Documentum
Encyclopedia
Documentum is an enterprise content management
platform, now delivered 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. The Documentum platform is part of EMC's Information Intelligence Group business unit, one of EMC's four operating divisions.
Documentum EDMS provided check-in/check-out access controls as well as workflow capabilities for sequencing document review and approval processes. It included an integrated full-text search engine for retrieving documents from the repository. Because of its applicability for organizations that produced, distributed, and updated complex sets of electronic documents in a systematic fashion, EDMS was adopted by several large enterprises—particularly in industries such as pharmaceutical, oil and gas, financial services, and aerospace manufacturing.
, Norwest, and Xerox Venture.
Documentum applied Geoffrey Moore
’s “Crossing the Chasm
” strategy to successfully address the document management marketplace. The company focused on solving customers' problems, targeting one industry at a time. It steadily developed a portfolio of software solutions that attracted mainstream companies and government agencies, seeking to transform their publishing operations.
Documentum became a public company on February 5, 1996, listing on NASDAQ with symbol of DCTM.
In 2000, Documentum released Documentum 4i, its first native Web application 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 snippet
s. 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.
Documentum's Web Application Environment is more commonly called Webtop.
(BPM) capabilities as well as tools for managing content across a distributed organization.
Through a series of acquisitions over the next several years, the company added further capabilities, including records management
, digital asset management
, Enterprise Content Integration
, Document Imaging
, and collaboration
. Key acquisitions that have accelerated internal development efforts include:
, FTP, Java
, Documentum Foundation Classes and SMB/CIFS.
Documentum provides a suite of services which include document management, collaboration, search, content classification, input management, business process management (BPM), customer communication management, Web content management, digital asset management
, forms processing, Information Rights Management
, compliance, computer output to laser disc (COLD) and archiving.
Enterprise content management
Enterprise Content Management is a formalized means of organizing and storing an organization's documents, and other content, that relate to the organization's processes...
platform, now delivered by EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation , a Financial Times Global 500, Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company, develops, delivers and supports information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure hardware, software, and services. EMC is headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA.Former Intel executive Richard Egan and his...
, as well as the name of the software company that originally developed the technology. EMC acquired Documentum for $1.7 billion in December, 2003. The Documentum platform is part of EMC's Information Intelligence Group business unit, one of EMC's four operating divisions.
History
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. It included an integrated full-text search engine for retrieving documents from the repository. Because of its applicability for organizations that produced, distributed, and updated complex sets of electronic documents in a systematic fashion, EDMS was adopted by several large enterprises—particularly in industries such as pharmaceutical, oil and gas, financial services, and aerospace manufacturing.
Becoming an enterprise software firm
In 1993, Jeffrey Miller, an experienced Silicon Valley marketing executive, joined Documentum as president and CEO with a mandate to transform the company from a technology-driven startup into an enterprise software firm. Under Miller's leadership, the company raised its first round of venture funding from Brentwood, Merrill Picker Anderson, Sequoia CapitalSequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital "one of the highest-caliber venture firms", and noted that it is "one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture-capital firms"...
, Norwest, and Xerox Venture.
Documentum applied Geoffrey Moore
Geoffrey Moore
Geoffrey Moore is a Silicon Valley based high technology consultant, venture partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures and author.His books are derived from his Silicon Valley consulting work at The McKenna Group and The Chasm Group , and earlier work by Everett Rogers on adopter categories and diffusion...
’s “Crossing the Chasm
Crossing the Chasm
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers or simply Crossing the Chasm , is a marketing book by Geoffrey A. Moore that focuses on the specifics of marketing high tech products during the early start up period...
” strategy to successfully address the document management marketplace. The company focused on solving customers' problems, targeting one industry at a time. It steadily developed a portfolio of software solutions that attracted mainstream companies and government agencies, seeking to transform their publishing operations.
Documentum became a public company on February 5, 1996, listing on NASDAQ with symbol of DCTM.
Moving to the web
In 1998, Documentum launched its Web Application Environment, a set of Internet extensions for EDMS. This product provided access through a Web browser to the business documents stored within an EDMS repository.In 2000, Documentum released Documentum 4i, its first native Web application 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 snippet
Snippet
A snippet is defined as a small piece of something, it may in more specific contexts refer to:* Sampling , the use of a short phrase of a recording as an element in a new piece of music...
s. 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.
Documentum's Web Application Environment is more commonly called Webtop.
A unified platform for enterprise content management
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 delivered integrated business process managementBusiness process management
Business process management is a holistic management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. BPM attempts to...
(BPM) capabilities as well as tools for managing content across a distributed organization.
Through a series of acquisitions over the next several years, the company added further capabilities, including records management
Records management
Records management, or RM, is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal...
, digital asset management
Digital asset management
Digital asset management consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets...
, Enterprise Content Integration
Enterprise Content Integration
Enterprise content integration is a middleware software technology, often used within large organizations, that connects together various types of computer systems that manage documents and digital content. ECI systems often work in tandem with other technologies such as enterprise content...
, Document Imaging
Document imaging
Document imaging is an information technology category for systems capable of replicating documents commonly used in business. Document imaging systems can take many forms including microfilm, on demand printers, facsimile machines, copiers, multifunction printers, document scanners, computer...
, and collaboration
Collaboration
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
. Key acquisitions that have accelerated internal development efforts include:
- Bulldog, announced in December 2001, added extensive digital asset management capabilities to the repository for ingesting, managing, transforming, and distributing a wide variety of digitized multimedia content.
- Boxcar, announced in January 2002, added technologies for syndicating content to remote repositories.
- eRoom, announced in October 2002, provide 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 SoftwareCaptiva SoftwareCaptiva Software is now part of EMC Software Group, a division of EMC Corporation. Captiva makes software solutions for document information processing and data capture from paper and electronic documents and provides related services...
, 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 managementBusiness process managementBusiness process management is a holistic management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. BPM attempts to...
capabilities of Documentum.
- X-Hive, announced in July 2007, added XML databaseXML databaseAn XML database is a data persistence software system that allows data to be stored in XML format. This data can then be queried, exported and serialized into the desired format.Two major classes of XML database exist:...
capabilities for managing and repurposing XML-tagged content components within an enterprise environment.
- Document Sciences, announced December 2007, added [Enterprise Output Management] capabilities.
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.API
Documentum functionality is available through a variety of user interfaces and through application programming interfaces (API) including web services, WebDAVWebDAV
Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...
, FTP, Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
, Documentum Foundation Classes and SMB/CIFS.
Functions
Documentum provides management capabilities for all types of content including business documents, photos, video, medical images, e-mail, Web pages, fixed content, XML-tagged documents, etc. The core of Documentum is a repository in which the content is stored securely under compliance rules. This repository appears as a unified environment, although content may reside on multiple servers and physical storage devices within a distributed environment.Documentum provides a suite of services which include document management, collaboration, search, content classification, input management, business process management (BPM), customer communication management, Web content management, digital asset management
Digital asset management
Digital asset management consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets...
, forms processing, Information Rights Management
Information Rights Management
Information Rights Management is a term that applies to a technology which protects sensitive information from unauthorised access. It is sometimes referred to as or Enterprise Digital Rights Management...
, compliance, computer output to laser disc (COLD) and archiving.