Brilliant Leap

Pass the popcorn- Tweet-slamming Documentum and, alas, a response

 Why watch “Real Housewives” when you can log-in on Twitter, enter keyword Documentum and watch the barbs fly? 

Marketing 2.0, in the Enterprise Content Management aisle, is quickly becoming more about pointing out your competitors shortcomings (real or imagined) than selling the features and benefits of your own products.

Consider some of these tweets:

oraclewebcenter Documentum customer? Been audited yet? RT @danieloleary #Documentum treating customers like thieves http://t.co/AaXekWUL #AIIM #CIO3:20 PM Jan 30th from Spredfast

oraclewebcenter  Still on #Documentum? Still have an 8-track too? Get into the 21st century WebCenter 100% trade-in http://t.co/ClU5YNN9

@JohnPowell996 (Alfresco CEO) Customers continue to get huge #Alfresco savings. EMC just announced results for Documentum (Information Intelligence Group) 18% down

@hbeader (self-identified as Senior Director, Product Marketing at Oracle) WebCenter Beats #Documentum! WebCenter Named a Leader in #ECM by Independent Research Firm bitly.com/AnTfAl #AIIM

Cloud2 IT Solutions @Cloud2ltd Documentum: very good if you need “magnificent cost, overkill and complexity”. For the other 99% #SharePoint will more than meet the needs

oraclewebcenter: Call Center Cuts Costs 75% By Switching from #Documentum to #Oracle #WebCenter Free Trade-In! http://t.co/5TeJtjd6 #AIIM

 

What’s interesting is that most of these Documentum-slamming tweets seem to come from self-identified management level execs and corporate twitter handles rather than paid social media broadcasters or via auto-tweet.

Not only that, but some of the RT’s (namely those that are Oracle WebCenter-related) are rather well-orchestrated and choreographed, implying that this it’s a deliberate strategy that managers have signed-on to participate in.

So what exactly is the prevailing move-off of Documentum (social media) strategy?

Documentum earns its way back onto the ECM shortlist- Will anyone notice?

EMC will report its fourth quarter results in less than two weeks and the big question on our minds is whether EMC CEO Joe Tucci and/or EMC CFO David Goulden will say anything about Documentum, Captiva, DocSciences or any of IIG's (Information Intelligence Group's) products.

They should, even if IIG's bottom line hasn't yet begun to grow.

I say this because after years of doing everything but telling its non-Government, non-Insurance/Financial, and non-Energy Enterprise Content Management customers to get lost, IIG  is finally introducing offerings that might delight a larger portion of its install base. Not only that, but the end-user (which EMC calls the "new user") is in IIG's line of sight again..

Yes, boys and girls, IIG is finally acting more like a software company that has something to offer its customers, in its own right, rather than an ugly step-child of a hardware/storage company that happens to sell software.

Hooray for IIG president Rick Devenuti; he's gotten a lot done since he took charge in October of 2010.

His team has delivered:

Searching for the rest of the story-Oracle throws near-knockout punch at EMC Documentum...EMC flaunts its close relationship w/Oracle on EMC.com

This post originally began as a letter to Rick Devenuti and Jeremy Burton of EMC, I wanted to ask them why they weren’t responding to Oracle's assault on Documentum.

After all, these men are smart, industry veterans who must know that silence is not golden when repetitive messages that deface your product are being blasted at your customers reminding them of its (real or exaggerated) shortcomings and when free tickets to “paradise” are being passed out as enthusiastically and indiscriminately as flyers on Times Square.

Wouldn’t most reasonable men say something or do something to defend their company and its products? I’m not asking for a press release but how about a tweet like: “Wait til you see what we’ll be introducing at Momentum next week”? 

But there was nothing.  

Documentum goes Mainstage at the EMC Forum

Yes boys and girls, it’s finally happened, the seas have parted and an EMC exec said the word Documentum during “THE” keynote.

And it wasn’t a whisper; it was loud, poetic praise. EMC Chief Marketing Officer Jeremy Burton called Documentum xCP an “unsung hero”, a “hidden gem in our portfolio”. 

The guy sitting next to me, I kid you not, said “he’s trying to make you want to buy it just so you can take the wrapper off and see what it is.”

But there was no need to do that. A presentation featuring Documentum xCP and Big Data followed. Burton and Gautam Desai, EMC IIG’s Director of Solutions, explained how insights won using EMC Greenplum’s Big Data analytics could inform cases being managed on the xCP platform.

