To be honest, I fully expect only one of the established leaders (EMC, IBM, Oracle, and Open Text) to make it. Microsoft might make it two with their Office365 offering but there is the separate concern that SharePoint will collapse under its own weight after two more releases.

Seemingly aware of all this, last year at EMC World, Rick Devenuti announced during the Momentum keynote a new strategy for Documentum. Based around the concept of the New User, the idea was to support the transition to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) reality hitting many organizations through new clients, new deployment methodologies, and even new architectures.

This year had more of the same. It what was more of a report card than any major news, aside from the Synplicity announcement. So I’m going to give out grades for the execution of the strategy. Here are the ratings:

• Above Expectations: The information presented exceeded the expectations set a year ago and the realities of the evolving marketplace.
• Satisfactory: Pretty much on course as per last year. Given the realities of software development, especially for systems as complex as Content Management. This is still a good rating because expectations were set pretty high.
• Unsatisfactory: A fallback or failure to met expectations. Cut functionality or significantly changed timelines are reasons that this would be awarded.

Keep in mind that even with good scores, determining whether or not any of this is going to be delivered in time to meet the needs of the market is a function of all vendors in the space as a whole. EMC can’t control what the other vendors do over the next year. They can try to shape the discussion of the market but there is no guarantee that they will be successful.

Moving to the Cloud

Above Expectations: Yes, above expectations. Jeroen van Rotterdam set some high expectations last year. All EMC did this year was either confirm or exceed  everything promised last year.

• Next Generation Information Server (NGIS): On track for the most part. It won’t be out this year but with the details that have been shared, it is looking better than expected. For the first release, the D2 client functionality is planned to be supported. I’ve always told them to not support everything in the first release to speed delivery and they seem to agree.
• Hybrid Cloud: Yes, true hybrid. NGIS and D7 will be able to dynamically exchange content and solutions between the two systems. That’s right, you can interact with content in one place and send it to the other if you need it for broader consumption. On the flip side, if you decided you need content to be limited to the on-premise server, you can do that as well.
• EMC OnDemand: This was as expected There was very little exciting announced here outside the confirmation of Service-Based billing. While not a cloud architecture, people can get many of the benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS) with this offering.
• Syncplicity: This was the big surprise and the reason that EMC is getting a high grade here. I’ll have a separate post later on the acquisition and what it means. One thing it does say is that EMC is going to fight and try and make a splash in the Cloud-based Content Management space THIS year.

Unified Client

Satisfactory: This was a mixed bag. The concept of developing a new Unified Client was abandoned when D2 was acquired from C6. As a whole, that isn’t a bad thing. The work they are doing on D2 as they move forward with the next release seem to be very good. It looks more functional and “modern” than most legacy interfaces that you come across.

Of course, there are issues. Digital Asset Management appears to be basically on hold until late 2013. That is a shame as EMC had a decent offering and I know many people that are more than a little tired of waiting.

In the meantime, the rest of the community are going to have to settle on a standard interface  that appears to be configurable for most non-case business cases. When tied with NGIS, it should be a fairly complete Cloud-based Content Management solution.

xCP

Satisfactory: If you were at the conference and really looked into the upcoming xCP client you might be wondering why this is just Satisfactory. Simple, the expectations and needs of the marketplace are pretty high.

The current xCP version was a dramatic improvement over the previous way Documentum clients built both Case and Business Process Management (BPM) solutions. Unfortunately for EMC, the whole market has been driving forward in this area and xCP 1.0 has some limitations that can require some work to remedy.

One the positive side, the new tooling for building xCP 2.0 applications seems to be solid. Good enough for several partners could build applications that appeared to work well during demos in only 3 weeks time. Were there issues? Yes. Given the several months until release, that is to be expected.

Which takes us to the negatives. The release has slipped over the course of a year. This is understandable given the year plus estimate given last year. Factors to consider:

• xCP 2 has significant design changes that are designed to allow it to work with both the upcoming D7 and NGIS. The goal is plug and play. This necessitated making xCP non-dependent on the Content Server. This was likely not easy.
• Structured Data Types are a thing of the past in 2.0. This is a good thing as the introduction of the business object is a welcome consolidation of concepts that has been needed for some time. On the flip side, migrations to 2.0 just got challenging. Any potential migration tool is likely a 2013 deliverable. I heard xCP 2.1 and xCP 2.2, though more of the former.
• Software development estimates more than six months out are generally guesses. I’ve done a lot of development projects in my day. If there is enough to do that you need six months to code it, there will be slippage. Turnover, unseen complications, and the massive amount of testing required are just realities of product development.
• Testing is ongoing. According to many sources, the product is in a primarily performance and quality testing phase. I suspect this is a slight exaggeration, but I do believe that all major features are likely coded.
• I’ve also heard that Rick has a lower tolerance for bugs than predecessors. This is a good thing as a buggy release could kill EMC in the market. There is a lot less room for error now than there was even just two years ago. Of course, that also lengthens timelines.

Everything Else

Above Expectations: This is actually more a function of the low expectations than anything else. The overall strategy had changed so much over the last five+ years that keeping a steady strategic direction exceeds expectations. It also helps that this is likely the only strategy than can keep them relevant in the coming decade.

EMC had lost all benefit of the doubt. Simply by executing successfully over the last year has kept them in the conversation. I can’t say they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt back, but there is no reason for current users to abandon Documentum because there is no future.

The community is in wait-and-see mode until the fall.

The advent of Documentum 7 (D7) is a huge plus. EMC has begun managing its own solution using  OnDemand and they are starting to truly feel the pain that the community has felt for years. These benefits are being introduced along with some significant performance improvements that should finally allow massive scaling of Documentum on-premise without feeling like a miracle worker.

The mobile client is making some good strides. Details aside, given the past performance of mobile components, this is a minor miracle unto itself. If they can continue this pace they will be in good shape in the future.

