So you may, or may not, have realized that EMC recently changed their website. Now, if I was a storage customer, my first reaction would have been, Oooooooo. Pretty. However, as a Documentum/ECM guy, I also went Where did all my stuff go?

Navigating EMC.com

Well, navigation is okay. A lot of content has to be searched for now though. User Groups are hidden away. I only found them because I knew what to search for on the site. The pages are also still boasting the old look-and-feel.

I also can’t seem to consistently get to Mark Lewis’s blog since the change either. I hang quite a bit. I can only find the link on the Site Map (or in my personal links). On the page listing the blogs is a link to an article he has written on Information 2.0 (which may get a post later). On the same page though, there is a link to the neglected blog of Cornelia Davis. It hasn’t been updated in four months and the link is to a post five months back.

I will say that it is fairly simple to find product information, but that is as far as I am willing to concede.

EMC Competes Against Who?

Here is where I really get disappointed. There is no vision for Enterprise Content Management. There are products, but any vision seems missing. There are things on the overall vision of EMC on their new Leadership and Innovation page. You can’t get to all of the articles without mining for them. This is very frustrating. I want to work with a Leader in ECM and Information Management, not someone that appears to just have it listed.

Let’s take IBM. With one click, I got to their Information Management page which tells me what they are doing in Information Management. One more click and I’m on their ECM page, complete with vision, sub-solutions, and just about anything else you might want to learn about IBM and ECM.

I know that EMC has one vision for Enterprise Content Management, or at least they did. I’ve seen it several times in the last year. This new design left it out. Are they going to depend on their sales guys to deliver the vision. Not a good idea without the online presence to back it up. I’m not calling out one company’s reps over another. I just know that after getting a spiel from a sales guy, I like to check facts and get more details online.

I’m sorry, but the site seems more targeted at people comparing EMC to Network Appliance (NetApp) than any of the vendors that the ECM world tracks.

eRoom and the Map of the Ancients

One surprise, eRoom is not that hard to find on the new site. You just have to know if you want Documentum’s Collaboration eRoom or eRoom product family. Really, the content overall is the same, just some context variables that mix it up. Shame that it is basically the same product as 3 years ago.

Actually, this was refreshing. If they gave it that much visibility, maybe they really are investing in it. I’m hoping to find out in the near future. I can tell you that I love that little product, as do people that are just getting to know it. It just needs some love. If it is getting the love, then that love should be broadcast.