Using Big Data to inform business decisions is something that’s seldom been done before- not because the concept is difficult to grasp, but because we’ve rarely had the ability to capture, manage and process more than a dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set, over a short period of time.

Now we can.

And as a result, we can make informed decisions on the fly.

Don't turn your back, Mr. Tucci- Oracle offers to swap Documentum Platform licenses for Oracle WebCenter Content licenses for FREE

Oracle wants to own the Enterprise Content Management space, and they want it bad. So bad that they are offering Documentum customers the chance to trade in their Documentum licenses and get 100% credit on Oracle WebCenter Content.

Say what you will, but Oracle's pitch is pretty compelling and its dig at EMC is pretty fierce:

"In its day, Documentum was a market leader in the document management space. But customers are increasingly disheartened by the lack of vision and product improvements since the acquisition by EMC. Meanwhile, many of the older products are reaching end-of-life and will no longer be supported. Organizations are finding that they need to make a decision about whether to make the costly commitment to stay with Documentum or move to another platform.

By moving to Oracle WebCenter, you will find that you are able to significantly cut your costs with a platform that is less expensive to maintain. But more than that, WebCenter is uniquely positioned to enable you to move forward, adding value by expanding the ways content can be used in your organization. Oracle WebCenter provides more than the most comprehensive ECM offering in the industry, with out-of-the-box integrations to the top enterprise applications. It also offers social collaboration capabilities, web experience management, and comprehensive enterprise search. You can lower your costs and create move value for your organization with Oracle WebCenter."

And Mr. Ellison must have told his marketing sherpas to be smart and go wild because if you did a keyword search on Twitter yesterday using "Documentum", here's what you got more than 90% (my visual estimate) of the time:(Things are calm this morning the sherpas in Redwood Shores are probably still sleeping.)

RT @OracleWebCenter The other hidden cost of Documentum: Third party licenses. End them with Oracle WebCenter http://bitly.com/oCQTki

RT @oraclewebcenter: Still paying per seat costs with #Documentum? http://bitly.com/r1HJVy

EMC CEO Joe Tucci admits it, IIG (aka Documentum) is losing marketshare, but EMC is FINALLY delivering products that may change that

Those of you who follow this blog know that, for three-and-one-half of the last four years, I've been begging for EMC to change its ECM/Documentum strategy. My posts on the topic go as far back as 2008.

I have gone on and on  about how Documentum's most passionate customers were developing wandering eyes, lusting after friendlier UI's, and losing hope that EMC's Content Management Group would ever again deliver anything that might delight their users. I talked about how I was seeing more customers leave Documentum than I was seeing sign-on. I all but said that Documentum was dying on the vine.

There were those of you who believed me. There were IT Directors and business process owners that called me to ask what ECM/IM solutions companies in their industries were thinking of moving to. There were developers, administrators, business analysts and architects who wanted to know what they should do next...

There were others (mostly those of you who work for EMC partners) who insisted that Documentum was doing just fine and that its market share was continuing to grow.

It was a friendly discussion, we had to agree to disagree, because neither of us had access to the specific numbers we would have needed to prove the other wrong. (EMC didn't detail Documentum or CMA/IIG sales in its quarterly reports.)

Until now that is...

Documentum Pros- For job security, you're going to have to learn to stand out in a crowd

A Documentum developer recently sent "Documentum Guru" Johnny Gee an e-mail asking which technologies he should learn to insure his job security for the future. Johnny wrote a blog post answering the question from a technical perspective and thought that I might have some ideas from a career perspective.

Before I get into too much detail, I think it's worth mentioning that the answer, in part, depends on whom you work for now and whom you envision being employed by in the future. If you are/see yourself working for an EMC Partner systems integration/consulting firm, like most Documentum bloggers (e.g. Johnny, Laurence Hart, Lee Smith, Robin East) are, then a future in Documentum development may remain a strong option. After all, EMC has resurrected its commitment toward empowering and encouraging integrators to build business specific solutions using its xCP platform, so it follows that opportunities at those companies should grow. (CAUTION: Those in the USA and Europe should note that many of these integrators are developing their solutions offshore, though they aren't always open about it.)

Why I'm Bullish on EMC's strategy for Documentum

God knows I don’t hold back when I think EMC is off-the-mark with its Documentum offering, so it’s only fair that I sing their praises when they do something to delight. 