Final Thoughts

That about wraps it up. Overall, very little earth-shattering. It was hard to get excited about upcoming products and features that were announce a year ago. They fact that everything was consistent was actually a VERY good thing. If there had been a collection of new things, then the crowd would have had to worry. As it was, we all smiled and nodded our heads.

EMC gets checkmarks across the board. Given how long it has been since that was the case, it is hard to complain. Momentum Vienna should be very interesting and exciting if everything stays on track. If you want to be there when the future of Documentum is shown off, then I strongly urge you to make plans now.

Given my role with AIIM, I’ll only be there if I am speaking on the Content Management space and the changing role of the Information Professional. If you are a Reporter, Analyst, Partner, or Client, you need to be there to see history.

Of course, whether the history made will be good or bad for the industry, which needs innovative players, is in the hands of EMC.

Notes

• Managed Service with database, storage, application servers, and all services taken care of for user
  • Captiva, Documentum plaform, Document Sciences, and xCP work on platform
  • One week from request to having system integrated into your network, including security. VPN and other security aspects on client side make it take that long
• They upgrade the environment, working with client to make sure the solutions upgrade cleanly
• Offers Disaster Recovery and High Availability
• VMWare View product must be installed on end-user network in order to manage the environment
• Virtual machine infrastructure allows isolation of systems while sharing
• In Q3, they’ll drop the entire OnDemand offering onsite for people
• Branch Office Caching Service (BOCS) is supported but BOCS must be installed in the customer environment.
• Just opened their 2nd data center
• vCube is single tenant, storage and database is shared resource
• Worked with VMWare and other EMC groups to find the best way to create this offering
• VCube is a “virtual datacenter”
• When provisioned, include multiple environments, Dev, Test, Prod
• Access is not as restricted in non-Production environments.
• OnDemand is priced as a service, based upon products, users, storage, level of availability, disaster recovery, and so forth.
• All the associated licenses including database and virus protection are included
• 60% of current tech support are environment issues. Eliminated in OnDemand
• Releasing an ROI document in next few weeks. Observed 20-25% cost savings over doing it directly
• Feedback as per Forrester survey with multiple vendors, not OnDemand survey results, this was Private cloud efforts people took on. Question: “Which of the following statements best describes your experience with ECM in the cloud?”:
  • 39% were happy across board
  • 20% had issues with Custom Code
  • 9% had migration issues (always hard)
  • Customization and OnDemand is an issue (same for any cloud apps if allowed at all). Goal is D2 and xCP which are configurable versus configuration.
    • Will consider low-risk customizations that aren’t likely to break upon upgrade.
    • Customizations can be hosted on-premise if “risky” and communicate to OnDemand via Web Services
    • Will allow client partner or services to manage risky customizations
  • Drivers for moving to OnDemand
    • Consolidation into one environment
    • Infrastructure refresh (covert capital to operating expense)
    • New Solution
    • Fix performance issues
    • Enhanced disaster recovery plan
    • Solve the lack of deep technical expertise, more prevalent in small to mid-sized organizations
  • Lots of new content around TCO, ROI, security, and other topics is coming out in a few weeks

Off to drop off my items in my room before tonight’s events.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but may not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of EMC products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

Notes

• Making the choice between Innovation and Governance shouldn’t be required. These choices are made and cause unfortunate consequences. See banking industry in the US the past few years.
• Delivery of New User interfaces
  • D2 3.1 and now 4.0
  • Documentum Mobile 1.1 (iPhone) and now 1.2 (IRM support)
  • Syncplicity (acquisition from yesterday)
• Brian Roche takes stage to show D2 4.0
  • Demo being done on a Mac
  • Showing preview of content in the application itself.
  • Showed Google maps showing “where” the document was last updated.
  • Get to pick different workplace based upon what you are working on and your role
  • Showed adding of Twitter widget.
  • Must be a Google gadget
  • D2 4.0 can co-exist with 3.1
• Mobile First, first class experience
• Talking about EMC OnDemand managed service model
  • Documentum 6.7 OnDemand
  • Captiva 6.5 OnDemand
  • Document Sciences 4.1 On Demand
  • D2 3.1 and Global Services delivered OnDemand now
• Demo of xCP 2.0, GreenPlum, and Document Sciences working together using xCP 2.0 as the front end. Showing how the app is made within the xCP and DocSci builder applications.
• Documentum 7 (D7) GA Q4, Limited Q3. Foundation of xCP 2.0
  • 8x TCO Improvement
  • Private-Cloud optimized
• Captiva 7.0, Unified Operator UI, Unified Designer, Improved Classification (2H 2012)
• Demo of Syncplicity
  • Provisioned an account for Jeetu in demo
  • Admin can act on user behalf (missing from most comparable apps)
  • Has activity streams to supplement folder navigation
  • Jeetu lost network connection, so this is live demo
  • Has remote wipe feature for any of the devices (Generally want for entire device, but app specific is good) Can remote wipe by device, all devices for a user, and by folder.

Not sure what is next. May be a good time to track me down. Will likely end up in the Bloggers Lounge. There are espressos there. Maybe a triple.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but may not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of EMC products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

Notes

• Jeetu Patel, CSO and CMO, takes the stage first
• Rick, the President, is taking the stage after the announcements
• Attendence approaching 1000 (lower than pre-EMC levels but increase over recent years)
• (Not a lot new so far, which isn’t a bad thing given the topics)
• Talking about xCP and Greenplum together, real-time analytics
• New graphics, same message (good)
  • New User
  • Cloud
  • Pervasive Governance
  • Transform
• Said eRoom. (Didn’t imagine it, I checked??? Maintenance release likely but not confirmed)
• Documentum D2 4.0
  • Drag and drop creation
  • configurable workspaces
  • Widgets like Twitter and Google
  • Configuration means agile development
• Adding IRM to Documentum Mobile App v1.2 for both iPad and iPhone to improve security of documents
• Brought John O’Meila to stage
  • Beginning to role out Services created solutions on EMC OnDemand
  • Life Science focus
    • D2 “grew-up” in Life Science industry
    • Building suite of Life Science solutions, 1st is Quality Manufacturing
    • Electronic submission coming
    • All on EMC OnDemand
• Five vertical focus for products: Public Sector, Life Sciences, Energy, Healthcare, and Financial Services
• Tension between the New User and need for Governance
• Acquired Syncplicity for enterprise synch and share (Box and Dropbox competitor? Research time)
  • Includes remote wipe and encryption
  • Increasing trial from 30 days to 90 days in booth 527
• Want to be place where Productivity meets trust

