EMC's Getting Out of the Way of the SharePoint Train

EMC Documentum and Microsoft today announced an alliance that integrates SharePoint 2007 with EMC's Documentum products. Some of the high points are:

• Users will be able to use the Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007 user interfaces as ways to put content into the Documentum repository. All of a sudden, users -- especially casual users -- won't have to go to Documentum training to use the Documentum system.
• EMC Documentum will be creating a set of Web Parts to integrate search, workflow, and content between Documentum and SharePoint.
• There are two deployment options. Companies can use the Office/SharePoint UI to put documents into Documentum only, or can put documents into both SharePoint and Documentum.

So what does all this mean?

Well, first of all, it means that EMC -- along with other major ECM vendors such as Open Text and Vignette -- is getting out of the way of the SharePoint train. Given the viral adoption of SharePoint 2003, and the new architecture of SharePoint 2007, the major ECM vendors are realizing that they can no longer dismiss Microsoft as a company that just generates documents. Instead, Microsoft is going to be a major ECM player -- and one that will appeal greatly to the vast majority of information workers. Rather than having to learn a new interface, customers can continue to use Word and Excel and gain ECM functionality by saving documents to SharePoint from within Office applications.

One of the analysts on the Monday pre-announcement call asked how this EMC announcement was different from the other alliances that Microsoft has with other ECM vendors, and Rob Bernard, the General Manager of Global ISVs for Microsoft said, "There are only a few major ECM vendors, and EMC Documentum is one of them. We want to promote user choice: if a customer wants to work with EMC Documentum, Microsoft is promoting the fact that we can work with this market leader." Analyst translation: "This partnership isn't unique; we'll partner with any ECM vendor that will help us sell more copies of Office and SharePoint."

Second, this announcement attempts to address an issue I continually hear from clients. The conversation with IT usually goes, "We're an EMC [or Vignette or Interwoven or Stellent or some other ECM vendor] shop and we're trying to figure out where SharePoint fits in. Our end-users have already installed a lot of SharePoint 2003 and we figure it's only going to get worse with 2007. So what should our strategy be going forward? Is SharePoint 2007 good enough to make it a corporate standard? If we do that, what is its sweet spot? Can it replace our current standard, or should we go with a coexistence strategy?"

In this case, EMC is covering all the bases it can. Customers can use the Microsoft UI as the front end to Documentum (no doubt the desired outcome from EMC's point-of-view) or as the front end to a combination of SharePoint and Documentum. I think a lot of customers will go for option 2. Documentum has always been expensive -- and appropriate for high value/high risk applications such as FDA compliance. The Microsoft UI brings ECM to the casual user -- areas where the business has balked in the past at paying such a high pricetag. So I would not be surprised if many companies go for a tiered/mixed approach.

I'm currently writing a Burton Group report on the impact of Office/SharePoint 2007 within the ECM space. Since it's a work in progress I haven't yet figured out everything I'm going to say. But certainly one finding will be that it's clear that the Microsoft Office/SharePoint 2007 train is roaring down the tracks, and ECM vendors will be trying to figure out how they can jump on the train -- or at least leap out of the way.

Comments

[russ stalters]

Nice post Guy. I have been predicting the SharePoint ECM train since November 2003 when I wrote "Document Management For Free" for AIIM E-DOC Magazine.

And, yes I agree that Microsoft is going to partner with anyone that will help them increase sales and revenue regales of their loyalty or perceived commitment to Microsoft. A good example of this was when Microsoft made Open Text their 2006 Global ISV of the Year (Microsoft lingo for Independent Software Vendor) at the World Wide Partner Conference.

I wrote about how this looked to someone familiar with the ECM market and astute enough to read between the lines since Open text had stood side-by-side with Oracle a month earlier at their launch for Content and Records DB.
Let's see how deep the integration with SharePoint really is and also how the Microsoft field positions EMC: As a partner or competitor?

[James Bogosian]

Guy,

I'd like to point out that the technology that will be making this alliance happen is being licensed from Vorsite (http://www.vorsite.com/). Vorsite currently offers integration tools for SPS/WSS 2003 and Documentum that are very similar to what will be released for MOSS 2007.

-James

[Robert W. Crouch]

Did you ever write the Burton Group report on the impact of Office/SharePoint 2007 within the ECM space?

[Guy Creese]

Hi Robert,

Yes, I did write the report on Office/SharePoint 2007, and it should be coming out in February.

[Jay]

Interesting posts. Curious, what do you folks think about these ECM vendors who ar now building integration to MOSS 2007? I think there is value in integrating BCS to ECM systems. Definitely make sense for content authors to use what they are comfortable with from a UI perspective, but ultimately organizations will need to get control over their SP deployments, and/or have a way to extend mroe advanced ECM function to a SP user. I think one of the key questions is what and how much are these customers will to pay for when it comes to integrating with MOSS 2007 with ECM systems?

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[sayen]

not only is share point not feature extensive, it is also not that easy to implement. it is not "ready to use" and will still require some setting up. this speaks for alternatives like http://www.hyperoffice.com which offer the same collaboration capabilities, plus integrated messaging capabilities (an exchange alternative), and they recently also announced integrated web conferencing solution ( http://www.hypermeeting.com ), AND the product can be put to use right away. I think it offers a afar better option to growing businesses.