EMC introduces product for managing SharePoint repositories

EMC announced a new product this week, EMC Documentum Repository Services for SharePoint, which lets companies manage multiple SharePoint sites inside a Documentum content management repository. The announcement was made at the SharePoint 09 Conference [1] in Las Vegas.

The solution could seem to be redundant technology, a content management system for a content management system, but the fact is that companies typically have many SharePoint installations in place. Its strength is the ability to set up a SharePoint site very quickly, but this can quickly result in many sites spread across the organization, making it difficult for administrators to understand where all this content resides. A system like Documentum can help bring that under control.

Melissa Webster [2], an analyst at IDC [3], says this solution could make sense for a lot of organizations running multiple SharePoint sites. "Certainly, companies that have basic content management needs, and that haven't already purchased a CMS will start with SharePoint. But users in larger organizations that have more sophisticated content management needs will continue to turn to companies like EMC for advanced functionality," she says. EMC's strength, says Webster, is in areas like BPM, for automating workflows; capture and image management to automate document-intensive business processes within the enterprise and so forth. "There are significant performance benefits using a Documentum back-end, rather than SQL Server, and Documentum also has strong content de-duping capabilities which are important for enterprises that need to reduce their storage and legal discovery costs," she says.

Microsoft and EMC have an interesting relationship. Using today's slang you might call the two "frenemies." They are each too big to ignore the other, so they work together even while competing for some of the same business. Brian Babineau, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group says this relationship makes sense for both companies. "Almost every technology vendor is a "frenemy" (sometimes referred to as co-op-etition) with Microsoft because of Microsoft's vast portfolio. The reality is Microsoft needs many of its technology partners, including EMC, to add value and bring to market, many of its solutions." Babineau adds, "We think there are definite connection points. Where there is overlap is when a customer is using Documentum for basic collaboration--this is where SharePoint will replace it. When a customer is using Documentum's detailed workflows, repository services, storing data across different storage devices, etc, this is when SharePoint will augment it, not replace it."

So Microsoft and EMC will continue to work together, even while competing with each other on certain levels. The fact is that the two organizations fill in many of the spaces across each others' broad product portfolios and provide each other with substantial markets. They may be frenemies, but each company is certainly benefiting from its relationship and goes out of its way to keep the relationship intact and growing.

For more information:
- see the EMC press release [4]

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