MOSS and Documentum
I’ve had some time lately to think more about the question of integration, or unification, between MOSS and Documentum; or any other ECM system for that matter. This came about as a result of a couple of situations where I found organisation looking closely at how to integrate the two producs; plus some reading of Andrew Chapmans blog.
Taking a big step backwards for a while I started to get a little concerned the way things are moving here, it feels as though there is a great deal of momentum behind the movement to have both systems operating together. Is this really the best way to serve an organisation’s requirements, in fact what are the organisation requirements?
It is not pushing things too hard to suggest that an organisation would like to capture, store, manage, use, distribute and possibly archive some of their content. I doubt there is any requirement to have these things met by having two repositories of information so what is it that one gives that the other does not?
MOSS
One of the key arguments in the pro MOSS brigade is the UI and the level of collaboration available within MOSS. I’ve asked a few people a number of times and if anyone out there has any suggestions but what collaborative features are people looking for which MOSS provides which Documentum cannot? With regards UI, if people move down the approach of Webparts then at the end of the day the UI they use to access Documentum through MOSS is the same as using Webtop basically.
Documentum
The weight here is usually behind the issues of compliance and scalability. Compliance is something which MOSS is starting to deal with and I expect it to be comparable in the near future. Scalability remains a concern for MOSS implementations, however I’d expect this to be resolved in the next 12-24 months.
Perhaps I am missing something here but it does seem that the approaches being proposed are not actually going to solve the business problems but will instead justify the need for having two ECM systems when one will do. We should be evaluating the systems against the requirements of the business and deciding which one is the best fit.
Observing Content Management 