EMC World Debrief

I attended EMC World and just wanted to give my thoughts on the different sessions and messaging around the software supported by EMC's Intelligent Information Group (IIG). 

On the "classic" Documentum products, the message is client unification with development moving firmly towards the Documentum Foundation Services (DFS) model and away from the WDK environment. CenterStage is becoming their main focal point of the web presence and as this does not have feature parity with WebTop or eRoom quite yet, the product management team emphasized that this was a journey as many customers have invested heavily in WDK based customizations. The mobile strategy is progressing with an iPad application promised by the end of the year. Work will also be done to unify the development tools surrounding the platform to make it easier to build Documentum based applications. The xCP platform still plays a large part of the strategy with a focus for partners to build industry specific business process solutions.


For collaboration users, eRoom will have another release towards the end of the year that will support the Microsoft Windows 2008 and SQL Server 2008 platforms, along with other technology certifications.
The messaging around the cloud was definitely the primary tagline, with all product families having some sort of cloud based access in their product roadmaps.

Bruce Bolton
(bruce.bolton@portfordsolutions.com)

So that's the update, client unification and cloud based computing is the message.
For transaction document management users, EMC's ApplicationXtender(AX) platform is here to stay and supports a roadmap that included more workflow enhancements and again more focus is on the client tools and UI. A new connector application is planned that will more tightly integrate AX with the desktop and document access from business applications. Although the technology roadmap remains Microsoft based, the AX team have made a significant move towards web services with a feature rich services based toolkit. Also many of the new applications are based around the web services approach.
Integrations were also announced with Box.net (http://www.box.net/) for cloud based storage access and with Cisco's WebEx (http://www.webex.com/) online collaboration tool.

Documentum v6.7 Now Released

On behalf of the EMC Information Intelligence Group, we are very pleased to announce the General Availability of Documentum 6.7. 6.7 is a stack release that consists of quality improvements, performance improvements, support for additional standards, and select new features. We have introduced stack-wide usage tracking and reporting into the 6.7 stack and many of our most widely used products incorporate this capability.

Release Highlights

• Support for Office 2010
• Business Activity Monitor Enhancements
• Composer Streamlined User Interface
• Content Intelligence Services Now Has Support for Linux Support,and Office 2010 files
• Content Server now has Macintosh file Support for EMC Centera connector
• Documentum Reporting Services has Support for Crystal Report Designer 2008
• TaskSpace has Improved Section 508 Compliance and Support for IGC Brava 6.2 Viewer
• Webtop now has Java 2 security support and Stronger compliance with security standards
• xPlore now available in fully 64-bit mode which increases the maximum file size that can use the exact match to a query
• Retention Policy Services has Consistent language support across Records Manager, RPS, and Physical Records Services
• Usage Tracking and Reporting Enhancements for the different Documetum Modules
• New Certifications in Documentum 6.7 for Application Server: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.1, Browsers: Safari 5.0, Firefox 3.6.12.1.1

DocuNECT v4.4 is Now Released!

Portford has announced the release of DocuNECT v4.4, with the following new features:

• Microsoft .NET v4.0 Support
• Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 support (32 and 64 bit)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer v9 Support
• Support for the newly released Documentum 6.7 for distribution
• Enhancement have been made to the DocuNECT OCR engine (http://www.aquaforest.com/
• Enhancement to the DocuNECT server to increase performance and error handling
• All Desktop Capture tools now compatible with Microsoft Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit)
• Connector development can now be performed using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
• Security enhancements to allow for password strength and expiration
• DocuNECT new Data Management features include stronger support for external database for lookups, including SQL statements and stored procedures that allow system parameters to be passed in for additional filter
• Values within the database lookup can be searched
• Picklist in Cabinets can now be attached to tables and support cascading so one picklist can be based on the value of another
• Built-in system connectors that automatically monitor the storage location space, clear logs in a specific timeframe, purge distributed batches. There is also a connector that automatically manages the connector logs so a roling log of a certain number of days can be kept
• Batches can now have text labels and store the capture lifecycle that originally generated the batch
• Group name expanded to 50 characters
• Website change: in the Barcodes module, Print Cabinet Indexes section, when generating the barcodes, the empty index values are replaced with "NULL" values, as empty barcodes are invalid

Visit the DocuNECT wiki for more information about DocuNECT (http://docunect.wikidot.com/)