Thursday, April 12, 2012

D2: "Reality Distortion Field"

Having read Steve Job's biography and how he applied his "reality distortion field" wherever and whenever needed, I started thinking about Documentum's D2 purchase. What is the purpose of this new, "easily configurable" UI? Isn't just trying to divert attention away from the fact that Documentum has not been able to revolutionize the ECM market the way it could?



The core content server is still there. But, because Webtop was out for so long, most large companies with complex requirements have customized that hell out of it. When xCP came along the message was "case management" which had most developers scratching their heads? They were trying to figure out how to go from Webtop to TaskSpace. Ok, they finally worked that out, but didn't implement it. Then D2 comes out with a wink and nod saying it's easy to configure and don't worry about your Business Object Frameworks (TBOs and SBO), they will work. Ok, prove it!

Here's where the reality distortion comes in: what EMC needs is a flexible, change oriented layer for businesses and creatives to build vertically focused products. Yeah, EMC wants partners to certify their solutions and call them products, but I'm talking about a platform that blows away Microsoft's Sharepoint, which is just a web version of file sharing at it's core anyways.

So, what's it going to be, a distortion field or a completely new product from the ground up? I'm sure it is part of the reason that Newton left Documentum to build Alfresco. EMC has a window of opportunity, will they take it? 

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