Expo center is next. See you there.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but may not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of EMC products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

Notes

• xCP 2.0 is being designed to be future ready and align with NGIS so apps created in xCP 2.0 will be able to move to NGIS
• xCP 2.0 Architecture Principles
  • Open: Open and standard technologies
  • Performance: Fast user interface, High volume
  • Unified Tooling: Single environment to build apps
  • Cloud Ready: Embrace VMware for private cloud, vitualized infrostructure and application deployment
  • Future Ready: Ready for NGIS, Abstract-away dependencies on Documentum platform
• Just said xCP 2.0 in Q3. (Heard elsewhere limited release in Q3, GA in Q4. All seems very firm.)
• Live debugging will be xCP 2.1 in order to build into unified tool
• Key Innovations
  • Stateless processes – generated services for app behavior and GUI
    • RESTful services auto-generated
    • UI data service that can be called from UI, Events, and Integrations
    • Wired to any UI Widget including charts
  • Unified expressions (and entire data model) and context data models
  • One-click app deployment from xCP Builder. Uses xMS. Called a recipe. Abstracted driver and data connection at deployment so app doesn’t change between development, test, and production.
  • Inject HTML and JavaScript directly into UI
  • xCP 1.x had 3 different expression models, dependent on component. Single model in 2.0
    • Core part of semantic application model
    • Unified data model shown in context
  • xMS supports both full and incremental deployments
  • xMS will deploy war, dar, and config elements
  • Now moving to early adopters/partners (beta testing essentially, only adding typing things). All had 3 weeks
  • Erin Riley of Beach Street (consulting partner)
    • Abstraction of data model into objects with more relationships
    • Dashboards can be on same page as task list, can collapse items
    • Real-time updating in application, no restarts (if I heard correctly)
    • Fine control of UI using HTML in widgets
    • No more adapters for stateless processes, can define inputs and outputs and map them to widgets on your page, allows for complex automated decision steps
    • Result lists are very dynamic
    • Is a pre-release, not bug free (release is months out)
  • Will Moore (sp?) of TriTek (consulting and packaged solutions)
    • Ported one of their packaged, certified solutions to xCP 2.0
    • Not incremental, more like a new product. Very different than 1.0
    • New Process Templates are unavoidable.
    • Structured Data Types are gone. Is good but makes migration an issue. Business Objects are more powerful and better
    • ExtJS and Spring help with agile solution delivery
    • No DFC equivalent, business objects instead
    • Key take-aways
      • Hard to go back to xCP 1.0 after using 2.0. Makes you realize the pain
      • DFC apps unchanged except for Structured Data Type attributes
      • All artifacts centralized into builder
      • Build/Deploy/Run much easier. All from the tool

Now off to Rick Devenuti’s keynotes, getting caffeine on way. There are supposed to be some announcements. The overall strategy is also expected to be consistent with last year which would be nice.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but may not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of EMC products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

Notes

• Architecture looks same as before, though likely a new diagram. D2 Configuration added but nothing surprising at this point. Very high-level model.
• Trying to move away from coding content applications to either;
  • Composing applications in xCP
  • Configuring interfaces in D2
• Contrasting Today’s architecture with Future (NGIS-Next Generation Information Server)
  • NGIS is multi-tenant Public Cloud Architecture
  • Marginal cost to add a tenant needs to be almost zero
  • SOAP is gone, only REST
  • D2 Config part of core configuration component
  • Created Documentum Markup Language to translate current model into XML to facilitate transformation from current stack to NGIS. Starting with D2, xCP next
  • Goal is design against current stack and allow for flowing it between the current stack on-premise to future cloud stack off premise. Includes solution and information (likely assumes an up-to-date xCP or D2 solution)
• Setting-up NGIS authentication with either internal LDAP or OpenID.
• Investing in both the current platform and NGIS
• For D7, working on performance and scalability
  • Improved Context Switch performance (reuse of session by other users)
  • Improved cache management, lower memory and CPU
  • Improved capacity of session and response times, reduced sessions in Oracle
  • Session to User ratio is dramatically better. less than 20 sessions for 400 users. D6.7 needs 80 sessions for 100 sessions.
  • Around 300 users, response times die around 100 concurrent users and spikes up. D7 session response time more than 300% better even when scaled to 500 users
  • More graphs (all 64-bit), very impressive, D7 is reletively flat to 400+ users while D6.7 is spiking up at 100 users. (Even taking values aside, the ratio of performance improvement between the two is dramatic)
• This is all done through various means. Jeroen is showing a graph that just focuses on the new type cache methodology
• Going for a pure REST approach, takes time to do right
  • Abstracting resource types from Documentum platform
  • Supporting resource mobility (HTTP redirects)
  • Connecting resources across products in seamless manner to application
  • Discoverability of resources
• Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA)
  • Apache Standard Architecture for Natural Language Processing customizations
  • Coming Released in xPlore 1.2 (Nov 2011)
  • Example is Content Intelligence Services (CIS)
• Federated Search in Mobile, Webtop, and CenterStage. D2 and xCP not currently surfaced.
• (Note to all Federated Search is the reaching out to other search indexes to display one result set. Is not Enterprise Search which is one search engine and multiple source systems)
• Hyperic based monitoring solution per customer in D6.7 sp2 and onwards (later this year). Plan to have it eventually allow you to correct errors or have it automatically correct errors. (this and many tech improvements are stemming from On-Demand efforts)
  • Includes Logging
  • Windows and Linux
  • Later this year for D6.7 sp2 is likely Q4 but no commitment for earlier. “Later this year” is catch phrase. Will have to ask others.
• XMS is designed to help automate the deployment of Documentum.
• D2 configuration based upon user and object type and a priority order
• Semantic model of xCP generates REST services
• Stateless BPM engine will allow user to trigger a process and have result appear in the interface
• xCP and Big Data
  • in xCP 2.0, built-in integration for Greenplum from xCP through xCP Designer, same for Document Sciences xPression
  • Stateless engine will interact to interact with Greenplum directly
  • Conditional output from Greenplum  can create letter from Document Sciences without user interaction, all through engine

