Documentum To Offer Content Management Upgrade

Documentum AX5 Channel Edition builds on a prior Legato release with much easier installation and administrative capabilities, said John Magee, vice president of product marketing at the Pleasanton, Calif.-based company.

The new Documentum release, along with a new Compliance Manager the company's existing Enterprise Content Management lineup, will be unveiled at the AIIM Expo 2004 show in New York next week.

Documentum was bought by storage kingpin EMC last fall a few months after EMC purchased Legato. At that time, some observers worried that EMC, with its direct-sales tradition, might not understand the channel smarts necessary to keep selling content management into smaller accounts. (See related story.)

Documentum faces a raft of competitors in the content management market, including FileNet, a pioneer in the field, and IBM, which recently acquired Green Pasture Software. EMC, for its part, is distinguishing itself in the content management space with an information life-cycle management strategy.

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Magee characterized AX5 Channel Edition as a major release, with enhanced Web performance and optimized for use on Windows Server 2003's Active Directory and security. Targeted applications include invoice scanning, billing and patient records management. A remote-administration feature will make it easier for VARs to troubleshoot and maintain customer sites without traveling, he said.

One longtime Legato partner said he was thrilled. "It just screams over the old 4.61 version, and you can now manage it from one module where you might have had to go to a half-dozen," said Mike Farrell, document imaging specialist at High Desert MicroImaging, a Sparks, Nev.-based solution provider.

The product will be available starting next week. Typical pricing is about $3,000 per user.

The Documentum Compliance Manager (DCM) will also be announced and available next week. The software targets businesses that face tough regulatory requirements including life sciences and manufacturing industries. "This out-of-the-box framework will let administrators set up life-cycle management, point and click to specify users, authorized rolls, audit trails, but it's flexible enough to handle changes to business processes," Magee said.

This product will be sold direct and through channels. The company expects to offer the product to ISVs who will embed it into their vertical applications, Magee said.

Also new for Documentum's Enterprise Content Management (ECM), will be a Web Compliance application that promises to bring Web content and records management into the company's offering.

Enterprise Content Management has been a whirl of activity of late with the EMC buys OpenText buying IXOS, and IBM Software buying several small content management-related companies in the past year. (See related story for more on content consolidation.)