Alfresco ECM Online Demo

Alfresco ECM Presentation

What is EDMS and how it benefits your business?

1         What is EDMS

An Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) is a software system for organizing and storing different kinds of documents and contents (e.g. word, excel, PowerPoint, PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, DWG, MPEG, MP4, WMV, MP3) in a single repository. EDMS refers more specifically to a software system that handles digital documents, rather than paper documents, although in some instances, these systems may also handle digital scanned versions of original paper documents.

The Electronic Document Management System helps users to organize, store, share and retrieve digital documents in a controlled environment. The EDMS system is fully auditable to ensure documents and information stored in digital repository is only accessed by authorized users.

2         Why companies use EDMS

The reasons for using EDMS are compelling:

• Improve access to records and information – authorized users can search across the unit, department or even access documents maintained by other agencies with a single search query. Workflow can automatically notify internal or external users when needed information has arrived or has been processed.
• Improve customer service – retained or in-process information can be immediately accessed. Accessed information can be faxed or emailed to the customer from the desktop.
• Reduce queue time – information can be routed electronically using email or workflow eliminating mailing and transport activities.
• Minimize duplication – a single copy of a document can be made available to all authorized users, including those outside the agency.
• Decrease data keying requirements – forms processing and eforms can access current data via lookups and export form data directly to business applications.
• Reduce storage and retrieval expense – a single repository reduces the need to store multiple copies while standardized indexing and integration with business applications allows users to instantly access needed documents or other information.
• Automate business processes – workflow can be used to move information from one step to another. Rules based routing can automatically determine needed activity and work steps. Work object or referenced data can automatically update business applications, create additional documents or workflows, and communicate with internal and external users.
• Improve regulatory compliance – technologies can create audit trails of access and activity. Compliance with Records Retention Schedules can be automated and improved. Incoming documents can be automatically classified and stored in the system

EMC Q4 2012 results: IIG/Documentum disappoints fans

EMC has announced the Q4 2012 results on Jan 29, 2013. I was curious to know about IIG/Documentum's performance in the year 2012 and as expected it disappointed the Documentum fans.

While EMC has registered a 9% Y/Y positive growth, IIG has registered approximately -3% negative growth compare to 2011. Though the year has been eventful for IIG wherein they acquired Syncplicity and announced major releases of Captiva (7.0) and Documentum (7.0) and xCP (2.0), but it didn't really translate into $$$ to keep the financial strength up for IIG, which might be worry-some for Documentum customers and partners once again about it's future within EMC.

Following is the comparison chart of EMC IIG earnings for year 2011 and 2012, which translates that they have performed poorly both on product revenue as well as consulting revenue front.

Few more interesting points I've noted from EMC CFO presentation is that:
1. Slide 5: EMC's focus in only on Cloud and big data and Content Management doesn't exist anywhere in the commentary.
2.  Slide 10: Though APJ region only accounts for only 14% revenue, but the Y/Y growth is highest at 19%, where IIG has not registered any significant Documentum deal in year 2012.

I also came to know from reliable sources that SourceOne (S1) and Kazeon are no more a part of IIG offerings and has been moved to backup and recovery division. Does this translate into IIG's exit from archiving and eDiscovery offering, or is it just an internal arrangement to get rid of less-revenue making products from IIG's portfolio.

So the future of Documentum remains unclear within EMC and year 2013 will be deciding period for its future while the tough competition remains from big players like Oracle, OpenText, FileNet and emerging regional players.

EMC releases ECM product upgrades: Will it help the slubering Documentum market?

EMC has recently announced new releases of Documentum and Captiva products at its annual customer and partner conference Momentum Vienna 2012. This is possibly the most fitting reply by EMC IIG to Oracle's accusations of 'Documentum' not being innovative in Oct 2011 (refer to Oracle's webinar and Jeetu Patel's blog).

Without naming anyone, Rohit Ghai, VP & GM IIG Product group has hit back at Oracle in his technical keynote address by saying that while EMC has successfully provided integrated solution portfolio by launching Documentum 7, Captiva 7, xCP 2.0, D2 4.0 and Document Sciences 4.5, other vendors are busy doing acquisitions and not able to provide integrated solutions to customers.

The partner and customer community has welcomed EMC's continued commitment for investing into its information intelligence suite of products and has weakened the rumors of a possible sell-off of a slumbering business unit.

While a great product is maturing further technically, there are still concerns though which have not been addressed in IIG president Rick's keynote address as to how are they going to address the problem of slumbering Documentum sales and address the concerns of its near-frustrated partner community.

