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.

Why am I sad to miss this? Well, there is the changes in three key leadership positions at IIG since EMC World:

• Jeetu Patel is now the CTO of IIG.  While I don’t know Jeetu enough to develop much of an opinion on this move, I see nothing to be concerned about from this appointment.  I’m sure I’ll develop an opinion over time.  There is one opinion out there from the TSG Group which appears optimistic.
• Jeroen van Rotterdam is now the Chief Architect of IIG.  As I discussed last week when talking about changes in the Documentum world, this is potentially very good.  If Jeetu was responsible, then my opinion of him has increased by a scale of magnitude.
• Rick Devenuti is now the President of IIG. The former COO steps up.  Lots of potential in his resume.  The question is, does he get Content Management?

It will be interesting to here what these three people say during the conference.  Speaking of which, these are the sessions that I would love to hear about.  If any attendees take notes, I’ll even post them here for all to read.

• Tuesday morning keynote: Originally the Mark Lewis keynote, I expect this to be the session where they layout the “5 year vision” that I heard rumored. Regardless, it will be interesting to hear.
• Tuesday afternoon keynote: Jeetu Patel is giving this one.  This will be a good chance to see what he may be thinking.
• Cloud Strategy for Documentum xCP: Is there anything beyond plans to live in virtual worlds?  Would love to see plans to make the architecture more cloud friendly.  Follow the link to the discussion and let’s see what happens.
• EMC Documentum Architecture Overview: This is Jeroen presenting on the Architecture. Very interested on any thoughts shared about the future of the core architecture.
• The Latest in Documentum Performance & Scalability: This is a session in two parts by Ed Bueche.  Always interesting, but he will be talking about Documentum xPlore.
• How to Get Microsoft SharePoint and EMC Documentum to Work Together: This is Lee Smith’s session.  The previous version of this presentation at EMC World got rave reviews.

For the record, there is also a Virtual Momentum.  It is planned to be live for quite some time, so I may consider it later.  It isn’t free, which is fair, so I will have to contemplate it balanced against the odds of my carving more than an hour for it in my schedule.

1. Rename the Intelligent Case Management product family to Intelligent Content Management.  After all, isn’t Case Management something you build on top of an intelligent content server with a nice configurable xCP framework?  There are other solutions that fit there as well.
2. Give Victor Spivak a Keynote at Momentum. Victor is great and we love to hear him talk about how things work.  He could talk about the cool plans for the backbone of the future of Content Management.  At the end, bring in Jeroen van Rotterdam to do some demos.  It is extremely entertaining to watch him when he himself isn’t always sure that the demos will work. (tip of the cap to Chris Campbell for this idea)
3. Build xCP 2.0 on the Next-Gen Content Server for D7. This is the funding concern.  Victor didn’t say when, but with all the qualifiers he gave, I expect that the move to xDB in the backend is not near-term.  It should be.  I’ll explain why in more detail in a later post, but there is a lot of money to be made by putting an Intelligent Content Server in the cloud.  My family photo album may be a commodity and free to store online, but my company records with retention policies and content analytics identifying trends will not be free for quite some time.  Imagine being the first DoD 5015.2 certified RM system that runs, and is certified, in the cloud.  Marketing legs that will last a long time.
4. Take Momentum back to New Orleans.  Let Tucci bring EMC World if he wants.  No more Vegas or Orlando.  Let’s go somewhere fun and new.  Three words on the 2003 conference: Best. Conference. Ever!
5. Separate non-Webtop UIs from the Content Server release schedule.  Let the client applications release more often and have shorter testing cycles.  Allow them to innovate.  You’ll never make them feel like the latest web apps, but you’ll keep them within a year or two.  With Webtop, and whatever follows, you have to keep at least one app that can deliver everything the Content Server provides.
6. Bring the Users back to Momentum.  I used to attend Product Advisory Forums.  Not just to give feedback on the roadmap, but to give ideas for the roadmap.  The first day had tutorials for those that were getting started with a new product line, introducing it, the concepts, and how to use it.  Half the sessions were case studies, presented by business users.   There used to be 6 tracks with more sessions per track than there are now, and that was before the developer conference was merged.  Market to the business users.  Give them the speaking slots.  Reward sales reps if they get multiple customers to present.
7. Attend Momentum Europe.  Never gotten to go, but I bet if I was in charge they would let me attend.
8. Refuse to conform.  I already do this.  In fact, the only reason I have this item in here was to get the list to 9, which is neither 8 (AIIM) or 10 (Letterman).  The point is that the product that just conforms will never lead, never generate excitement, and will never have the world hanging on every word that the President of the company says.
9. Create a Vision and Share it with the World.  I’d craft some awesome vision and share it.  I’d push to achieve it.  I’d do whatever I could to make my enthusiasm for the vision contagious.  I would create excitement in the industry about my products.  People may still circle the date for SharePoint 2013, but they would also be circling the date for D7.

