EMC/Documentum Marriage Raises Skepticism of ECM Crowd
A recent Transform Magazine article amplifies industry skepticism that has been raised regarding EMC's recent acquisition of Documentum, but ultimately concludes that its concept of Information Lifecycle Management is not a bad idea. In ILM, content may be stored at different levels of accessibility depending on its use - deep online storage if it's not being changed or in change-management oriented storage in a system like Documentum if it's an active item. No, this is not Enterprise Content Management the way that folks selling huge output-oriented content systems would have it, but it captures a key factor in the changing face of managing content assets. With capabilities such as EMC's "Content-Addressable Storage" and the more open Digital Object Identifier (DOI) scheme becoming more prevalent, the "where" of content becomes even more abstract than the paragdigms of the Web have provided. The "hows" of content access provided by ECM vendors remain important, but with search technology bridging much of the access to content on an on-demand basis and Web services responding to individual needs for functionality , the importance of permanent portals in providing content is not as central to the long-term success of many content systems as it may have otherwise been. Expect a new generation of disruptive technology to challenge large ECM players' assumptions about how content can be best provided to audiences cost-effectively and flexibly as the Web services era unfolds.