Both were attempts to capitalize on hot topics of the time, Java and the Web. I never bought that the DFC would make a whole pool of talent available; Documentum’s about the model, not the means. However, the marketroids successfully reframed it. Hiring managers now believe they can take Java people and mold them into Documentum people, and I hear gasps of disbelief when I say Java or Visual Studio aren’t requirements to do Documentum–a good Java programmer is not necessarily a good Documentum developer.

The lack of focus then is what brings us to the lack of quality now. Innovation at the model and server level is rare, and frankly I don’t give Documentum much geek cred anymore because of it. Great ideas like BOF and Aspects are stapled into an API rather than made an inherent part of the product. Too much work up the stack (and on vertical solutions) has made the product top-heavy and tottery. EMC continues to chase markets (i.e., case management) rather than concentrate on making a solid core product.

That being said, there are many neat things being done. Some I feel are a little late in the making (i.e., the D6.5 webtop interface), but progress is still progress.

But, I have to track back towards the negative. Because I feel that unless there is improvement in quality, especially in the OOTB basic features, the recipe is in the making for Documentum to make itself obsolete in favor of much easier and readier things to implement. SharePoint, for example, is not a perfect replacement, but it is there and much more accessible to the end-users in many cases. Documentum’s quality needs to improve and such measures of end-user ease-of-use need to be implemented to keep Documentum viable. From a logical point of view, it is highly viable (I cannot think of anything else I would manage enterprise documents in, especially where workflow or records management is concerned), but it is the end-user perception that ends up winning out many times. Especially when that “end-user” has the word “Executive” in their job title.

The bloat from 5.3-D6 is bad. Better with 6.5 when they switched to jboss. Would still like to know more about the reasons. As for AdLib, I’ve been lucky and not had major problems.

No matter how you slice it though, this is definitely a vote towards the negative.

Desktop Client -> Webtop: feature parity still does not exist. When I talk with clients who used DTC a lot, they still bemoan the absence of simple features like saving search results and a really easy integration into Windows Explorer OOTB. Sure, there is an {insert several thousand dollars} product that can be glued-on that does something, but it is still not DTC.

Documentum Application Builder -> Composer: feature parity is far from there. Modifying an application once installed still requires use of DAB which has the exact same quirks I’ve seen in it since 5.2. Fix Release in PowerLink is blank for these issues.

Documentum Application Installer -> DAR Installer: neither one is good about reporting or handling errors. These are THE ONLY way to install an application into another system. As the only installation mechanism, these two entities should work substantially better than they do.

Workflow Manager -> BPM: Developers/Users either use technology from 1999 or pay $75K to get something that works properly. The way in which WfM has been neglected is awful.

5.3 -> D6: The resource requirement jump is mind boggling. I remember running a development environment in a VM with 512MB of RAM. Now 1G, preferrably 1.5G, is needed. The bloat is unbelievable.

ADTS: The silent failure during the AdLib install is a real hang-up for those not familiar with the process. Additionally, the outdated version of AdLib being used is hard to troubleshoot since it is (a) hard to find an EMC support person who knows about it and (b) AdLib themselves go into shock when contacted and told the version number. Excellent plan to use 3rd party tools (reinventing the wheel == bad), but bad plan in persisting with something very out of date and basically unsupported.

This is an interesting topic if for no other reasons than it is colored by our personal perceptions over time. Looking forward to more people chiming in.

Since I can’t address Socrates, I can only rely on personal experience on what I perceive as change in product quality over the years. Things have changed since “The Good Ol’ Days” for both the better and the worse. Overall, I’d have to say that quality has *generally* improved over the years. In my final estimation I take into consideration the growth of the product and the company; and also what I consider the fringe elements like the user community, user support and sales staff.

I’ll quickly touch on the actual questions to be answered. 1) Current issues that seem to be creeping up in each release? Simply, yes. There are *still* core issues in the ORM and the DFC that I’ve identified and passed on to product managers. Architectural items like that aren’t quickly fixed and impact the *entire* product line. I get that. One particular issue will probably require significant resources to fix and a EMC VP to champion. Maybe I got lucky and over the summer it was fixed in 6.6.

2) New releases – Better or worse than in the past? Here’s where I point to where quality has improved over the past. From my usage and viewpoint new features work as promised and don’t cause other items to break. This is a *major* improvement over the 4i days when I had to keep a matrix of which patches worked with each other and which ones broke others. Quality can always be better (Praise Be Unto Deming). I see EMC as not just treading water, but slowly starting to move forward.

This would be a good moderator topic for a live discussion so we could direct our focus onto specific areas that people feel need higher quality.

Besides the qulity issue within the product suite , I have also seen the lack of troubleshooting knowledge and skills from the support team (is it part of the product quality? I think so). An extrem experience for me was a service request regarding indexing. The case was closed after 9 MONTHS even without my explicit consent. You would guess right. I never got the issue resolved.

I agree with James’ comment on Composer/DAR. It’s never a good thing if you provide half-cooked meal. The hype of Composer to replace DAB (was it fully materialized?) , and then the delayed Centerstage release showed off-balance among product definition, quality control, and delivery.

I’ll share with you my experiences of when I joined EMC (from Oracle)

There was a perception of poor products and implementations leading to dissatisfied customers, poor references etc. etc. etc.

I dug into each and every one of these and although there were some product issues a lot of it was related to CMA Consulting (or the partner) not being prescriptive enough about certain things.

Some of it was recommended configurations not being adhered to, some of it was a lack of business requirements, compounded by a lack of an information strategy, project management was seen as an overhead and the amount of post -production support required was woefully under-estimated and some of it was just the drive-by shooting approach of sales…

In ANZ we’ve fixed all of the issues within our control and 80% of the issues have gone away.

All I can say is that I see and sense a real drive toward quality under Rick and hopefully this coupled with the focus on Consulting (we don’t use PS anymore) from David Gai will allow us to shake the flaky image to the benefit of our customers and the whole Documentum eco-system.

Lawrence

The question still is, is the focus on quality because of recent issues or because of ongoing concerns? [not a good way to say this without sounding critical].

In defence of product quality, many of the issues are due to the sheer range of functionality and the myriad of platforms and components that it now needs to support – It is impossible to ensure that all permutations are tested, much as we’d like them to be.

In Australia we have seen the number of product and project issues declining as we become more prescriptive around the recommended configurations – we’re a consulting organisation and we’re expected to offer best practice advice, in the past maybe EMC has not been firm enough around our recommendations….

EMC is taking product quality seriously, I hope this starts to be reflected in future releases.