree, but SharePoint is not ECM. It doesn’t scale and it most of the important features in an ECM system are missing. It is a Collaborative tool that can hold content and that can serve as a portal. Period. It may be more one day, but it isn’t now.

As for silos, that is a whole other problem.

I’m not sure what you mean by silos of content. If you’re referring to having multiple content stores then yes most businesses have such silos whether they have Documentum or not. Are silos really a problem in the age of SOA, search engines, etc?

>SharePoint is probably two releases from being able to handle it.
Possibly. SQL Server.next will allow content to be stored on the file system so it seems reasonable to assume that SharePoint will get this feature soonish. I’m not aware of any scalability issues with SharePoint – can you point me to any articles on this? I thought that SharePoint _was_ being used in large organisations. Don’t MOD & US Navy have large SharePoint deployments?

I appear to come out in favour of SharePoint but my background is actually in Documentum. I am wary that SharePoint changed the ECM game and that the traditional ECM players appear to be slow to react (other than providing SharePoint connectors).

Regards

SharePoint is probably two releases from being able to handle it. First they have to get the content out of the database. Then they have to scale. They’ll make great strides in the next release, but the amount of content to store is increasing, so it will take a couple of releases to catch the curve.

In the meantime, I’d rather minimize the missing functionality with as few vendors as possible.

As for Magellan, way too early to say. It looks promising, but a lot of it will depend on timing and quality.

-Pie

Is there any value in integrating Documentum with SharePoint? Why bother with Documentum at all when you can just use SharePoint? Basic Content Services appear to serve the needs of many (most?) organisations. SharePoint lacks feature depth compared to ECM heavyweights like Documentum but despite this has blitzed the competition. For any missing ECM features, you could integrate with more MS-orientated products such as K2, Meridio, etc. Wouldn’t a more MS-centric approach provide tighter integration with SharePoint compared to Documentum plus Vorsite/Wingspan/etc?

I just don’t understand why organisations are trying to integrate one ECM with another. Would it make sense to just pick one solution and make the best of it? I get the feeling that the SharePoint integration is just EMC attempting to convince customers that Documentum does not have to be replaced but can co-exist. Rather than ride the coat tails of SharePoint I would like to see EMC and other established players attempting to take SharePoint head on (Alfresco seem to take this approach).

Is this where Magellan fits in?