An ECM Platform, Packaged to Go

EMC Corporation  has spent a great deal of effort
marketing and selling its enterprise content management (ECM) platform since
acquiring Documentum.

Now the information systems vendor wants its original equipment
manufacturers (OEM) to get in on the action.

EMC has created Documentum OEM Edition, a version of its ECM platform
tailored for OEMs.

This means EMC OEM partners such as Document Sciences, Armedia and Daybreak
ICS will be able license EMC’s ECM platform and turn around and sell it to
their own customers, said Lubor Ptacek, director of content management and
archiving at EMC.

Software developers can embed the platform in any content-driven
application, including accounts payable and contract management apps for
financial services, or any apps used in life sciences, aerospace, financial
services and energy.

Ptacek said Documentum OEM Edition solves the pain software makers feel in
building their own repositories and content platforms, a process that can be
time-consuming and costly.

“OEMs need a Documentum that can be embedded and completely disappear within
their own application,” without bogging down the application, Ptacek told
internetnews.com.

“By not having to worry about the infrastructure, the OEM can put all their
R&D dollars and marketing dollars into the application logic and
differentiate themselves from competitors.”

The software comes as the glut in documents, XML, reports and electronic
forms has spurred a growing number of corporations to seek content repositories that
store, manage and move information.

This is a trend that has bubbled up in the wake of compliance regulations
such as HIPAA, Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Documentum OEM Edition comes with a silent installer for efficient embedding
into the host application.

The package also comes with a preconfigured version of the EMC Documentum
Content Server, and uses the same features and API  as the
version sold to enterprise customers.

EMC Documentum OEM Edition will be available by end of the fourth quarter
2006. Ptacek said EMC has set up flexible licensing models to match the
model of the host application.

“We need to match whatever licensing model they have,” Ptacek said. “If
their application is based on CPUs, we sell it based on CPUs. If their
application is based on seats, we sell it based on seats because we don’t
want to cut off that business.”

For EMC, the software is the latest move the company is making to
differentiate itself from competitors IBM , Oracle , Open Text  and Interwoven  in the multi-billion-dollar ECM space.