Now I’ve already written about the company’s  “ECM Your Way” vision which promises to make it easy for end users to access, collaborate and interface with Documentum via any means that they choose ( via Box, Cisco Quad, MyDocumentum, Sharepoint etc…) as well as its pledge to deliver these services via any device (the iPad interface is expected first and should become available in the third quarter of 2011).

EMC Documentum hears the beat of a generation that won't wait

Note: Blogging from EMC World.

Documentum sits at the top of the EMC stack, so it has to be end-user friendly. I've been shouting about this for the past several years and now it seems that EMC FINALLY gets it. (Not because of anything that I've said, of course.)

The Documentum you'll see, in the very near future, is going to look alot more like the technologies you use in your personal life: it's going to be social; it's going to be mobile; it's going to be accessible from the device and through the interface of your choice. It will play nicely with other platforms and technologies. It will stay in the conversation when you say "open source".

EMC is partnering with external vendors to add features and functionalities for its customers that it is not yet ready to offer.

• Take content mobility (access-ability via the cloud) as an example, that feature will be delivered via Box.net.
• Collaboration via Cisco Quad.
• There will be mobile apps. The iPad interface will be available in the very near future, RIM and iPhone will follow soon after. New iterations should appear every few months.
• Much of this will be accomplished on an open platform so that it can evolve quickly enough.

At EMC World- Will EMC's Big Data strategy include Documentum?

EMC World starts tomorrow (Monday, May 8) and I’ve heard that there should be some interesting news about Documentum.

  My hope is that EMC will finally tell us how Content Management fits into its overall strategy and that it will mean more jobs and opportunities for Documentum Pros. The latter (the more jobs part) isn't EMC's purpose, of course; creating value for its stocholders and customers is. Still, it would be a nice side-benefit.

You see job growth for Documentum pros is worse than flat; it’s in decline. If this continues, there will be more Documentum professionals avaiable than jobs requiring their expertise. Needless to say, that’s a bad thing for those of you who are deeply invested in the technology; it will affect your marketability and,  if you don’t move on from it, your pay. Don't misunderstand me, Documentum -related jobs won't completely vanish, but companues will no longer need to pay you a premium.

The theme of this year’s EMC World is "Cloud meets Big Data".

While “cloud computing” is a term that you’re probably all familiar with, Big Data may be new to you. I’ve been learning about it for the past year. My interest was first pinged when I interviewed the founders of MyCityWay and New York Mayor Bloomberg's office for the NY Post. It was tagged again when I saw that IA Ventures was filling its portfolio with Big Data firms. And then again when Om Malik of Giga Om invited me to cover his Big Data Conference.

It was there that I became convinced that Big Data was the next technology that Brilliant Leap was going to specialize in. We’re only now beginning to recognize how much data we can process and how much we can learn from our new found ability. We’ve barely begun to recognize the problems this can help us solve and the gains it can bring to not only enterprises, individuals and our economy, but also to society as a whole.

Brilliant Leap believes that we’re on the brink of a Big Data revolution and we want to be part of it.

All of that being said, I’m not  sure that there’s a link between ECM and Big Data from an occupational perspective; the skills and training required to excel in these two areas are very different. (One calls  mostly for middleware solution architects, configurators  developers and administrators, the other calls for computer scientists, math geniuses, storytellers, information architects and experts who can usurp critical information from petabytes of data.  Forecasters say that the supply of experts in the latter will not be sufficient for at least ten years. We’re already beginning to hear about the shortage from our clients in the  Financial, Consumer Products, Healthcare,  internet/Media/Social Web industries.

If  you’re at all curious about Big Data, we’ve started a blog that discusses it from a very high level (thus far). There’s also a great video of Jeff Jonas speaking at the GigaOm Conference; it’s  both entertaining and informative.

And, though it may seem that  I’ve digressed from my ECM topic, I’m saying all of this because I’m sincerely hoping that Joe Tuccil explains how ECM fits into EMC’s Big Data Strategy. Not only that, but that it’s something more than the fact that your ECM Apps and data that reside on the cloud can be more easily leveraged by Greenplum Map Reduce, Cassandra, and Hadoop.

Monday is just a few hours away, we will see.

Follow me on Twitter @BrilliantLeap and/or @BigDataGeeks