Of course, then my day would end and people would go back to what they were doing before I arrived.  The would head to the bars talking about that nut that snuck in and sat at Mark’s desk all day.

The EMC World 2007 conference, while under EMC World’s wing, still felt like the session count wasn’t that far off.  I remember a few grumblings, but nothing documented, so I’ll just use that as a baseline with the understanding that the previous year was at least as good.  I believe 2007 was the year that the long-standing pre-conference tutorials vanished, so calling it even is a throwing EMC a bone.

Let’s See Some Numbers

• 2007: “Momentum Sessions”=120 Sessions, Content and Information Management Tracks (includes Momentum and lots of Developer)=178 sessions.
• 2008: No “Momentum” grouping, just a Content and Information Management similar to above…104.
• 2009: Counting the sessions in the Momentum book, which includes “Developer” sessions…88.  Using the previous methodology from 07 and 08, you get 96.

2007 to 2008, WOW!!! That was impressive. We spent so much time running around that we were just happy to find our session, much less worry about an alternate session to attend in 2008. The 178-104 is a fair comparison as those are both identical EMC categorizations.  That is a 41% drop!  No recession talk a year ago, much less the 6+ months before when they planned it.

The drop from 2008-2009 is less severe and I’ll even call that a recession downturn with a drop of 7.6%.

So let’s get to the meat. 120 Momentum, non-Software Developer Conference, sessions in 2007 and a recession adjusted 95 sessions (88*1.08) is a drop of 21% over 2 years. WAIT A SECOND!!! Those “95″ sessions INCLUDE all the CMA developer sessions (these 17 Documentum ones) that weren’t included in the 2007 Momentum count of 120.  Taking out the 17, and keeping the recession adjustment consistent, that is now 120-77 which is a 36% drop!!!  Over a third of the Momentum sessions gone!!! (Non-recession adjusted 120-71 gives 41%!!!)

Now, anyone with better numbers (*cough* EMC *cough*), please contribute. I am not counting double-sessions or Birds-of-a-Feather sessions.

Where Did The Sessions Go?

If anything, there should be more sessions.  EMC has acquired more technology under the CMA umbrella.  The X-Hive acquisition by itself adds a few sessions.  So with the same number of sessions being offered, there would still be a hit to the core sessions.  Even with the advent of SourceOne, which is home grown, we still see a decrease.

I’ll tell you right now that there are more options and technical details for a developer to learn than there were just two years ago.  DFC and WDK are still here and not going away, but we now have TaskSpace.  There is xCP and DFS.  Composer isn’t easy yet as it is still maturing.  Developer sessions, just in themselves, should be growing, yet they aren’t either.  Shoot, there were 15 breakout session slots filled, plus 2 un-filled, by the CMA.  If it wasn’t for a few long sessions, 2 of them I think, you could single track and hit all of the CMA Developer sessions!!!

Anyone miss the “Meet the Speaker” socials or the “Meet the Experts” gatherings?  How about those pre-conference tutorials?

What gives!?!?