Time for more coffee. Going to find a good spot to see Tucci’s keynote. Enjoying the conference so far, but lots to learn.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but may not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of EMC products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

As you know, I’m now the AIIM CIO. We don’t use Documentum, though we do have an EMC storage array. We aren’t delivery partners with EMC. Jeetu does sit on our board and EMC does sponsor some of our events. So while we do have a relationship with EMC, it isn’t one that would lead to my attending EMC World.

Then a funny thing happened, I wrote a post about how I still felt part of the Documentum Community. Before I knew it, I had swung by the Developer Conference and I was scheduled to speak at this year’s EMC World on A Brave New World for Information Management.

So I’m back, though I never really went away.

We are only a week away so I thought I’d reiterate my ground rules for this, and any, conference. For those that are unfamiliar, I pretty much type notes at every sessions and hit publish at the end of the session, essentially sharing my session notes with you. These rules are very similar to last years Rules (I even cut-and-paste for a draft), but I’ve updated a bit as I do every year.

All “live” posts that follow these rules will start EMC World 2012:. This is to clearly identify them for everyone. If I write a post before/during/after the conference that doesn’t adhere to what I am laying-out here, it won’t have that prefix.

Just a heads-up, my session mix will vary a little this year. I’ll still hit the keynote, roadmap, Ed Bueche’s, and Jeroen van Rotterdam’s sessions. I’m also going to be spending more time on the floor, blogger’s lounge, and some Big Data sessions. You may have noticed, Big Data is exploding out of the marketing niche and starting to be come relevant for all Information Professionals.

Disclaimers

I’m going to be running a basic disclaimer in all my posts. If for some reason I forget to paste it in, this disclaimer applies to all EMC World 2012: prefixed posts and you can be sure I’ll be adding the disclaimer as soon as I notice that it is missing.  This is because I will be writing the posts during/after sessions and I will hear things that I may misconstrue or that talk about future events.

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but may not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of EMC products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

As indicated, if I learn later that something I posted was incorrect, I will endeavor to correct it, but it may not be immediate.

Topics of Conversation

As a general rule, if I, or the person I am talking to at the time, has a beverage in their hand, I’m not blogging/tweeting it. If it is blatantly clear that the information is public, I will share it in a constructed post during, or shortly after, EMC World.

The issue here is that even in my new role, I have a long-standing relationship with of EMC/Documentum. As such, I am sometimes privy to information that is not made available to the general public. If I start sharing this information, then I would no longer be able to learn any of it in the future. The information is by far more important any benefit that I may gain by posting it here or anywhere else.

This is a fun little line that I have to walk, but I think I’ve walked it well. There are several EMC personnel that have shared information with me since I started this blog and subsequently tweeting.

I have, to date, kept all confidences and will continue to do so in the future.

Twitter

I will be using Twitter some during EMC World.  You can follow me at @piewords.  You can also follow all the Momentum 2012 action at #mmtm12 and all of the EMC World action at #emcworld.

Most information will be going here, into my blog. Random thoughts and where I am going (in my annual quest to maintain my caffeine levels) will be mostly through Twitter. If you don’t have my phone number to text me, your best bet to locate me at EMC World will be through Twitter.

The Time Delay

I am a busy person at the conference, though less so this year.  As such, not all posts will be tagged immediately as I will be focusing on getting them posted and moving to the next session. Have no  fear, the tags will come.

I will also be updating my EMC World page of links at most once every day.  While it is a good index of what I have written, it will not be completed until after the conference is over and I have time to update it. I will try and add links from other blogs, but that is also time dependent.

That’s it…See you there!

So why is that strange? Doesn’t everyone need a mobile client? Isn’t that a cornerstone of Choice Computing? Doesn’t Sarah, the new user, want access to information anywhere on every device. Well, you are correct on all fronts.

The strange part is that when you take a step back, you realize that the market is already addressing this need.

The Basics

I covered this in several posts, but the goal for EMC is to have multiple mobile releases, targeting one every three months give-or-take. The first release is for the iPad, the second will be for the iPhone.

What I haven’t talked much about is that the interface looks a lot like the Media WorkSpace client and the communication between the app and the Content Server is being done through the 2nd early access release of the REST API. I expect/hope they’ll release it on the planned 3rd release this summer.

It wasn’t a shiny application, but it looked real. I got the feeling that it was a real product and that it WILL be out this Q3 and not one 2 years from now.

That wasn’t the only mobile application on display in the keynote.

To Box or not to Box

Do you know what other mobile app I saw EMC people use at the conference? I saw the Box application for the iPad live on-stage during Jeetu’s keynote. It works fairly well and is out now. There is also a version for the iPhone and Android. Box has a strategic partnership with EMC to help provide “Content Mobility” so you would think that their interface would be fairly decent..

So this raises the question, why not use Box instead of EMC’s app?

I actually asked Jeetu that question during the post keynote milling of people up front. He said that it was because the EMC app would have tighter integration with the process elements of Documentum and be free to licensed customers.

You know something, those were good reasons, especially considering the “ambush” nature of my question. I saw clear use cases for both applications without complete overlap. Things were okay in my head until Lee Dallas reminded me of the reality that has been in effect for over a year.

