Why Documentum?
July 25, 2014
Why Documentum?
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with OpenText Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
As a consultant I work with a variety of organizations in various industries, assisting them with the implementation of EMC's Documentum platform. Our projects have ranged from single departments to global corporate roll-outs. Use cases ranged from simple document version control to fully automated Event Management and content publishing environments.
- Documentum's backend repository engine is probably one of the most robust, best-designed repository's currently available. While other vendors seem to constantly release new "implementations", Documentum's design has remained virtually unchanged since it was first released, yet it continues to address the content management needs of users.
- Although there are many document and content management platforms available today, Documentum probably has the largest collection of modules to address varying functional needs.
- Recent releases of Documentum have provided significant improvements in user-friendly development and configuration tools, making it easier to rapidly configure and deploy applications based on the Documentum platform
- Documentum provides a large number of interfaces and APIs for managing the application as well as for building custom solutions/add-ons. This makes it an extremely flexible platform that can be used to build most any kind of application
- Documentum's support infrastructure and the general online community is well established and broad
- In the past some of Documentum's add-ons have been very difficult to use (e.g. Documentum for Outlook) and difficult to configure (e.g. ADTS and MTS).
- Due to the inherent complexity of some of the add-on modules, it was likely (at least in early releases of some of these modules) that they contained difficult to isolate bugs and other anomalies. The good news is that EMC's Support Teams provide relatively good and rapid service to assist with the resolution of such issues
- Documentation is probably Documentum's weakest feature. Although significant amounts of documentation are available for all components, and there are very few items/aspects that are NOT documented, the organization of the documentation sometimes makes it difficult to find what you are looking for at times.
- In the past, as new add-ons were created and released, some of these ended up being short-lived (either due to users not adopting them or if it was found that the implementation was questionable). Depending on the solution, it may be advisable not to be a "first-adopter" and wait to see what happens to it before deploying it.
- Better version tracking and easier retrieval of content
- Significant improvements of content publishing solutions (faster cycle times, more accurate content releases, better management of security)
- There can be some significant ramp-up times, particularly where custom components are required, but other products may not even offer the option for such custom add-ons
- Improvements in adherence to regulatory requirements
Using OpenText Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
Evaluating OpenText Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Competitors
There are numerous other products available including SharePoint, Stellent, FileNet, etc. Most offer many of the same solutions and modules that Documentum provides, however some, such as SharePoint, still have significant shortcomings when it comes to true, enterprise-level document management that require workaround solutions, either via architectural or custom tweaks. The Documentum platform tends to excel in its flexibility due to its available APIs and configuration options. In addition, the stability of its backend repository makes it ideal for global, enterprise-level solutions.