For one thing, there is no longer a Call For Topics.  For the past two years, EMC has not allowed users to submit topics to present.  We, the attendees, got a lot of case studies and real-life examples.  There were more business users telling their stories, and TRADING their stories with each other.  I learned a lot from those people over meals and between sessions. I might only see them at Momentum, so I valued that time.

I see other consultants all the time and only the ones that you know well share their mistakes with you. We are in competition, so it pays to play it close sometimes. Users share because they can.

Each year, there seems to be less business users attending, and they are the ones with the problems we are trying to solve.  Content Management is not an IT problem.  Documentum is not used by IT.  It is used by the everyday, to steal a term, Knowledge Worker.

Go to 10 companies with Documentum. In 8-9 of them you will find end-users that know the name “Documentum”.  Go to 10 non-IT companies owning primarily EMC storage, and no Documentum.  I bet that in 8-10 of them, the everyday end-user, ones whose only interaction with IT is the helpdesk, won’t know the name EMC.

Different products, different users, different stories.

Storage can be measured in tests.  There is a lot to it and I don’t want to take away from anyone on that side of the house. Content Management is about people. It is about managing change, defining processes, and getting people to buy into the technology. It is not just how to deploy the technology.

We don’t only need to know what the next features are in Documentum.  We need to know how people are successfully gaining user adoption.  How are they selling the ROI to the managers?  How they are getting the system working with legacy systems, and the political hurdles they overcome.  I know DFS can do things, but how did Uber Pharma make it work with their legacy testing system?  How did they upgrade from 4i to 5.3 to 6.5?  What were the lessons learned? How did they manage the risk?

Fill the gap. Bring back the Call for Topics.  Bring back the business users.

Make the conference about users again.

Before I dive in, I want to say that I recognize that EMC has listened and tried to make the conference better for the Content Management professional. I appreciate the efforts and I hope that they continue to listen to the feedback.  No conference is perfect, but they should strive for perfection.

I shared, and gathered, these thoughts with people from EMC employees, partners, and customers.  This is a conference evaluation, not on the strategy or direction of EMC.  That will come later. Check my EMC World page for all my links.

The Good

As I said in an impromptu interview conducted by Len Devanna, this year was better than previous EMC World’s. Considering where the bar was set last year, that wasn’t much of a challenge.  EMC did a great job of clearing the bar with room to spare.

• The Momentum Community: Between the ribbons, Momentum Lounge, co-located CMA expo partners, CMA party, and closely grouped sessions, it was easy to find other Documentum users.  We weren’t everywhere, we were just together.  That was a MASSIVE improvement.  I know several people and companies that did not attend this year because of the disjointed feeling after last year’s EMC World.  They missed out this year and I hope that EMC continues the community trend.  That should help attract those attendees and vendors back to EMC World next year.
• The Bloggers Lounge: The aforementioned Len Devanna organized a Blogger’s Lounge for both bloggers and tweeters of the EMC community to come together to meet, talk, and drink espresso drinks.  I was a regular there and by the end, the barista knew my order, a double espresso.  It really upped the visibility of social media within EMC and to the larger EMC community that hadn’t really looked closely at the online tools for business purposes.  Next year we’ll need to schedule a Tweetup to handle all of the new twitterers.

• Water Bottles: A couple of groups, including CMA, handed out metal water bottles.  Scattered throughout the conference were stations for refilling the bottles with water.  Next year, I’d like to see this taken further and give everyone a bottle and have large number of prominent water bottles scattered everywhere.

Overall, it was a better organized conference than last year and I can’t blame EMC for the rainy weather.

