See correction below
EMC Documentum is synonymous with enterprise content management. Picking and configuring appropriate components from the company’s product set — over 100 different systems — takes research and work. But stick with the process and you’ll be rewarded with a solution that doesn’t feel cobbled together; rather, it’s one of the best at solving various particular content problems, anything from project collaboration to managing documents in order to satisfy ISO 9001 certification.
For my test, I evaluated four components that specifically address EDM (enterprise document management) needs. EMC Documentum 5 Enterprise Content Management Platform formed the core of the testbed. Beyond key components of an EDM system, including version control and library services, this product provides secure virtual rooms in which teams work on documents.
Of course, many enterprises (such as financial service companies) do volume-document processing. For this aspect, I used EMC Documentum Business Process Management (BPM) to build workflows. Finally, given the importance of compliance and document retention, I also evaluated RPS (Retention Policy Services) and the Compliance Manager module.
Distilled to the essentials, an EDM system allows for creating (or capturing) documents, editing them, approving workflows that result in publishing material, and ultimately preserving or destroying these items.
My first test simulated a situation fairly typical of any enterprise: Sales, engineering, and other departments need a repository to control technical and marketing publications. EMC Documentum offers multiple ways for users to interact with this content. Microsoft Office integration let me open PowerPoint, create a presentation, and save it directly to the document repository.
Interesting things happen with the collaborative capabilities of the EMC Documentum system. First, my presentation was placed in the appropriate private room based on meta information I entered. Next, designated reviewers were notified so the team could discuss and edit the document. Once all members were satisfied, the presentation was automatically moved to a public folder, locked against changes, and marked to be retained for six years (to meet compliance regulations). That type of tight content management and collaboration is rare; it signals how well EMC Documentum understands — and streamlines — the document management process.
It’s easy for admins to add additional meta fields, adjust retention rules, and specify conversion to other formats, including HTML and PDF. Further, Documentum Client for Outlook, another interface, provides a single point for managing e-mail and documents.
My second test involved an elaborate high-volume mortgage loan approval process, which could easily translate into other industries. The BPM module takes center stage here. The graphical process manager helps developers quickly specify actions, such as document capture, routing, and approval.
I started this test by scanning a paper loan application, performing optical character recognition (so the data could be stored in a repository), and converting the document into a PDF. Simultaneously, the process called an external Web service to retrieve current loan rates. These parts formed the start of a virtual document that was routed through different departments for approvals.
The UI here is Webtop, a browser interface that can be customized for specific tasks using a Web development kit. For instance, in this loan setting a tab opened a checklist of required documents — with another tab providing quick access to all the files.
Most impressive is BPM’s intelligence. For example, an e-mail was triggered asking for the applicant’s employment verification. The reply was automatically added to the client’s virtual document. The process manager also monitors the work queue, which ensures that a particular person isn’t given an unbalanced workload. And finally, the completed file was locked and assigned a retention period.
There’s a lot more going on here. In the background, for example, Compliance Manager enforces digital signatures and ensures content authenticity. It also detects attempts to alter or remove documents.
I found RPS equally significant. Besides enforcing routine retention rules, admins can quickly lock down any content that might be related to an audit or investigation. RPS is also storage-aware; documents are automatically archived to the most cost-effective system (which can be EMC or third-party hardware) according to how often the files are accessed or where they are in their lifecycle.
Various large organizations use Documentum to process tens of thousands of documents per hour. EMC also reports benchmarks of a billion-object repository and 1,000 simultaneous users. Although I wasn’t able to fully test the limits of the solution’s scalability, these claims are certainly plausible.
A final test involved Content Integration Services — an interesting search capability (which is available from Webtop) that federates results from more than 300 sources. Using adapters, the system clusters results from Google, proprietary apps, databases, and premium Web subscriptions. Documentum seems to have quietly solved another vexing enterprise issue: precisely locating documents and information from a single interface.
This unified theme is really central to Documentum solutions. While I focused on document management, the single database processing engine and security model applies when enterprises add other components, such as Web content management, digital asset management, or records management.
Systems of this scale are costly, reaching into the millions of dollars. But considering the price of mismanaging unstructured information and the risks of noncompliance, EMC Documentum 5 should be a prudent investment.
Correction: In this review, the name of EMC’s product should have been EMC Documentum 5 Enterprise Content Management Platform. InfoWorld regrets the error, which has been corrected.