There are lots of other apps out there as well.

Pick an App, Any App

I quickly remembered that many companies had been releasing mobile apps over the past two years. If we just consider applications that are based upon the CMIS standard, you realize that there were lots of options.

In fact, during EMC World, multiple people approached me to show me their mobile application. While none of the apps is what I would consider game-changing, they all solved different business applications. They all have a place in the market.

They also happen to be released and being supported today.

It raises the question, is there a place for generic Documentum applications? Jeetu talked about tying their apps to process. Of course, other people will write those types of applications as well.

What Should EMC Do?

What I see in the mobile app right now is a checkbox feature. Don’t get me wrong, too many companies rely on those checkboxes when picking software, so it is a must-have for EMC. The question is, aside from getting that checkbox, what should EMC target?

First, develop enabling technologies. That means leading-edge CMIS support and pushing the proposed browser binding for the 1.1 version of CMIS. It also means pushing forward on the REST API to allow for partners and other companies to build business specific applications leveraging the deeper, compared to CMIS,  functionality of Documentum.

If the value proposition is the tie into the business process functionality, write an application that is a framework. TaskSpace mobile? Why not write an app that sends TaskSpace components to a mobile app automatically? How about making sure that the Information Rights Management products works on mobile clients?

Those might be some things that EMC could do better than partner companies.

As for generic applications, promote partner applications that are already developed. Use some of the same logic that led to the current Collaboration strategy. If you can’t do it all, make sure that you are investing in the right areas.

Just a thought.

Linkfest

Throwing some links to mobile apps out there. There is no endorsement of any of these apps. These are just known apps that are released. If something isn’t on here, I likely just forgot, hadn’t heard of it, or couldn’t find the link. The point is to show that there are options now.

• Documentum: fme docspread, Flatirons iCMS
• CMIS: Generis’s CARA, Open-Source Android CMIS Browser, YerbaBuena

I know that there are more out there, so feel free to add links in comments. Keep the sales pitch to a minimum when linking or I will remove the comment.

In many ways the announcements at this year’s EMC World just reaffirmed the direction set last year. Last year I was sad. This year, I’m starting to lose my sense of humor.

CenterStage, The Awkward Middle Child

At this point, I’m thinking that CenterStage should just go kill itself. It should just trigger an endless loop that can only be avoided by not logging into the interface.

Three years ago, CenterStage (then Magellan) was hailed as the next big thing. Then it languished in grade school, falling back a year or two, and now everyone is pointing to the Unified Client coming in D7. CenterStage used to be the basis for the mobile client, 2 years ago, and now it can’t even rustle up a calendar to match eRoom or SharePoint.

Quick sidebar about the calendar, HOW HARD IS IT? I mean, come on people! Clients tell me that they would move to CenterStage, even the not ideal 1.1 version, if they only had a way to have a central calendar. Try this:

1. Take the existing data table construct introduced two versions ago
2. Define a custom data table type (look at SharePoint or eRoom for field advice)
3. Add an abstraction layer (object-oriented languages might have a simple way to do this)
4. Steal graphical look from almost any major collaboration system (eRoom, SharePoint, Jive…)
5. Test and publish

I’d write the thing myself if there wasn’t all of these plans to move to a new UI and backend with D7. Where does CenterStage fit into all of that? That was a question I never got answered. Why? Everyone gave me a different answer so now I have none. The best answer I got is that EMC is trying to make sure that nobody can customize CenterStage in such a way that it inhibits their move to the common UI which will have a more structured customization structure (think WDK).

By the way, Webtop has a future in D7. Heard that definitively stated multiple times.

This is all a little harsh considering how good a year CenterStage has had. Two point releases. The lastest, CenterStage 1.2, is supposed to be scalable and be able to access the entire repository. As I haven’t talked to anyone that can independently verify, I’ll leave it at that.

Do you know what summed-up CenterStage’s future? I heard Webtop mentioned as part of presentations 3-5 times more often than CenterStage. If that doesn’t mean anything, nothing does.

The Trinity of Collaboration

During Rick Devenuti’s keynote, the future of collaboration was clearly outlined. EMC will offer to solve the problem in one of the following three ways:

• SharePoint: Need to collaborate in the department and beyond? SharePoint is your tool. In fact, you are likely already using it. It is a way of life in the corporate world and EMC is focusing on making SharePoint work better. After all, if SharePoint doesn’t work well, someone may choose a solution for which EMC isn’t needed to provide the backbone.
• Box: In the surprise of the show, EMC announced a strategic alliance with Box. This is aimed at those that need to collaborate beyond the enterprise and do it on the move. Four months ago, this partnership was unfathomable. While independent of Whitney (Tidmarsh) Bouck’s move, that change likely strengthened/accelerated the alliance. While integrating using the previously announce EntropySoft-based ECM Cloud Connect offering, tighter integration is planned. Lee Dallas talks about this as acceptance of Employee Managed Content within the EMC mindset.
• Cisco Quad: The Quad product is a more traditional social, real-time collaboration platform. This addresses the more Virtual War-Room type of collaboration that can be very useful. Jeetu has posted a “conversation” with Cisco talking about how the two offerings strengthen each other.

No matter what you think of the strength of the products, this shows EMC outsourcing collaboration. In fact, the less you think of the offerings above, the stronger the capitulation EMC is making.

Why outsource collaboration? Simple, as Jeetu stated in his keynote, EMC cannot out-innovate silicon valley as a whole. This is an honest, and accurate, understanding of reality.

Of course that is why you buy companies that fill a gap. You take both their existing innovations and the innovators. From there, you try and nurture the products into something bigger.

Not that it always works that way.

My Quandry

Parts of me are sad, upset, angry, and a whole assortment of increasingly bitter emotions. I love eRoom and collaboration. Watching this happen just drives me nuts.

