The New Generation of Solution Ready Products

This blog post is also posted on the Documentum Blog on the EMC Community Network.

It has been almost a year since we acquired the D2 technology and xCP 2.0 has reached the key milestone of release candidate and will be released later this year. With these 2 products, EMC IIG has an extraordinary technology stack.

D2 is not only a great portal interface, it is an amazing rules engine for content. xCP 2.0 is a best of breed application composition platform for custom line of business applications that need to leverage content, process and analytics. Both of them are built on a great platform. Ahson Ahmad recently wrote about the enhancements we have made to our platform with Documentum D7.

D2 Configuration - The Rules Engine for Content

At the heart of Documentum D2 is a powerful rules engine for content that helps address some of the key shortcomings encountered in ECM projects:

• Fast time to value. Through rapid configuration of information management rules, content applications can be rapidly configured to meet business requirements.
• Consistent information rules and governance. This is critical to the success of an ECM project. Without proper information rules, a content repository is not much better than a file share. It quickly becomes another digital landfill where information gets added but cannot be found nor leveraged. Successful ECM implementations leverage context, content, and user actions to classify information and trigger the right policies (security, metadata, etc.). However, in order to drive adoption, it is critical to minimize the user actions needed. D2 provides a high level of configurability to minimize user actions and maximize user acceptance and productivity.
• Great user experiences. User experience is paramount to user acceptance. To that effect, it is important to be able to create modern, responsive and contextual user experiences for accessing content.  D2 leverages the power of its configuration engine to enable highly contextual user interfaces. Its widget based user interface provides a highly flexible paradigm to create composite views of information.

xCP Designer - Advanced Custom Applications Built Without Coding

With xCP 2.0, we have rethought the way advanced custom applications get built without coding.  The xCP 2.0 Designer provides a unified application composition environment to model the information, business logic and processes that interact with information, integrate with external systems, leverage process and content analytics and rapidly compose the application user interface.  Content analytics is at the heart of building information models with xCP 2.0 providing the ability to semantically extend information models and leverage discovered metadata throughout the application.

What does this mean for you?

So what does this mean for your business? And how can this accelerate the delivery of tangible solutions to your business problems?  Let's explore the implications for different stakeholders:

1. If you are a line of business unit: Businesses have immediate problems that need to be solved.  Off-the-shelf solutions provide accelerated time to value to address a specific class of problems.  Leveraging a solution platform enables the rapid configuration of these solutions.  This provides significantly more flexibility that traditional packaged applications.  Craig Le Clair, from Forrester Research, frames it quite well in his "Stuck in Cement: When packaged apps create barrier to innovation" research. In concrete terms, how quickly can an energy company deploy a plant and facility management solution to support the construction of an oil rig or a refinery?  What solution can they use to manage the Standard Operating Procedure for operating drilling equipment?
   
   
   
   
   EMC IIG provides productized solutions to deliver such value for the Energy and Life Science industries.
   
   
   
   
   IIG Partners solutions provide EMC Certified Business Solutions to accelerate time to value for a wide spectrum of business transformation initiatives: from the tactical and operationally focused (for instance cost reduction initiatives) to the strategic and transformation looking to drive value innovation (for instance looking to enable new ways of doing business).
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. If you are a line of business IT: Line of business IT needs to respond rapidly to changes in the business environment without needing to undertake higher risk and lengthy customization projects.  Both D2 configuration capabilities and xCP application design environment enable Line of Business IT to quickly evolve their applications while minimizing both cost and risk.  In addition, EMC OnDemand provides a cost effective deployment model for rapidly standing up new business solutions and can be a cost effective option for complementing corporate IT services.
   
   
   
   
   
3. If you are corporate IT offering shared services: Corporate IT can offer a shared service infrastructure that can be quickly adapted to serve the needs of business units.  Leveraging both the D2 and xCP infrastructure, corporate IT can create an application factory as a shared service, and offer such platform as a service where multiple applications can be deployed on a shared infrastructure.  In addition, investments made to tightly integrate with VMware private cloud technologies provide additional flexibility for managing such shared application infrastructure.
   
   
   
   
   
   

In Summary

In summary, with a significantly refreshed product portfolio, EMC Documentum brings unprecedented flexibility to its customers and accelerated time-to-value with IIG and partners solutions.  Our commitment to deliver the best of breed products and solutions to our customers has never been stronger.

