In case you haven’t heard yet, there are some big changes coming at EMC. Earlier this week, in a joint announcement (via blog posts)with VMware, the companies said that they would be pooling assets to form Pivotal Initiative. You need to read about it , and then come back to this post. I’m going to tell you what others are saying about the big change and what it might mean to you, the Documentum professional. First and foremost, and what’s hard to dispute, is that EMC, via Pivotal Initiative, is getting further into databases and software development. Big boss Joe... Continue reading

EMC has been spouting an interesting tagline over the last year: “Transform IT+ Business+ Yourself” Chances are that you’ve seen it on EMC’s website or plastered on a placard or slide at an EMC Event. And if you’re anything like most of the people I’ve spoken to, you haven’t given the tagline much thought. If that’s the case, then it might be time to start thinking now. Because if you own, use, partner, or work with EMC products (and, so, it goes to follow Documentum), the time for transformation (unless you’re already transformed) is now. Refuse to recognize this and... Continue reading

Maybe no one has told you just yet, but enterprise software is getting hot again. And when I say hot, I mean almost iPhone hot. You can credit digital natives, the Gen Y workers who refuse to tolerate slow, boring, technologies that require a lot of effort and stop short of delivering anything miraculous. Or the fact that web 2.0 and the mobile app economy are becoming saturated, leaving all the brainy geeks in Silicon Valley jonesing for a new paradigm to code in. (After all who needs another app or wants to join yet another social network.) Or maybe... Continue reading

I don’t usually write a post on 9/11; instead I start my day with a moment of remembrance and silence for the victims (Yes, I’m capable of being quiet) and then I go on with business as usual…the gym, recruiting, interviewing, negotiating job offers etc… This September 11 feels different, though. Maybe it’s because the weather here in the NYC area is so similar to what it was on 9/11 – a cool, crystal clear day. Back then I worked 18 hours/day (I work about 12 now), Documentum was in its heyday, and demand for Documentum pros was far greater... Continue reading

I love tech industry gossip. Some people go for celebrities; I go for technology companies and technologists. Instead of reading tabloids, I read tweets and follow links to see who’s saying what about whom. Last night the tittle-tattle streamed in via Twitter: Microsoft Is Buying Yammer, According To People At Yammer The tweet led to an article on Business Insider: We just heard from a source inside Yammer that the office is abuzz with talk of Microsoft buying the social-enterprise startup. And the talk is spreading outside Yammer's office hard by the Caltrain station in San Francisco. Sarah Taylor, an... Continue reading

For those of who you don’t know, I spent all of last week at EMC World in Las Vegas. I went there for a few reasons; one is so that I could get the skinny on where EMC and EMC IIG (aka Documentum) were headed; and two so that I could report my findings to all of you; and three to cover the Data Scientist’s Summit for our other company Big Data Geeks and some of the publications that I write for. I also covered EMC World for CMSWire.com where I’m a contributor. If you’re interested in reading about Big... Continue reading

You can’t head for Vegas without a bet in your head, so this year we’re wagering as to whether or not Joe Tucci will say the word “Documentum” in his keynote. Most years (and even on most quarterly reporting calls) the safe bet proves to be “no”, but. even so, this year I’m betting yes. It may be wishful thinking on my part, my taking of anomalies in EMC-related data and misinterpreting them for trend, and my belief that IIG is hiring-up (they have 72 open jobs) because the expect to grow, but regardless of where it’s coming from, the... Continue reading

First, the ugly stuff Those of you who regularly read this blog know that, up until recently, I've been somewhat critical about how EMC has handled its ownership of Documentum. Since 2007 (and probably even earlier), I've been saying that Documentum was about to start losing market share; that salaries and rates for Documentum professionals and contractors were going to flat-line or drop (demand wasn't keeping up with supply); that the ECM market was being disruptedby Sharepoint, Alfresco and Oracle; and that unless you were totally invested and devoted to Documentum, you should consider broadening your skill set to improve... Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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... Continue reading

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.... Continue reading

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... Continue reading

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 Continue reading

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.... Continue reading

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... Continue reading

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... Continue reading

I'm guessing that most of you don't pay all that much attention to the comings and goings in ECM-vendor land, so unless you follow me @BrilliantLeap or Laurence Hart @piewords on Twitter, you may not know that long time Documentum marketing maven Whitney Tidmarsh Bouck has left EMC. When Hart heard the news, he worried that the citizens of Documentum-land might panic, or jump to wrong conclusions, about yet another senior level exec leaving EMC's ECM group. Like a reassuring Papa Bear, he assured his readers that Whitney was leaving for her own reasons, not because something was wrong with... Continue reading

Someone please explain, why is it a radical idea to put ECM technology users at the center of their content rather than an ECM system at the center of their content? User-centered design has, after all, been around since the early 1990's and end-users typically foot the bill for solutions, don't they? Aren't they, and not IT, a technology company's real customers? To me this seems obvious, but ECM speakers and bloggers seem to be experiencing Oprah-like "Aha! moment" around this idea. Better late than never, I guess. I was talking about this with a good friend last night- he's... Continue reading

There's a term I don't hear mentioned in the ECM world very often, at least until last Tuesday that is. What am I talking about? User-experience. Chris Preston of EMC called it a "game-changer" at AIIM's info360 Conference last week. Hooray! I wanted to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming when I heard the words. And, if I wasn't, I wanted to give him a standing ovation. A bit over-dramatic? Don't think so. If EMC had realized this five years ago, Sharepoint might not have won some of Documentum's marketshare, and if CenterStage had been ready, vigilante corporate... Continue reading

AIIM (the Enterprise Content Management Association) is kicking off its annual conference tomorrow. It could be a rather interesting event. There's a disruptive vendor (Box.net) in the morning's lineup; its co-founder Aaron Levie is giving a talk "Making Enterprise Software Sexy. No, Seriously." While I'm looking forward to hearing what Levie has to say, I wish I could tap into the thoughts of the traditional ECM vendors (Documentum, Open Text,IBM/Lotus Notes/ FileNet) as they listen to him. Can Box.net compete in terms of features, fuctionalities, compliance and secure collaboration? What does Microsoft and Alfresco think of Box.net? We know that... Continue reading

Watching the tech world can make movies like Wall Street seem kind of boring. Here corporate leaders and employee bloggers use strobe lights to illuminate flaws in each other's business strategies; they taunt each other's marketing campaigns on YouTube, and sometimes they even sue their employees when they jump to a competitor's ship. Grant it, these behemoths have something to fight over-- position, customers, and a market that's worth billions of dollars; but they don't cop to that, instead they poke holes in one another's business strategies. Earlier this week Hewlett Packard's new CEO, Leo Apotheker, laid out his vision... Continue reading

What's the big deal about Big Data? I asked this question of a client about six months ago. He had come to me requesting that I conduct a search for his firm- he needed two sharp Knowledge Management/Content Management experts who were eager to extend their experience into this "new" frontier. "What's the big deal about Big Data? Your kidding, right?" said my client. There was both laughter and disbelief in his voice. Without him needing to say it, he was telling me that this was something I should know. Now I knew that he'd trust me with the assignment... Continue reading