EMC

The Endless Security Cycle

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I have been thinking about how to write this post for a while now. I have several approaches to choose from, but then I hit on the key concept. It doesn’t matter. Here is the general pattern of James’ approach to this topic.

  • James will criticize ECM security as a whole and then point to one or more issues.
  • I then attempt to explain why those key “issues” aren’t issues.
  • James will then elaborate or comment on my post in one or more follow-ups, usually explaining something that I didn’t put in my post for one or more reasons. In the case in point, I didn’t take it deep enough. While doing this, he ignores any defenses I may have made of the “issues”. He invariably bringing up other “issues” as well.

Rather than continue the cycle, and eat my time up, I’m going to post one more time on this topic and move on for now. Some disclaimers of my own:

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Secure ECM Systems

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In my earlier post, I called James out on his post, which was a fairly biased statement about EMC’s testing for security, or lack thereof. In my post, I pointed out that the security warning did not warrant such an attack. I tried to point out that James wasn’t necessarily wrong in his statements, just that he didn’t provide any evidence that backed them up. He criticized their proactive efforts when the source material calls for a reactive effort.

Well, James replied to me in two subsequent posts. The first post endeavored to teach me about the importance of testing for security in systems proactively. It wasn’t a lesson that I needed, having heard of the SQL Injection attack back in the 90s as a weakness in ASP applications (or at least an attack that was fairly similar). Being aware of these issues, I’ve make a point of controlling what a user can do in interfaces.

His points are valid though, so I wanted to take time to talk about them. This is my first post in a series addressing the points he brings up. So if I don’t address something now, don’t worry it’ll come.

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Inciting Insight or Panic?

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Normally when I read a post by James McGovern, I understand that he is trying to get under people’s skins in order to provoke a response. Some people respond to this by attempting to give the type of information that James is looking for in a post of their own. Others view it as a form of harassment and try their best to ignore it, though James just looks on that as a form of encouragement. Both reactions are perfectly fine.

I, and pretty much every blogger, are not compensated for writing our blogs, much less for responding to James. It is optional. When I blog, I do so as me, myself, and I. Not as an employee of any company or organization.

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SharePoint and ECM Working Together

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Andrew Chapman got a new gig. He is now in charge of SharePoint solutions for EMC. I am assuming that this includes Content Services for SharePoint (notice the old site link still works) as well as any other current and future products. I couldn’t be happier. Andrew knows how to listen and evolve his thoughts based upon new information and experiences.

In many ways, this is an out-growth of his work in the world of compliance and records. He had seen how organizations were having trouble managing their growing SharePoint environments and they were asking him how to get Documentum and SharePoint to work together. Organizations like SharePoint’s user-interface and Documentum’s ability to enforce business rules and manage the large amounts of information being stored. Andrew voiced his opinion one too many times and his new job was born.

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One EMC and eRoom’s Place There

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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?

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X-Hive and the Content Server

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On the 17th, I had the fortune of attending a briefing/seminar on X-Hive. It was a series of presentations given by Jeroen van Rotterdam, one of the founders and architects of X-Hive. Jeroen is now the General Manager of XML Solutions for EMC. I was able to learn more about the product and its future within the Content Server.

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BEA…Going, Going, Gone

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So, a while back, Oracle made a play for BEA at $17 per share. BEA told them to take a hike for anything under $21. Today, BEA caved at $19.375. That’s right, caved. When you offer someone a 25% premium and then later are able to buy them for only a 24% premium, you win. Yeah, they may be spending an extra $1.8 billion, but BEA is worth a lot more now. What does this mean? It depends on who you ask…

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RSA and Autonomy

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Just wanted to share with everyone. I learned that the OEM agreement that I mentioned earlier between Autonomy and EMC is for the RSA product line and not Documentum. There had been a slight discussion going on in my previous post on the topic that Autonomy wasn’t destined for Content Server. Now we know.

So it seems that Search is still on the same path. Upgraded FAST and an option for Lucene in D6.5. This should also lead to more plug-in architecture for Search engines in the future. It also means that we need to watch Microsoft more closely once they close the deal in Q2.

The folks at Brilliant Leap! and Lee Smith had some interesting thoughts (Read in that order). However, with the information regarding RSA, it spins it a little straighter.

EMC Search Potpourri

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Sometimes I miss the 90s. Search was so easy in ECM environments. Everyone used a bundled Verity and was happy.

Then things changed. People started to notice that if you actually used the system on an large scale, search performance degraded. There were many reasons for this. One was that vendors weren’t upgrading their bundled Verity engine. Another was that the engine was sitting on the same machine as the primary ECM server, so resources were being consumed at an increasing rate.

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Alfresco Thrashing the Wave

Now that I’ve reviewed Forrester’s Wave report on ECM, let’s tune into some specific criticism. Specifically Jeff Potts spoke up and took them to task on how they weight what they measure. Being a fan of Alfresco, his post is a little on the defensive side, but that doesn’t eliminate his points.

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