I wish they would just open-source the eRoom code so it could evolve again and not just limp along in a perpetually supported state. It’s like a zombie of your kid or spouse. You just know that given time a cure will be found and you can’t bring yourself to kill them off.

This emotion makes it really hard for me to step back and evaluate these decisions. No matter how you slice it, Documentum isn’t targeting collaboration. They might say they are with CenterStage, but any collaboration achieved is a side-effect of sharing content. It is the same level of collaboration offered in the 90s by most of the document management players.

Oh, the execs still say they do collaboration, until you confront them. You point out that all the new and planned features for CenterStage are Content Management features, not collaboration features. They hang their hat on the data table in v1.1. Eventually, they agree that CenterStage, and other clients, help people collaboration, but that the colaboration is a side-effect of the core purpose of the interfaces which is to allow better management of content.

Now maybe they were just trying to get me to go away, but they had to know I would share. To be honest, it is okay. EMC can’t be all things. They want to focus on what they feel they do best, Content Management, Governance, and Business Process Management.

That is fine. It is probably the right move given the heavy investment needed elsewhere (e.g. xCP 2.0, Next Gen Information Server). That won’t stop me from mourning a little bit.

Or a lot.

Last year I was pretty strong in my criticism of EMC’s lack of vision or strategy in the Content Management space. In a way I should thank them because it inspired me to write a post on the Future of Content Management that was later received fairly well at Gilbane Boston and info360.

Of course, none of that helps my existing Documentum clients, nor does it help the community at large. Well this year, EMC presented both a vision and a strategy at EMC World. I was pretty excited, not so much because I thought it was the best vision, but because it even vision.

Introducing Sarah, the New User

The vision kept hitting you in the face everywhere. It was all about “The New User”. After a while, I got tired of “The New User” and decided that the picture looked like a Sarah. As a result, when I refer to Sarah, I’ll be talking about the mythical New User.

Sarah is a pain in the butt. She wants to use her device, be it an iPad, Blackberry, or her Android. She also wants to us her laptop of choice. She wants to be able to do this anywhere and use all sorts of content that nobody ever designed SharePoint to effectively manage. The most irritating thing, she’ll use external tools with no enterprise controls if you don’t provide the tools for her yourself. (I think Sarah would like Omnipresent Content Management).

Jeetu Patel actually wrote a blog post talking about the new user. The post clearly outlines EMC’s thoughts about Sarah. Buy into the vision or not, this vision is the basis on which EMC is going to create solutions for the future.

It really isn’t anything revolutionary. The vision boils down to the Consumer IT world driving the Enterprise IT world. While overly that is an overly simplistic rendition, it is a valid vision. It doesn’t address the problems we are going to have with the volumes of content, but it does address how people want to interact with content in the future.

To be honest, that is a side of Content Management that EMC and other traditional vendors have ignored for far too long.

Getting From Here to There

So now we have a problem to solve. How is EMC going to deliver on their vision? Is there a plan?Well, according to Rick Devnutti and Jeroen van Rotterdam, they are going to build a new public cloud capable platform (Next Generation Information Server). They are going to build new unified clients for xCP (single builder interface) and a single user-experience for all content management. All of this in D7 in summer 2012, just over a year away.

Wow, that sounds like a lot. It is also all at least 1 year away and a lot can happen in just 6 months in the software world. To be fair, if EMC presented a date that was sooner, I would not believe them.

What about the meantime? Well, they are leveraging some previous work to kick a mobile client out the door in July 2011 for the iPad. They plan a new mobile release every 3 months or so with updates and/or new platforms, iPhone being targeted for the second release. Subsequent releases will be determined when the dates gets closer.

As for the cloud, Jeroen, Jeetu, and Rick all said that the current platform was not public cloud ready. (All you salespeople, I hope you heard that). That is why they are creating the vCube option for EMC OnDemand. Essentially just Managed Services, it will provide Documentum on demand and will include multiple environments. Essentially EMC is taking the burden on itself to to stand-up and deliver Documentum when needed.

EMC OnDemand looks snazzy, but I’ll believe the 2-hour setup time when I time it with a stopwatch. I’m more likely to believe, and happy to accept, a 24-hour turn-around with zero issues. Trust me, I can find plenty to do on a Documentum project during a 24-hour time-span.

So we have a strategy that may be able to deliver the on the vision. One last detail…

Execution

What is needed now is execution. While I have great faith in what we will see over the next six months, it is the longer-term execution that we need to see.

Let me tell you why I think the next six months looks good…paranoia. After previous debacles with releasing CenterStage and other announcements, EMC has cracked down on product announcements. Products need to be real before they are announced, complete with prototyping and resources committed for completion. In fact, they considered not announcing EMC OnDemand because it was so far from GA, even though it is scheduled in the 6-7 month timeframe. They decided that they had to announce and make that commitment to the community. It is technically feasible as they aren’t creating anything new, just putting it all together in a new way.

Another point is the fact that Jeroen’s presentations, while cool, were loaded with disclaimers showing items that were “projects”, “experiments”, and “architectural thoughts”. That means none of it might make it into a “Product”. I suspect that a lot will, but they weren’t committing to anything.

I think this little “joke” illustrates the problem. Two years ago, we were told that a mobile client for EMC was coming in the Q3/Q4 timeframe as part of the CenterStage 1.1 release. Now  the current plan is to have a Mobile client, iPad first, in Q3 of 2011. The joke was that when they promised the mobile app, they hadn’t promised which Q3. I got them to commit to this 2011 for the demo we saw this year.

The question isn’t if they can hit the near-term dates. The question is if they can hit the D7 date with the Next Generation Information Server at the same time while hitting multiple rolling mobile releases.

If you miss one date by more than a couple of weeks, their credibility will take a hit. Benefit of the doubt is gone for EMC in this area. On-time, quality, releases is what they need to deliver right now.

After all, this isn’t just about the faith of the Documentum community. Their are competitors out there and it only takes one of them to beat EMC to the finish line to cause all sorts of troubles for them.