The Bad

• Hard to Find Essentials: Scary fact, the easiest place for an attendee to find power for their laptops was in sessions, and that wasn’t easy.  Power was hard to find, but many didn’t notice because they were busy trying to find out where the coffee had disappeared to in the last five minutes.  These were things that I didn’t notice, thanks to the Blogger’s Lounge, but others pointed out to me frequently.
• Compressed Schedule: Once again, everything overlapped.  The only free time I had to go to the expo without skipping a session was opening night. If you have ever been to a conference, you know that it is very difficult to get too deep into a product or service offering when an expo first opens.  Usually a visit later in the conference is called for in order to meet everyone and learn what needs to be learned.  I had to skip a breakout session and a Product Advisory Forum session to accomplish 80% of what I wanted to accomplish in the expo.  I was unable to accomplish the other 20%.  The expo needs more hours added or moved to the evenings when sessions are over for the day.  In addition, it would be nice if the invitation only sessions, like the Product Advisory Forums, were moved to the first day before the opening party (Sunday afternoon) or to the last day after the last session has concluded (Thursday afternoon).
• Where’s Waldo?: There were lots of EMC people missing this year.  I understand that there is a recession. When you cut sessions, you cut attendees, which cuts revenue.  Still, difficult decisions need to be made.  I didn’t see lots of regulars that are good speakers.  The one I missed the most? Craig Randall.  He is an excellent speaker that is extremely visible to the entire Documentum Developer Community.  He is a public advocate and when he says he isn’t attending EMC World, developers notice and question their need to attend.  I’m sure this is tied to the first item in the “Ugly” category.
• Overviews At The End: Nothing helps you realize what you missed better than getting an overview or roadmap towards the end of the conference. It makes you realize which of those strange new acronymed products you actually need to learn about.  “What is xCP? No clue. Wait, that is the new name for the Case Management Framework? Ooooo, interesting. What do you mean the deep-dive session was yesterday?” That is only topped by hearing this 2-3 times in a session once you realized that you needed to learn about a product, If the expo was still open, you could have gone to see a demo. I’ve heard that part of the reason for this is that the people that give the presentations are in Executive Meetings on Monday.  Here is a thought, MOVE THOSE MEETINGS!!! If the executives have to know first, move the meetings to Sunday.  If they don’t need to know first, but just need more details, move them to Tuesday.  Overviews and overall roadmaps on the third day drive me NUTS and show poor attention to detail.

That last one almost made it to the the final category, but just because it is a pet peeve doesn’t make it ugly

The Ugly

Some trends have continued and they are becoming major issues.  If these aren’t addressed, I’m not sure how much value the conference will offer the average user in a few years.

• Diminishing Sessions: This was extremely noticeable this year.  The half-day training sessions were cut a couple years ago and each year, there have been less and less CMA sessions.  Meet the Experts, gone this year. Meet the Speakers, cut last year and still gone.  There is a diminishing of both tracks and sessions per day.  If the sessions are near each other, do we really need 30 minutes between each session?  During the four session periods on Thursday, only the first two housed CMA sessions.  There were a LOT less developer sessions.  The ones that were held were more akin to the older technical sessions from previous Momentums.  Remember If you build it, he will come? Well..Don’t schedule it and they won’t come also applies.  There were also only TWO hands-on sessions.  Yes, they can be done online, but the most valuable part of all of these sessions is the Q&A.
• Who Has Done This Before?: This is a common question at the end of many product sessions. It is a hard question to answer when their are so few customer presentations.  Nothing is as compelling as hearing people share their experiences implementing the solutions.  Customers LOVE those presentations.  Ever since they killed the call for topics a few years ago, case studies have all but gone away.  What went with it?  The reason many attendees came to Momentum.  The conference shouldn’t just be about product features.  It needs to cover best practices from those that have survived implementations. This was a problem last year and it continues.

When everything was combined into EMC World, TWO separate conferences were eliminated, the Software Developer Conference and Momentum.  Both conferences were growing each year when the acquisition took place.  Now the CMA portion feels smaller than either one.  It isn’t just the recession.  People aren’t seeing the value in the sessions being offered.

Here is a question, why does VMWare get to keep their conference, VMWorld? They have more in common with storage than the CMA crowd. Don’t get me wrong, I met many storage people this year that I liked, I even saw how the CMA community can coexist in the same conference as the storage people. I just feel like the entire conference is withering away even as the product offering and need for Enterprise Content Management grows.

