Microsoft/EMC Pair On Doc Management

EMC's planned Content Services for SharePoint and Archiving for SharePoint are both due in the same timeframe s Office 2007, said John McCormick vice president of product management for content management and archiving.

The first offering will comprise EMC created and supported Web Parts for SharePoint that will enable "users to do content management, virtual doc management, all core content management tasks from within SharePoint talking directly to the Documentum platform" he said.

Web Parts are typically plug ins for SharePoint, often downloadable and often free, to expand SharePoint capabilities. EMC will charge for its offerings but pricing was not available.

Archiving services will allow repository-to-repository integration and data flow and will let people use the SharePoint Platform for content creation and editing and have that content then flow into Documentum's ECM, provided it meets the appropriate rules set for that repository.

The news is interesting on several levels. First, EMC with its purchase of Documentum three years ago, bought its way into a leadership position in ECM. Since that time EMC has also bought several solution providers, including Internosis and Interlink, with strong Microsoft expertise.

So those EMC-owned service resources clearly have a vested interest in this technology. In addition, solution providers who had relied on billable hours integrating document management with outside systems may lose some of those hours, although McCormick and Rob Bernard, Microsoft's general manager for ISVs, said the easier integration will also grow the overall universe of ECM users.

In theory, the first product would enable a worker to create an Excel spreadsheet of a division's earnings, work with team members with it in SharePoint and then flow the approved document through appropriate rules into the Documentum repository.

This is also interesting since SharePoint itself already sports some document management capabilities and these will be bolstered with the 2007 release. In that release Microsoft is converging what had been Content Management Server into SharePoint itself.

Asked if this deal means Microsoft has no designs on enterprise content management of its own, Bernard said, "from our perspective this is more clarity. If you have deep usage scenarios and Documentum users in verticals, Microsoft and EMC are working closely to make them [work] seamlessly with Office. It is fair to say SharePoint will have more content management, we're constantly responding to a large, broad set of customers needs," he said. "Customers should go with the vendor that makes sense and be confident of [interoperability.]"

Both executives said customers will be able to choose between EMC and Microsoft digital rights management [DRM] to cover their documents. The two DRM systems will integrate eventually, they said.

EMC has also certified its Documentum platform for Microsoft SQL Server 2005.