Certainly DCTM has been moving in the right direction with CMIS (via DSS) support and refactoring much of content server into the JBoss layer. As I have stated before the license model has not been inviting to a service provider model (SAAS) as evidenced by the lack of offerings. Documentum continues to be an on-premise solution.

Filestores may be another item ripe for upgrade. While EMC provides multiple methodologies to abstract file storage from the physical disk volumes, I am not aware of many cost effective mechanisms for achieving endless storage with acceptable retrieval times (or time to first page view in imaging solutions). EMC Centera is fantastic on-premise solution and a great model, but perhaps an Azure based solutions would better fit the bill allowing for the emc content server to more appropriately be scaled to an unlimited number of CPUs dynamically without regard for the management of virtualized hardware or disk.

I have been and remain interested in creating such a configuration and would entertain partners in this endeavor which would need to include migration methodology, search, image viewer, etc…

Regards,
Ed Alexander

I am curious to understand why you think that Documentum architecture is not suitable for the cloud? They support virtualisation and with the new DSS even search will support virtualisation.

What aspects of the architecture do you think – make it unsuitable for the cloud?

thanks

Actually,

Apples to Apples

Microsoft SharePoint and EMC Documentum are kissing cousins in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant (pre SharePoint 2010) with Microsoft in a slight lead [see CMS Wire].

Just to back up the claim, take a look at the pharma industry moving into SharePoint based FDA submission tools. Additionally, the last two banks I have worked for are moving into SharePoint as well. Don’t think that EMC does not need to compete with SharePoint for business in their traditional markets. EMC currently holds an advantage in records management and is soon to move on to its second generation composition model rapid CEVA development toolset. My personal belief is that when Documentum gets their technology direction focused (leave Adobe Flex behind) and update the composer toolset we will see lower prices and a push into the SMB market and cloud based services.

EMC does have a great product for removing BLOB storage from the SharePoint site collection (not Documentum though).

Best Regards,

Ed