EMC needs to work on these things and be sure not to neglect the thoughts from last year as they still apply, even those that were addressed.

Boston on Mother’s Day

Next year, EMC World 2010 starts on May 10th and runs through the 13th in Boston.  I like the conference not being on Memorial Day, but it now starts on Mother’s Day.  I’m already working on how to explain this to the wife as next year is the “not having brunch with the Mother of Pie so the Wife of Pie can sleep-in and do whatever she wants” part of the bi-annual cycle.

I hope to see you there.

I was thinking about talking about my plans for EMC World, which looks pretty good, but the I realized something…This will be my 10th Documentum User Conference!  So I have decided to flash back a bit to the previous conferences.

• 2000, Momentum Vegas: Ah the Venetian. This was my first look at the wider Documentum world. I was with Infodata Systems and stuck in the booth.  We were showing Plumtree and Documentum together that year. The system was beautiful until it crashed, literally, an hour before the show, killing the system. I was so tired that I didn’t get to enjoy the show after-hours. I seem to recall feeling like my feet were about to fall off.  I do remember tigers though.
• 2001, Momentum Chicago: Don’t recall the venue, but it was a decent conference, even if I was stuck in a booth again plugging AnnoDoc.  It took place a few weeks after 9-11, so attendance was down. I actually spoke on Streamlining Content Management Using Portal Technologies (plus Enterprise Search, but that wasn’t in the title).  It was the last day and thus a sparsely attended session. I told the attendees that I couldn’t sell them the perfect solution as it didn’t exist yet (still doesn’t), but we could start the Journey. One of the best days of my life occurred on that trip, but you’ll have to buy me a beverage to hear about it in detail.
• 2002: Momentum Orlando: Like many mid-sized Orlando conferences, this was at the Dolphin.  You begin to hate pastels after a while at that place. This was my last booth tour as it was my last conference with Infodata and AnnoDoc. This also marked my one foray into Karaoke.  I think the world is a better place for not trying that again.
• 2003, Momentum New Orleans: Best. Conference. Ever. No booth so my feet didn’t hurt.  I attended more sessions and had fun with more people, than I have at any conference before or since. Winner of the best food and partner events, hands down. This was the second conference of the revolving name-tags (Impact Innovations Group). I will never, EVER, forget this conference.
• 2004, Momentum Montreal: Disappointing. Everything was spread out and there weren’t a lot of people that I knew in attendance.  Learned a lot and enjoyed it, but this has to rank last. Following New Orleans didn’t help. This year I was with DRC, the buyers of my company. The Red Sox winning the World Series didn’t add to my enjoyment.
• 2005, Momentum Las Vegas: First year with DeepBridge, and the 4th year in a row with a different company name. (1 acquisition, 2 job changes) During the conference, the possibility of merging with EMC World was discussed.  Everyone complained and we got one more year in 2006. Interesting party at the racetrack.  Good times.
• 2006, Momentum Anaheim: The last U.S. Momentum. Great time. I met Jed that year sitting at a bar, watching American Football.  I spend the weekend before at a condo overlooking the beach and got some free babysitting. This trip was also with DeepBridge. I believe we were named Partner of the Year that year. Train performed at the final party and they put on a great live show. Their Led Zeppelin covers even impressed those that had actually seen the original in concert.
• 2007, EMC World Orlando: Much grumbling about the loss of the spirit of Momentum, which still continues in the States today (the grumbling that is). This was the motivation for starting this blog, so I guess it wasn’t a total loss. Everyone tried to say that their were separate Developer and Momentum conferences, but it wasn’t.  This was my first year at my current company, Washington Consulting, Inc.  They brought me in to run their ECM solution.  I still have the job, so I guess I’m doing okay.
• 2008, EMC World Las Vegas: This was the year that I knew everyone. I’d run into an old friend and my boss would take a snapshot. You’d think I was a social butterfly. I’m not. I just know a lot of people at this conference. I got to meet Craig this year. I had probably met him before, but this was the year that it was more than me being one of a few hundred random attendees.  I also conducted a roundtable discussion that for some reason, Alan Z has never let see the light of day, God bless him.

