Documentum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (January 2009)
This article may contain wording that merely promotes the subject without
imparting verifiable information. Please remove or replace such wording,
unless you can cite independent sources that support the characterization.
Documentum
Developer(s) EMC Corporation
Stable release 6.6 / May 2010; 11 months ago
Written in Java
Operating system Cross-platform
Available in Multiple languages
Type Enterprise content management
License Proprietary
Website http://www.emc.com/

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.[1] The
Documentum platform is part of EMC's Information Intelligence Group business unit,
one of EMC's four operating divisions.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 History
o 1.1 Getting started
o 1.2 Becoming an enterprise software firm
o 1.3 Moving to the web
o 1.4 A unified platform for enterprise content management
• 2 Releases
• 3 API
• 4 Functions
• 5 References

• 6 External links

[edit] History
[edit] Getting started

Howard Shao and John Newton founded Documentum in June 1990. They had worked
together at Ingres, one of the leading relational database vendors at the time, and sought
to solve unstructured information management problems using relational database
technologies. (Unstructured information refers to information that does not have a formal
data structure – documents, images, audio, video, etc.) With initial backing from Xerox,
they developed a customized system for Boeing to organize, store, maintain, and
selectively publish the thousands of pages of information for the Boeing 777 training
manuals. They developed another customized system for Syntex, a pharmaceutical
vendor, to automate the process of assembling New Drug Application (NDA) documents
when seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

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.

[edit] 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 Capital[2], 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.

[edit] 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[verification needed] -- ranging from self-contained documents to
granular information snippets. 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.

[edit] 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
management (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:

• 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 Software, 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
management capabilities of Documentum.

• X-Hive, announced in July 2007, added XML database capabilities for managing
and repurposing XML-tagged content components within an enterprise
environment.

• Document Sciences, announced December 2007, added Enterprise Output

Management capabilities.

[edit] 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.

[edit] API
Documentum functionality is available through a variety of user interfaces and through
application programming interfaces (API) including web services, WebDAV, FTP, Java,
Documentum Foundation Classes and SMB/CIFS.

[edit] 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, forms processing, Information Rights Management,
compliance, computer output to laser disc (COLD) and archiving.