Lastly, and I do mean this, Good Luck EMC. Your going to need it.

In keeping with my theme of naming these posts after Clint Eastwood westerns, I have moved on from the trilogy to one that I feel more exemplifies this year’s conference, Unforgiven. Why? Simply because for most of the EMC World life, the Momentum conference has been a shell of its old self. Marriage had taken away who it really was. Well, Momentum looks like it might be back.

Before I go any further, remember I am talking about the conference only, not the content of the conference. Those follow next.

Last Year’s Checklist

Last year, as in previous years, I put together a list of things that needed to be fixed in my Momentum evaluation. To help illustrate the progress, let me share with you that list here and grade it.

• More user/partner sessions: I think this was flat. The call for topics didn’t seem as public as last year, but the number of sessions was about the same.
• More business users: Fail. This felt about the same, even though the conference is more user friendly every year.  Please come back.
• Separate lunch area. Didn’t get this and I don’t expect we will. There is a significant logistic issue to make this happen. Would be nice though.
• Less marketing: Heard many of the same things this year as I did last year. Tell people what is coming in the products so they can plan. Also tell them how to best implement the solution. If you think about it, nothing sells software better than having someone say how they implemented a solution and made their life better.
• Start with the keynote: This was better. Rick’s keynote was on Day one this year. Of course it was at 3:30pm and after two breakout sessions had taken place. Why not put it during the first set of breakouts? I’m sure every breakout attendee would rather have attended Rick’s keynote at 10am.
• Create a big-room track:  Success. Jeroen’s Architecture presentations and Ed Beuche’s Performance sessions were both in larger rooms. Keep this going.
• Rinse and repeat: John McCormick’s roadmap session was done twice and clearly marked.
• Developer hands-on:  There was one room that was running hands-on labs all conference. It was very successful and will likely be returning next year. I didn’t get a chance to stop by, so if you were there, please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Actually, if you have any comments, drop them below.

Still Some Work

So some improvement, but more importantly, no lost ground. There were some important issues though.

• Horrific Internet: The wifi was usually non-existent. The first couple of days it was okay, but it completely collapsed by Wednesday. This is a tech conference. We need connections. I at least had my phone, all those AT&T iPhone clones were completely out of luck.
• Power: To some degree this is an issue with the facility. That said, we could have used more power strips in the Momentum lounge and one at each projector at a minimum. You burn lots of power when you are looking for a signal.
• Lack of Expo Time: This was a major issue. The only time that we had for the expo were at the opening reception and lunch. The opening reception is pure chaos and not good for solid, in-depth discussions. Lunch was needed for lunch which was leveraged for meetings with people. I had to skip a session that I was extremely interested in attending and I still didn’t get enough time on the floor. We need some more expo time that doesn’t conflict with sessions. Maybe more pre-dinner time or an opening during lunch on Monday.
• Reduce Jeroen Conflicts: Every person told me that they wish Jeroen had his own timeslot with no conflicts. Not just community experts, but clients as well. I can’t think of any session that wouldn’t make some people feel conflicted. At the very least, no client-led sessions should be scheduled against the Product Roadmap, Ed Bueche, or Jeroen van Rotterdam.

Still, pretty good. In fact, when you get down to it, most of these are broader conference issues and not necessarily Momentum only concerns.

Returning to Form

Here is the summary, the conference is probably as segregated from EMC World as it is going to get. There will be little things every year that will not be perfect, but as a whole, the Documentum people were protected from the “storage” side.

As someone pointed out to me, most of EMC starts at the database and works down. IIG starts at the database and works up. Documentum works on-top of the rest of the EMC stack. We need more users to attend the conference like they used to do back before the merging.

This is where you come into the picture. We need to tell people that it is safe to return. It is easy to meet and share ideas with fellow users again. There are quality sessions being presented by users now. These aren’t just EMC requested sessions, these are sessions submitted to EMC, so there is some honesty in the sessions.

When you get down to it, Momemtum isn’t going to get a lot better until more people start attending. It is the sharing of ideas and the different viewpoints that comprise the true value of these conferences. Everything I covered above are just enabling factors. The real thing we need is you.

Momentum is back as a conference. Not perfect, but very good. It is now a good place to meet and share problems. It is returning to a national-global user group again.

We just need more users.

• Also known as XML Archiving
• Why does this topic matter?
• >50% of apps are legacy in typical enterprise portfolios
• 70% of IT budgets are for Existing systems
• 2 of 3 CIOs say their organizations do not have a single view of legacy system data for compliance reporting
• Data is important, can’t just get rid of it.
• Many legacy systems are written in Cobol, over 220 billion lines of Cobol code which is 80% of all code [to be fair, Cobol is very line intensive]
• The hardware it is running on is getting old and harder to repair/replace
• Solution Design Goals: Quick and easy search, Maintain Chain of Custody, Support Data and Unstructured Content, Standards-based, Keep costs low
• Can convert relational database to XML and then convert it back in order to validate no data loss
• Need to use a web-based UI to access the data, they have an XML Archive Client
• Do not pick one ETL tool for every scenario. Pick one for the application
• Using Dynamic Delivery Services for the storage and UI
• Template driven, trying for zero coding
• XForms, XSLT, XProc are all inputs to create the Archiving Application UI automatically
• Two versions, Standard and Extended, Extended has unstructured data and data compliance leveraging Kazeon
• Also a consulting offering around this solution. They have a financial analysis tool to prove ROI
• As always a demo

This was my last note-taking session. Off to the partner meeting, which I think is public, but it doesn’t really lend itself to this. I’ll tweet anything new and write an article if it becomes very interesting. See you next year.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