That’s about all the time I have to write today.  I do want you to consider attending if you use, or are getting ready to use, any EMC product.  There is fun and education to be had by all.

Promise.

Which videos am I looking at???  The keynotes from Momentum 2008 in Prague. I have been making plans to attend EMC World in May and I was looking back to see any changes from the last EMC World to that Momentum.  More on EMC World later, but if you aren’t already making plans to attend, you need to get on the ball.

Six More Months, No Pizzazz

Mark Lewis delivered the keynote, broken into three parts (1, 2, 3) and while energy doesn’t really come through video as well as it does in person, the audience seemed a little passive.  Nothing exciting.  I’m not going to break down the message as it is 3 months old at this point.  Suffice it to say that the message didn’t appear that different from previous keynotes that I have observed.  The vision will do well for EMC, but it wasn’t delivered in an inspired manner.  It is a shame because Convergence, Community, Context, and Compliance (well maybe not Compliance) are exciting and are easy sells.

I wish they had recorded more of Whitney, but not having attended, there may not have been a lot to record.  There was a speech recorded from Balaji Yelamanchili.  That had a little more energy.  More importantly, Balaji actually mention CMIS briefly when talking about SharePoint.  Not highlighted in any way that would demonstrate the importance of the pending standard.

What I, and the entire community deserves, it a vision delivered with enthusiasm.  The world is going to be hunkering down and focusing on eDiscovery and Archiving, but if EMC has to lay out the future in two years, it can be excited.  A future where CMIS is second nature and new, exciting applications are being developed by partners that can run on multiple systems.

I miss Dave.  He would have at least put on a show to make us excited to be using EMC products.  I’m glad that he is doing well.

EMC World 2009

Are you going?  I am. That is, I am as sure as any consultant is in this economy. My biggest question is how many colleagues to bring.  Maybe if I convince everyone to bill a few extra hours a week for two months I can bring a bunch.

This is going to be a fun one.  I have heard that they are working to make the CMA/Documentum group a more distinct part of the conference.  I know that I’m going to be reaching out to more people and trying to connect and build a sense of community.

If you are an EMC customer, get there.  You have great stories.  You can give life histories of your systems.  You live with mistakes and are part of the long process.  Consultants sometimes fix them, but we rarely get to see a system through it’s entire life like you do.

Let’s get some fresh faces, energy, and stories.  Let’s meet face-to-face so that when we interact online, we have that foundation that builds trust and comfort.

Be there.  Regardless of the keynote, we’ll create our own enthusiasm.

The biggest problem right now isn’t that EMC’s solution is behind the curve.  The current solution from EMC is comparable to their competitor’s offerings.  The problem is that the solution is inherently inadequate.  EMC knows this (which is a good thing), but until they, or anyone, gives us a better option, what do we do?

Therapy for the Masses

I’ve been percolating these thoughts for a while, but Alan Pelz-Sharpe’s post over at CMS Watch kicked me into action.  He relates the story of a rough Records Management implementation using Documentum and the later attempt to implement everything with SharePoint as the front-end.  The main problem, one of the many problems (for there are several), is that the pilot didn’t have the two products fully integrated before the “pilot” become production.

I laughed, but I could have easily cried.  I have clients, past and present, that have been, or are, in this situation.  Pilot systems growing into production systems before they are ready is an all too common reality.  More relevant to this discussion is the challenge that they are having getting the two to work together.

Those with SharePoint can’t really implement the current solutions without the users noticing a big difference.  The integration of an ECM system into SharePoint isn’t seamless.  If the user start with SharePoint, they tend to be happy.  When you throw in the ECM system behind the scenes, they might still be happy, but things are now different.  Users don’t like different.  Users might not be using the Document Libraries anymore, but Web Parts that surface migrated content in the Documentum repository.  Documents might now be represented as “shortcuts”.  As Andrew points out, when you work with shortcuts, SharePoint processes, and links to, the shortcut itself and not the actual document.

