Tiptoeing Into the Fray
This has been a nice discussion of the relentless commoditization of document management features. Products like Lotus Domino and NetRight in an Exchange environment do an exceptional job of least common denominator enterprise-wide document managment. Products like OpenText do a nice job of enterprise-wide storage and retrieval. Services and alliances are identified as the keys to achieving further volume penetration at acceptable costs per user.
Two Points:
The Document Mgmt. market has demonstrated that it needs more than check-in, check out, more than 8 attributes for each folder or library, more than browser-based access. It needs the robustness of API's to integrate document processes so that the need for paper entirely disappears, even at the end of the process. API's to ensure that full and rich processes present the right documents through the process so that, for example, a customer on the Cisco web site, is presented with the documentation that applies to their current hardware configuration. So that customer services rep's are presented with documents based on the ongoing customer conversation. Storage management to ensure that hierarchical storage management features are relentlessly adhered to. Virtual document assembly capabilities so that the current document components are assembled when needed. Tools and features to enable the intranet and extranet web sites are document managed, not web-mastered. The truth is that there is just nobody who does this as well as Documentum. FileNET does imaging better, but FileNET has too long a legacy of products to integrate into an unified back-end. FileNET's architecture is just never going to have the strength and features to back up a web site that RightSite has.
Second, these are capabilities that the market is wanting more of. Sure, Documentum has fumbled due to arrogance, complex and incomplete products, and an inability to attract, train, and incentivize the sort of partner base that has carried FileNET for so long. But, these things are coming together for Documentum, just as the market is wanting to put product features that no one provides as well as Documentum behind their web sites.
Documentum needs to learn one real lesson, that is, that it is a product company and therefore needs to organize itself to enable its partners to participate in win-win selling scenario. The price points in document management are getting away from the big dog home run model that Documentum still adheres to. The Documentum that I know tries to take the best projects for its professional services group, to the alienation of the partners who have the sort of domain expertise to make it successful in vertical, horizontal, and geographic markets. Additionally, its pricing strategy seems to cut its partners out of big negotiations. |
