Documentum

Documentum is an enterprise content management platform, now owned by EMC Corporation, as well as the name of the software company that originally developed the technology. EMC acquired Documentum for $1.7 billion in December, 2003.^[1] The Documentum platform is part of EMC's Information Intelligence Group business unit, one of EMC's four operating divisions.

History

Getting started

Howard Shao and John Newton founded Documentum in June 1990. They had worked together at Ingres, one of the leading relational database vendors at the time, and sought to solve unstructured information management problems using relational database technologies. (Unstructured information refers to information that does not have a formal data structure – documents, images, audio, video, etc.) With initial backing from Xerox, they developed a customized system for Boeing to organize, store, maintain, and selectively publish the thousands of pages of information for the Boeing 777 training manuals. They developed another customized system for Syntex, a pharmaceutical vendor, to automate the process of assembling New Drug Application (NDA) documents when seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Documentum introduced its Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) in 1993, a client-server product for electronic document management. This product managed access to unstructured information stored within a shared repository, running on a central server. End users connected to the repository through PC, Macintosh, and Unix Motif desktop client applications.

Documentum EDMS provided check-in/check-out access controls as well as workflow capabilities for sequencing document review and approval processes, and included a full-text search engine for retrieving documents from the repository. EDMS was adopted by several large enterprises, such as pharmaceutical, oil and gas, financial services, and manufacturing companies.

Company growth

In 1993, Jeffrey Miller, a Silicon Valley marketing executive, joined Documentum as president and CEO with a mandate to transform the company from a technology-driven start-up into an established software firm. Under Miller's leadership, the company raised its first round of venture funding from Brentwood, Merrill Picker Anderson, Sequoia Capital,^[2] Norwest, and Xerox Venture.

Documentum was floated on NASDAQ February 5, 1996, listing with the DCTM symbol.

Web versions

In 1998, Documentum launched its Web Application Environment, a set of Internet extensions for EDMS, offering web access to the documents stored within an EDMS repository.

In 2000, Documentum released Documentum 4i, its first Web-native platform. The company redesigned the repository to ensure that it could manage a very large number of discrete objects —ranging from self-contained documents to granular information snippets. Beyond just managing documents for print or electronic distribution, Documentum 4i could integrate with external Web applications and be used to distribute content to portals, Web application servers, and Web sites.

A number of third party applications are based on Documentum.

Content management platform

In 2002, Documentum launched Documentum 5 as a unified enterprise content management (ECM) platform for storing a virtually unlimited range of content types within a shared repository. The platform provided integrated business process management (BPM) capabilities as well as tools for managing content across a distributed organization.

Key acquisitions

Through a series of acquisitions over the next several years, the company added further capabilities.

• Bulldog, announced in December 2001, added extensive digital asset management capabilities to the repository for the management of digitized multimedia content.

• Boxcar, announced in January 2002, added technologies for syndicating content to remote repositories.

• eRoom, announced in October 2002, provided a collaborative workspace for distributed business teams, including those from disparate organizations, to share content over the Internet.

• TrueArc, also announced in October 2002, added records management capabilities and augmented Documentum's offerings for compliance solutions.

• askOnce, announced in March 2004, provided enterprise content integration and federated search technologies for accessing and retrieving information stored in disparate repositories.

• Acartus, announced in October 2005, provided capabilities for archiving business reports, billing statements, insurance policies, and other kinds of fixed content.

• Captiva Software, also announced in October 2005, added image capture and scanning technologies to convert paper-based documents into digital formats.

• Authentica, announced in March 2006, added digital rights management technologies, to secure digital assets outside the boundaries of the shared repository.

• ProActivity, announced in June 2006, added business process analysis and business activity monitoring features to enhance the business process management capabilities of Documentum.

• X-Hive, announced in July 2007, added XML database capabilities for managing and repurposing XML-tagged content components within an enterprise environment.

• Document Sciences, announced December 2007, added Enterprise Output Management capabilities.

Documentum Products

Documentum Content Server (Core Product)

Documentum Content Server manages content in a repository. It is a core product. The repository has three primary elements: a Content Server, a relational database, and a place to store files. ^[3]

Everything in a repository is stored as an object. The content file associated with an object is typically stored in a file system. An object has associated metadata (for example, a file name, storage location, creation date, and much more). The metadata for each object is stored as a record in a relational database.^[3]

Documentum Clients

Basically Documentum has a lot of user client applications and sometimes with very similar and overlapping functionality. For example Documentum D2 and Documentum xCP are both very advanced configurable clients, they both allow eliminates the need for custom code and etc. Customer should analyze a lot of technical information and products functionality to make a good choice of suitable Documentum client.

Documentum xCP

EMC Documentum xCP: A flexible development platform for automating complex, information-intensive business processes for better decision-making. Documentum xCP platform has a web-based client and platform for development of user interfaces and server side components (like fully automatic or semi-automatic Business Processes). ^[4][5]

Webtop

EMC Documentum Webtop: Browser-based interface that provides access to the EMC Documentum repository and enterprise content management services. ^[6]

Documentum D2

EMC Documentum D2 is the advanced, intuitive, and configurable content-centric client for Documentum that accelerates adoption of ECM applications. Powerful configuration eliminates the need for custom code, yielding rapid deployment and dramatically lower costs for system maintenance. ^[7]

Documentum Mobile

Extend the power of enterprise content management to your mobile devices with secure, mobile access to enterprise information, enabling you to act on information faster than ever before. Access to your enterprise content is now available through your iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch mobile devices. ^[8]

My Documentum

EMC My Documentum: Enterprise content management services and simplified information access within the EMC Documentum infrastructure using clients from popular desktop and familiar business applications. ^[9]

Releases

The culmination of these acquisitions was Documentum 5.3, released in April 2005, followed by Documentum 6, launched in July 2007. Documentum 6.5 was released in July 2008 and 6.7 was released in April 2011. Documentum 7.0 came out in November 2012.

Recently EMC released Documentum 7.1 in November 2013 as expected.

Expected releases for 2014 Q1 are D2 v4.2, xCP v2.1 and Captiva v7.1. For 2014 Q2 D7.1 Developer Editions (mobile, xCP, D2) using Linux/Postgres and EMC Documentum SaaS environment.

API

Documentum functionality is made available through application programming interfaces (API) including web services, WebDAV, FTP, Java, Documentum Foundation Classes, Documentum Query Language (DQL), Web Development Kit API (WDK), SMB/CIFS and CMIS.

Basically all the customization is done using the DFC (Documentum Foundation Classes), WDK (Web Development Kit), which is the rich collection of Java APIs. Also some graphical tools are available: Forms Builder for user interface and Process Builder for business process automation.^[3]

Functions

Documentum provides management capabilities for all types of content. The core of Documentum is a repository in which the content is stored securely under compliance rules and a unified environment, although content may reside on multiple servers and physical storage devices within a networked environment.

Documentum provides a suite of services, such as document management, collaboration, search, content classification, input management, Business Process Management (BPM), customer communication management, and Web content management.

References

• "Documentum, Inc." http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu, Case # N9-502-026

External links

• EMC CC
• Documentum related information for programmers
• DIUG Documentum Italian User Group
• dmOwner, public meta-search engine of Documentum related contents
• CARA User Interface for Documentum from Generis