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Technology Stocks : Documentum (DCTM) Software -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Asymmetric who wrote (545)	9/27/1999 1:50:00 AM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 600

Peter, Sorry to subject you to stream of conciousness thinking but lets see where this goes... 200K US isn't a big deal. Also, OTEX produt lends itself to "shelfware" at worst or at least "simple deployment". There is a very big different between emailing a URL to a new service on the company intranet and emailing a URL or installing a complex application which fundamentally changes how an employee works. "Enterprise" deployment is such a misleading term. For example, and I hate to pick on the legal space except that it provides an excellent example of a truly homogenous organization. A legal services firm is a terrific target for "enterprise" deployment for one very simple reason. Everyone does essentially the same thing. Now obviously that is an oversimplification, but the key issue here is that all work for most legal services firms is centered around "Client" and "Matter", and the documents fuel the pursuit of resolution. In such an organization the professionals and paralegals and administrative support staff all work with the document collection in one way or another -- usually tightly bonded work teams. Rolling out an enterprise deployment to such a group is relatively simple - everyone expects to work in more or less the same manner. Even in very large legal services organizations this more or less remains true. Now contrast that to any large organization - say a multinational conglomerate of some type. You have marketing and r+d and engineering and support and finance and treasury and legal and compliance and health/welfare and executive and marcom and ... well, basically you have maybe 10 major functional departments and depending on just how big and complex the org, tons of fifedoms and lots of resistance to change. Been there, done that. Nothing to do with technology - the best technology and the cheapest price do not obliterate this as a significant issue standing in the way of large scale deployment in a complex organization. Having been through quite a number of enterprise deployments of both the homogenous type and otherwise, I can tell you that the diverse organisation is a difficult beast to tame. And any large organziation - 1000 staff and up, presents a sales target of many times larger than 200K US. That is a "drop" in the bucket. OTEX Avg Selling Price of 200KUS (does that include services?) is yet another confirmation in my mind that they are largely selling shelfware / or at best commodity-ware, and need to be ever more mindful that Lotus and MSFT are just around the corner, and in some cases already in the door, ready, willing and able to eat their lunch. Not that DCTM, FILE, DOCS/HUMC and other "process-centric" DM/KM players can rest on their laurels either.... but that is a topic for another day and a few more glasses of wine. A key point to consider is that typically the cost of software is the smallest or second smallest piece of the puzzle (hardware often the smallest these days). Change does not come without cost. Regarding your concerns about OTEX, I share them. I am not yet past my concerns with DCTM either tho. I wonder how much further this run can go if it turns out it was only because some goodly sized deals were signed. Sales being what it is... "what have you done for me today?" is part of the "sell on the news" equation. You know -- past performance is no guarantee... Respectfully, Michael