The Evolution of the ECM Market

When Documentum was founded, the founders' vision was to manage the world's information to enable innovation and scientific breakthrough (like finding a cure for cancer). Since then, what started as a Document Management opportunity has gone a long way. Today, Enterprise Content Management is a mature market providing breadth of technologies that enable organizations to reshape the way project or transactional decisions are made. The ECM market is also a market that has gone through significant transformation lately and continued consolidation.

I see the convergence of 4 markets contributing to the evolution of ECM targeting different interaction types (from adhoc to structured) and application types (from horizontal to vertical).

The Commoditization of Content Services

The unprecedented success of Microsoft SharePoint has commoditized content services and significantly changed the content management market. SharePoint is now a force to be reckoned with. The sprawl of SharePoint sites has also created tremendous opportunities for information governance and given rise to a new generation of anti-SharePoint offerings such as Box.net leveraging the cloud to simplify information sharing.

The Emergence of Social Business Platforms

With the launch of their new Alfresco Enterprise release, Alfresco embraced the concept of Social Content Management. Jive and IBM refer to the same opportunity as Social Business. Whatever the term, in its latest magic quadrant, Gartner recognizes the impact of social interactions as social media create masses of unmanaged content.

Jive and IBM are the clear leaders in Social Business Platforms and the recent partnership between Jive and Alfresco recognizes the need for Social Business Platforms to provide robust content management capabilities. Social Business Platform vendors like Jive have been successful against Microsoft by focusing exclusively on social features and how they can help certain types of employees (salespeople, developers, etc.). Microsoft has also recognized the impact of social on content management and collaboration with SharePoint 2010.

Vendors for Social Business Platforms include: Jive, IBM, Microsoft, Cisco Quad, Acquia / Drupal

When ECM Meets Search Based Applications

The concept of search based applications is defined by Sue Feldman and her team at IDC as "applications that combine search and or text analytics with collaborative technologies, workflow, domain knowledge, business intelligence or relevant web services". This definition is being embraced by search vendors such as Endeca, Sinequa and Exalead (now part of Dassault Systemes). Gregory Greffenstette, Exalead chief science officer, offers a glance into concrete examples of search based applications from logistic track and trace type applications, to CRM, 360 view of the customer and decision intelligence.

At EMC, we have recognized the importance of search based applications and are incorporating search and text mining functionality into our products from CenterStage to Documentum xCP leveraging our Documentum xPlore, Content Intelligence Services and Federated Search Services, now core features of the EMC Documentum Platform.

Other ECM vendors from OpenText to IBM have recognized this trend as well with significant investments and acquisitions in this area. Key to delivering the promises of search based applications will be tight integration with composition tools for a new breed of business savvy developers that will enable the rapid creation of search enabled applications.

The following search vendors have embraced this trend: Autonomy, Microsoft / Fast, Attivio, Endeca, Sinequa, Exalead (Dassault Systemes)

Towards Composite Content Application Frameworks and Dynamic Case Management

As Gartner points out in its latest magic quadrant, there is increasingly more pressure on ECM vendors for ready to use solutions which solve real business problems rather than generic content platforms composed of dozens of loosely coupled modules. The need for more business solutions coupled with the convergence of the ECM and BPM markets has seen the rise of new opportunities for what Gartner calls Composite Content Application frameworks and Forrester calls Dynamic Case Management. While composite content application frameworks address the needs of content solutions, dynamic case management focuses on the convergence of ECM, BPM, business analytics and event processing. The reality is that there is a spectrum of solutions from content to case that require a new generation of composition tools to rapidly deliver business value with the agility to evolve quickly as business needs change. Organizations need more than a repository, they need an application platform and the solutions that come with it.

The following vendors provide composite content application platforms: EMC Documentum xCP, IBM, OpenText, Adobe, SpringCM, Hyland, Nuxeo

Towards the New Information Fabric

As the delivery of composite content application platforms transition to the cloud, this creates an opportunity for a new information fabric that will deliver tremendous business value and flexibility while reducing barriers to adoption. The industry is clearly at an inflection points in the adoption of cloud services. While Public cloud services offer tremendous promises, hybrid cloud deployments are most likely to provide the right balance between information control and flexibility.

Future winners in the evolving ECM market will need to embrace new composition frameworks that can rapidly deliver solutions at the intersection of content, social, search and analytics, and BPM (from content to case). Those composition platforms will also need to support hybrid cloud delivery models to deliver optimal business values based on the customer needs.

Do you share this perspective on the evolution of ECM market? Share your thoughts on this blog or on twitter.