Documentum 6 goes flexible

The market has changed since EMC released the last major upgrade to its Documentum platform two years ago. The world of enterprise content management has gone multi-vendor, and the proprietary-heavy Documentum was starting to look crusty and demanding next to the competition.

So to get its flagship platform back to pace, EMC is stripping the tags, metadata, and proprietary code off its API to back hearts and wallets in ECM implementation.

The new version 6 of Documentum offers web services standards and revised coding for easier integration with other enterprise applications within the Service Oriented Architecture. The software's new API has been redesigned eliminate Documentum-specific methods and terminology in favor of vendor-neutral framework for developers working with content-management tools. EMC claims the services enable developers with no Documentum experience to build EMC applications quickly and easily.

EMC has also replaced the Builder and Installer components with the standardized Documentum Composer, a tool based on the Eclipse integrated development environment. EMC says the new tools offer faster deployment and ease of use through reconfigured options.

Documentum's branch office caching service has received an upgrade as well. The service now allows users to view, create, edit and search content locally on the platform, regardless of location.

The Documentum 6 platform will be released in late August.

To prove that Documentum is now easy-breezy to program for, EMC is also running a contest for software developers to make applications based on the Documentum 6 platform. The top submissions will be spotlighted at the EMC Developers Conference 2007 in Monaco — and cash prizes awarded. The top spot will earn $50,000, second prize $20,000, third prize gets $10,000 and honorary mention prizes nab a cool $5,000.

Contest registration opens in early August and submission will be accepted through September 28. Rules, regulations and registration an be found here. ®