SharePoint is a simple application for users to comprehend.  It integrates with their MS Office tools and there are no pesky plug-ins or downloads.  There are no java libraries to configure or validate and the users don’t need special permissions on their desktop to install anything.  IT JUST WORKS!

Documentum is a power-user tool.  The user interface is powerful, and intimidating at times.  Will CenterStage arrive in time?  No bets here.

I think I need a drink.

How It Should Work

Let’s say I am a user of SharePoint, which is actually true.  I’m a good little user and I load all sorts of useful content into SharePoint to help everyone do their job better, mostly true.  Behind the scenes, the poor database is starting to limp because of all the content that I, and my dutiful colleagues, are loading.  The solution is simple, put a more robust ECM system behind it.

The problem is that things change when that happens.  I now have shortcuts and/or I have my content in Web Parts and not Document Libraries.  Things have moved on me and I have to tell everyone how to access things now, AFTER I find them myself.

In theory the problem should be resolved simply.  I plug my ECM system of choice into the back of SharePoint and *POOF*, no more problems.  The users have no clue as to what happened.  They just know that they can just do their work without having technology limitations impact their business needs.

Where is this solution?  Well, it is just becoming possible.  Andrew outlines the two real options, EBS and RBS, as well as the pros and cons of each.  He doesn’t go into too much detail regarding product direction, but Robin East spills some details while talking about a Product Advisory Forum from Momentum Europe 2008.  Some of the information is under NDA , and some may have changed, so I’ll let you read his gleanings from the session.  At the time, it appears that EBS was the leader between the two.

[Edit: Mine and Andrew's discussions are under NDA and I hesitate on what specifics that I can share. Robin's post is free and clear due to the avenue that he acquired his information. I don't like to talk about it purely from a CYA perspective.]

There are a lot of open issues on how to make this work.  Identity Management and channeling changes initiated by Documentum back up to SharePoint are two of the ones that are being addressed, but the answers aren’t here…yet.

What To Do Now

Here is the basic problem, what do people do between now and the time that Microsoft, EMC, or some other vendor can make SharePoint do everything it needs to do without impacting the user experience?  I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford that much therapy.  The answer revolves around applying common sense.

Move ahead.  Just think twice before you begin the integration process.  This isn’t to say that the options are poor or to be avoided, at least not all of them.  It is simply that if you do integrate now, then you are probably going to have to change the user experience down the road (and/or now if SharePoint is already deployed).  The users may not like it.  If you are really unlucky, the transition/migration won’t work at all.

These are the steps I would be looking at if I had both right now:

• SharePoint is easy for the users, so use it.  User acceptance is one of the largest challenges regarding the adoption of Content Management systems.  Solve that problem.  Just deploy SharePoint in moderation.
• Get some governance in place to control the growth of SharePoint.  Control, Control, You MUST learn Control! The controlled growth will make it easier to transition things later and keep things from getting too close to the precipice before you are ready to take the next step.
• Build your Documentum environment, and solutions, for your power-users.  use it for those business applications that need more ECM focus and muscle, like publishing, Imaging, and Digital Asset Management.
• When the time is right, slip Documentum behind SharePoint to strengthen SharePoint and allow for growth at a more natural rate.
• Expose the Documentum-based solutions through SharePoint so that those that aren’t power-users can leverage the new ECM muscle that has been placed behind SharePoint.

This may look like a lot of work, but compared to the alternatives (pushing SharePoint past its limits or repeatedly changing the user experience), it is a walk in the park.  I know some people that have been burned by SharePoint, but their organization didn’t always exercise restraint, or patience.

This is a problem that can be solved, now.  It just takes a little bit of group therapy to get to the light at the end of the tunnel.

I think I’ll get that drink now…