EMC OnDemand might be a good news for the customer community which can help reduce the TCO and deployment time, but there is no word on its competition with on-premises solutions offered by partners, since my assumption is that OnDemand will be offered directly by EMC sales folks or EMC will share little incentive with partners for selling OnDemand solutions. Read on for quick summary of new releases and some more thoughts.

Gartner’s 2012 ECM Magic Quadrant: Quick Analysis

Gartner has recently released much expected ECM Magic Quadrant for 2012. There are quite a few interesting facts to note. In my earlier post Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM 2012: What to expect? just before the Gartner release, I had predicted IBM to be on the top of chart in terms of ability to execute and Gartner proved me right. But I was wrong in predicting the visionary position for Microsoft, which went to IBM followed by Oracle. Gartner gave credit to IBM's overall business alignment with its ECM offerings, wherein Oracle gained the position due to its acquisitions, mainly FatWire and the ability to better align its acquisitions with overall business strategy.

There is disappointment though for Microsoft and EMC fans in ECM Magic Quadrant 2012
despite EMC IIG CMO Mr. Jeetu Patel making dedicated efforts to improve analysts ratings. Microsoft's SharePoint story seems to be losing steam.

8 Steps guide to make your ECM project a success

As per Gartner Research Vice President Tony Bell  "more than 50 percent of large Enterprise Content Management (ECM) projects fail if less than six months are spent on vendor choice and planning." (source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10357858-16.html).

So if more than half of the ECM projects fail, its a big reason to worry for those who are planning to acquire an ECM system by spending few hundred thousands dollars. ECM projects usually get initiated with great enthusiasm to save on costs and increase user productivity by the way of reducing paper usage and creating a digital repository of all contents for easier sharing amongst users. The adventure often ends-up with frustration of having a non-usable system which now stores everything but is tool slow and too complex for daily usage. Increased complexity and decreased performance of accessing contents compare to shared drives results in everyday escalations by end-users and business managers giving nightmares to IT managers.
So what should the CIO or IT Manager do right to avoid such a fiasco?I have summarized my experience below in 8 bullet points which can help you increase your chances of success.

1. Assess your business needs: It's important to know what does the business needs? ECM is a vast subject from capture to store/manage to process till archive and disposition and every piece of information which gets generated during the course of business activities comes within the scope of ECM. Starting from writing an email to your customer or vendor to receiving a fax till signing a contract or agreement.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM 2012: What to expect?

Gartner released 2012 Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management (WCM) sometime back and the next in line will be MQ for ECM. While the WCM player's positioning remains pretty much the same compare to 2011 report, it was quite surprising to see a sudden drop in the rating of Autonomy after being acquired by HP. Gartner has dropped its rating both in terms of ability to execute and in vision, primarily due to the uncertainty over HP's commitments and business plan for Autonomy.

Though there was no surprise to miss the name of one of the ECM leader, EMC from the WCM Magic Quadrant. The curiosity however grew over EMC's strategy for adding this missing piece in their ECM offerings. Now I'll be eagerly waiting to see the 2012 Magic Quadrant for ECM which is expected to be delivered by Gartner in Q4, hopefully in October itself and see how will the EMC's absence from WCM arena affect their position in ECM MQ.

A quick comparison of various players in Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM 2009, 2010 and 2011 shows the following trends:

Solving the puzzle: DMS, RMS or ECM

With the growing notion of Green IT and the need to achieve paperless office drives companies to look for an IT system which can help them reduce the paper usage in office, while increasing users productivity by the way of converting and managing papers in electronic form.

The job to identify and implement such a system often gets assigned to the IT department, which then reaches out to various IT vendors to evaluate their solutions. Each vendor today refers their solutions using different terminologies confusing the IT managers or the business decision makers and throws a unique challenge in front of them to first decide on what exactly are they looking for, a DMS, RMS or a full-blown ECM?


While the first might be dirt cheap, the later might require deep pockets to acquire, implement and maintain.While not one size fits all, its important to first zero down on the type of solution an organization is looking for and then invite the right vendors to demonstrate their product features, implementation capabilities and future support

Facebook as Enterprise Collaboration Platform: Let's brainstorm

I received surprisingly pleasant feedback on my last post Facebook in an Enterprise: Weird thought or an untapped potential?, so I thought of taking a step further and tried drilling down if my 'weird thought' can take realistic shape and if Facebook has the right ingredients to evolve as an enterprise collaboration / social media platform.

When its comes to enterprise collaboration / social media platform, enterprises usually expect the system to provide following functionalities, which add value to their business. Wikipedia and AIIM define this in following broad terms:

• Search: allowing users to search for other users or content
• Links: grouping similar users or content together
• Authoring: including blogs and wikis
• Tags: Allowing users to tag content
• Extensions: recommendations of users; or content based on profile
• Signals: allowing people to subscribe to users or content with RSS feeds