• Documentum Foundation Services (DFS), SOAP/WSDL
• Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)
• Part of platform with 6.7 release earlier this month
• REST API (reinvigoration of efforts) [Some applause]
• Non-core DFS functionality ships with supporting products (such as RPS services)
• 6.7 DFS
• WebSEAL integration
• Native .NET support for UCF (removes need for JRE on client)
• Details on CMIS. [See the rest of my blog for details on CMIS or my latest presentation on SlideShare]
• Documentum REST SPI
• EDN Labs project in 2009
• Plan to have updated releases this year
• REST given for 3 use cases
• Rich Internet Apps
• Mobile Applications
• Cloud-based Applications
• Stressing the DFS is not being replace by REST. Used for “tighter” integrations

Norrie doing the REST API Technical Overview now…

• Highlights
• Pragmatic REST API for Documentum Platform, not 100% RESTful, but ease-of-use taken into account
• Intuitive resource model covering basic and adbanced Documentum data and functionality
• Simple JSON and XML representations
• Linked resources for API navigation
• Standard authentication protocols
• No date given on Release 3, working on it and will be this year and based upon previous feedback
• Several code examples, progressing to iPad Application example
• [Generally solid examples and tips. Will want to have presentation on hand if you are learning REST using the REST API]
• Going to be a WAR file
• Stateless for flexible scaling/High Availability
• Authentication and Authorization
• Deployment Configuration
• Implemented with Spring Security
• Support for Multiple Protocols
• HTTP Basic
• Multiple SSO
• Kerberos
• OAUTH
• Mature Authentication Customization Framework

Back to Ahson for Roadmap

• Early Access for REST is 2011Q3 – 2012Q2, existing members maintain access
• Plan for updates every 2 months, maybe faster, trying for agile model
• D7 in Q2/Q3 2012 REST API will be part of core
• No update to CMIS for 1.1 support because the finalization of 1.1 is still some time away, plan for faster support

Of to meet my co-presenters for my Wednesday presentation for coffee. Need to go over some of the details of the presentation. After that, lunch at the EMC Community Luncheon

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of EMC products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

We are still a week away, but it is going to be an incredibly busy week for me, so I want to get this out now. For those that are unfamiliar, I pretty much type notes at every sessions and hit publish at the end of the session, essentially sharing my session notes with you. These rules are very similar to last years Rules (I even cut-and-paste for a draft), but I’ve updated a bit as I do every year.

All “live” posts that follow these rules will start EMC World 2011:. This is to clearly identify them for everyone. If I write a post before/during/after the conference that doesn’t adhere to what I am laying-out here, it won’t have that prefix.

Disclaimers

I’m going to be running a basic disclaimer in all my posts. If for some reason I forget to paste it in, this disclaimer applies to all EMC World 2011: prefixed posts and you can be sure I’ll be adding the disclaimer as soon as I notice that it is missing.  This is because I will be writing the posts during/after sessions and I will hear things that I may misconstrue or that talk about future events.

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of EMC products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

As indicated, if I learn later that something I posted was incorrect, I will endeavor to correct it, but it may not be immediate.

Topics of Conversation

As a general rule, if I, or the person I am talking to at the time, has a beverage in their hand, I’m not blogging/tweeting it. If it is blatantly clear that the information is public, I will share it in a constructed post during, or shortly after, EMC World.

The issue here is that I am a longtime partner of EMC/Documentum. As such, I am sometimes privy to information that is not made available to the general public. This information is used to serve my clients better.  If I started sharing this information, then I would no longer be able to learn any of it in the future. That information is by far more important any benefit that I may gain by posting it here.

This is a fun little line that I have to walk, but I think I’ve walked it well. There are several EMC personnel that have shared information with me since I started this blog and subsequently tweeting. I have, to date, kept all confidences and will continue to do so in the future.

Twitter

I will be using Twitter some during EMC World.  You can follow me at @piewords.  You can also follow all the Momentum 2011 action at #mmtm and all of the EMC World action at #emcworld.

Most information will be going here, into my blog. Random thoughts and where I am going (in my annual quest to maintain my caffeine levels) will be mostly through Twitter. If you don’t have my phone number to text me, your best bet to locate me at EMC World will be through Twitter.

The Time Delay

I am a busy person at the conference.  As such, not all posts will be tagged immediately as I will be focusing on getting them posted and moving to the next session. Have no  fear, the tags will come.

I will also be updating my EMC World page of links only once every day.  While it is a good index of what I have written, it will not be definitive until after the conference is over and I have time to update it. I will try and add links from other blogs, but that is also time dependent.

That’s it…See you there!

First, EMC is looking for feedback on how to make Momentum even better.  You can take the survey in just a few minutes.  Personally, I want to see more presentations from Clients and the Documentum/IIG Community-at-large.

While I am on the topic, if you are part of the same Momentum crowd, it is time to submit your presentation topics.  The deadline is the end of December, so let’s get started!

Last year, some of the better sessions were topics that were submitted by people from outside the EMC ranks.  They told real stories where Documentum software was part of the solution and not the point of the solution.  It wasn’t about sales, it was about learning about how best to use Documentum so solve problems outside of the demo VMWare image.

I’m hoping that this year the number of topics accepted is larger.  I would love to see some purely technical topics presented by clients and members of the Documentum community.  There is nothing like a good set of lessons learned and Design advice garnered from years of experience.

As for me, I’m thinking of two topics to present.  One is with a client and a partner on an XML Publishing system that we implemented.  It is a practical look at what can be done with the current technology, as well as some notes on what could have made our lives easier.

The other topic is more of a Best Design Practices session that I am toying with co-presenting with another member of the Community at-large.  We are still trying to work out the details given that we are with different companies.  It will be interesting if we are selected, but I am concerned that without a “client” on the submission, it will be denied.  Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

So what have you been doing this past year?  Let everyone know and submit a topic.  The goal isn’t to market or show-off, but to share with others.  This should be a learning experience for both the presenters and the audience.

As I lock down my topics, I’ll share them with the community to solicit feedback on any details that they would like to hear.  I think I know what people want from these presentations, but it is always good to hear specifics in advance.

Please submit your topic and share it with the Community.

See you there.