CenterStage

EMC’s Faulty Perception of Content Management

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How I Met Your Mother Spit TakeWhile at the Monktoberfest last week, I had the luck to run into some people from EMC.  Not just any folk from EMC, they were from “core”, the storage side of the business. After convincing them that I knew enough about EMC to have a real conversation, we discussed Documentum and the Information Intelligence Group (IIG) where Documentum sits.

The talk quickly turned to why Documentum did not live up to the potential they had when EMC acquired them. While I have many opinions, I thought I’d get their opinion. It was a little surprising.

They didn’t adopt Virtual fast enough.

There have been a lot of missteps over the years, but that wasn’t one of them. I was selling Documentum during the rise of VMWare and I can state this for a fact, I NEVER lost a deal because Documentum didn’t support virtual machines.

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Collaboration, Just a Documentum Side Effect

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Last year I posted an article on how CenterStage was the Latest ex-Collaboration Tool from EMC. Turns out I understated the case. EMC isn’t going to be building a collaboration tool, at least not one purposely built to encourage collaboration.

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.

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Documentum has a Vision Again, How About Execution?

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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.

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EMC World 2011: Jeetu’s Documentum Update

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Time for Jeetu Patel’s keynote. Expecting some more details on yesterday’s announcements. Not expecting anything earth-shattering, just some more insight into what questions I need to be asking next. Not going to repeat details from Rick’s keynote in these notes.

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CenterStage, the Latest ex-Collaboration Tool from EMC

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I had a mission at Momentum this year that I had to perform for some of my eRoom clients.  I had to determine the viability of CenterStage as a replacement for eRoom.  Two facts answered my question:

CenterStage 1.1 is scheduled for GA in Q4.  Calendars are a year away.

Really?  Where have I heard that before?

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CenterStage or SharePoint? An Early Look

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I recently dissected a “comparison” between Documentum and SharePoint. Karma was paying attention and I found myself performing a comparison of CenterStage and SharePoint for one of my long-time eRoom customers last week.

Setting the Stage

A little background.  This client has had eRoom Enterprise since 2004.  There has been some isolated success in some pockets of the organization, but not everywhere.  The initial champions left during the deployment and there was no real concerted push to use the system afterwards.  It had grown slowly over time, but hadn’t become a must-use system for many.

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Dissecting a Documentum-SharePoint “Comparison”

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Saw a tweet today that was pretty exciting.  It was referencing a “comparison” between SharePoint and Documentum.  I was initially excited.  I’d love to see CenterStage  and SharePoint compared.  I compared SharePoint to eRoom a couple of years back and wasn’t planning on a comparison with CenterStage until the database/list functionality was ported over.

My excitement was short-lived.

I instead encountered a piece that resembles propaganda more than a fair and balanced comparison.  That may sound harsh, but I will defend the charge.

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Documentum Renewal: Architecting Content Applications

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Of all my posts in this series, this is the one that is probably the least needed.  I say this because it looks like EMC is some of this now.  It does need to be said though, just so EMC know that we still care, and in case I am guessing wrong.  The themes for the Architecting of Content Applications is closely related to the Application Separation topic and in many ways, is the complement to the Focus on the Core edition.

I’m going to stay away from some specific feature requests for applications.  I would want to do complete run-downs on any app before I did that.  I want to be a little more strategic in my advice.

As always, please feel free to add/comment.

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Documentum Renewal: Focus on the Core

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I just started writing a series on what EMC should do with their Documentum product as part of my Christmas gift to EMC. That part is key…this is a gift from the community because we want Documentum to be better and to stick around.

Why do I say the community? Simple enough…because I hear these things from many users at different installations across multiple verticals. I hear things from clients, partners, competitors, and random people at meetings.

We criticize because we care.

That being said, my first post in this series, on Application Separation, had a great reply from Lee Smith which is worth looking at.  Take a moment.

Today we are looking at the Content Server, the engine that makes everything work.

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EMC and Mark Lewis’ Focus on Return on Information

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In my previous post, I shared a copy of Mark Lewis’ CMA keynote presentation from EMC World 2009. It made me realize that I needed to crank out this post on EMC’s vision and Mark Lewis’ delivery of that vision. This is going to be a little devoid of facts for a couple of reasons.  One is that the raw facts are captured in the presentation, SlideShare and YouTube, and in my notes. The second is that no vision was delivered at EMC World!!!

The Missing Vision

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