Centra, Documentum Team Web Conferencing, Content Management

Next week, the company will outline plans for a connector from Documentum's Content Server and Centra's Knowledge Server due by the middle of next year. Then, by year's end, Centra plans to embed Documentum's Content Server in its core platform, according to James Freeze, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Centra, Lexington, Mass.

That means, by the end of next year, customers buying Centra's 8.0 release will get built-in content management. It will also be able to sell its collaboration platform into Documentum accounts, he said.

Centra is a Web conferencing and e-learning pioneer that in recent years decided to offer core Web conferencing capabilities with modules suited for narrower business processes or tasks. It has modules for enterprise application rollouts, collaborative learning and customer prospecting, for example.

Centra competes with WebEx and Interwise, and most likely will see more friction from Microsoft. That software giant is slated to formally roll out its Live Communications Server 2005 next week and it continues to field the hosted Live Meeting service as well. Microsoft announced the beta of its new VoIP-enabled IM client earlier this week.

Longer term, Microsoft is working on common infrastructure for both its hosted and on-premises web conferencing in a server code-named "Kiev" due next year.

Storage kingpin EMC bought Documentum for its content management expertise last year.

The Centra news will be announced at the EMC Documentum partner and customer conference in Montreal next week.