EMC World: New Documentum DebutsEMC World: New Documentum Debuts

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This week's EMC World may have a strong cloud focus, and storage is certainly the engine that drives the vendor, but information management is the major push of the second day of the annual gathering of customers and partners in Las Vegas. EMC is making a number of announcements, including a new release of Documentum D2, and new offerings for life sciences and engineering, plants and facilities management companies on EMC OnDemand, a hybrid cloud.

The latest release of EMC's content management application, Documentum D2 4.0, also available on EMC OnDemand, includes a new user interface; configurable, widget-based workspaces for "functional" tasks such as browsing the repository, searching for content, managing tasks, and previewing content; and gadgets such as Google Maps, calendars, and access to Twitter and Facebook accounts. Workspaces are containers for widgets and gadgets.

Alan Weintraub, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, says the release will give Documentum a better position in the market. "Documentum has struggled with its user interface. Webtop is complex and seen as user-unfriendly," he says. "Many Documentum implementations fail, not because of the technology, but because of the complexity of solutions and the end user's acceptance of the solution."

He says most Documentum implementations suffer from "user revolts" and adds, "The move to D2 will help organizations get over the user acceptance issues."

EMC is also expanding its Information Rights Management (IRM) offering with Documentum Mobile, which will provide some benefits by enabling better content security for documents stored on mobile devices, according to Weintraub. "While this is a key and unique feature, the complexity of implementing IRM may still make this a little-used feature."

Documentum for Life Sciences Solution Suite, available initially as part of OnDemand, addresses quality and manufacturing for compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11 regulations. It includes the Documentum Enterprise Content Management platform; Documentum D2 for configuring user interfaces, implementation, and migration services; and document control configuration tools for auditing, reporting, and e-signature support for compliance, lifecycle management, and document control services; and industry-specific modeling capabilities.

Weintraub says it's refreshing to see Documentum refocus on life sciences. "They have been losing ground in life sciences for the last few years. The introductions of new life sciences solutions will enable them to regain momentum that was previously lost or in jeopardy."

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