Partners Await Documentum 5

"Overall, this is a seminal product event for Documentum," said Christian Pease, director of channel sales at San Jose, Calif.-based e-business integration firm Burntsand, who was briefed on the product. "A couple of things stand out here: One is ease of use, particularly a single-browser environment, and the other is deployment. Taking systems to production should be much easier and faster than in the past."

Documentum 5, the first version upgrade in three years, will also include new collaboration tools, a more robust imaging offering, a records management offering, support for the Mac OS and enhanced security features such as encryption, single sign-on and digital signatures support, said Lubor Ptacek, director of product marketing at Documentum.

To further ease of use, Documentum is providing J2EE-compliant components for building user interfaces that have a common look and feel across all Documentum applications.

"In the past, Documentum kind of missed the boat on its interface," said Ellen Reilly, vice president at Fujitsu Consulting, Edison, N.J.

Pharmaceutical companies traditionally have been a strong vertical for Documentum, where its platform was suited to the needs of knowledge workers. But with its more robust imaging solution,OEMed from Captiva,Documentum will now be able to challenge FileNet in high-volume transactional environments such as financial companies, partners said.

Enhancements to its digital asset management offering could also boost Documentum's appeal to corporate marketing departments and media companies, partners said.

Having a platform that can handle a whole range of capabilities is a fundamental advantage for Documentum, Pease said. "The notion of being able to cover all these things is very, very powerful."