I’m a big fan of enabling partner solutions and trying to make it easy to create and maintain them with minimal code. I’m not a big fan of software vendors creating these kinds of solutions because it can damage the partner ecosystem and the solutions may not get the resources to be updated and maintained. Your historical examples are spot on, though DCM lasted quite a few years as a viable option before wasting away.

Aside from showing love to some verticals, the solutions don’t matter long-term. EMC’s success won’t be because of these solutions. After talking to a few partners, I don’t think it will cripple the partner ecosystem either. They aren’t doing a lot of them from appearances and at least one vendor I know is successfully competing against the solutions.

Obviously this will be something to watch. If they announce another 3-4 solutions this year, it’ll be an item of concern. For now, let’s watch.

Certified Solutions from partners were were also applauded as one way IIG was going to succeed in the future.

The language used to describe these solutions became more earnest as the event went on reaching a crescendo during Jeetu’s presentation where going the last mile to provide line of business apps was where IIG was heading. Rick D also gave air time to the topic in his keynote.

IIGs / Documentum’s track record for maintaining applications is patchy at best, remember GXPharma and DC Manager? Only last year IIG endorsed CSC First Docs as the pefered choice for drug trail submissions and this year IIG are back with a new offering of their own. OpenText made the same noises about becoming a solutions provider few years ago and appear to have gone quiet.

If customers are asking for applications not customizations (OK configurations these days) to solve a business problem are IIG the right people to provide a whole range of industry vertical applications.

Building, versioning and supporting line of business application products is a world apart from being a great platform provider. Is the Professional Services team the right place to build and maintain applications, will partners conitinue to invest in building certified solutions on Documentum if there is a danger that IIG will compete and whether or not of whether this solution strategy will prevail in the long term all remains to be seen.

The problems are for IIG are already showing as the first of these productized services solutions is based neither on x/cp or D2 which means a complete re-write to keep up with the platform let alone adding new functionality.

I was surprised you didn’t mention this in your, excellent as usual. summing up.

As ever thanks for your coverage of the conference and your thoughtful analysis