Documentum

Documentum is an enterprise content management platform currently developed by OpenText. In December 2003, Dell EMC acquired Documentum for $1.7 billion. The Documentum platform was part of EMC's Enterprise Content Division (ECD), one of EMC's four operating divisions.

Documentum

Developer(s)	OpenText
Stable release	23.4 / December 2023
Type	Enterprise content management
License	Proprietary software
Website	www.opentext.com/products/documentum

On January 23, 2017, OpenText, a Canadian technology firm based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, specializing in enterprise content management, acquired Documentum from Dell EMC for $1.62 billion.

History

Founding

Howard Shao and John Newton, who worked together at Ingres at one point, founded Documentum in June 1990. With initial backing from Xerox, Shao and Newton developed a customized system for Boeing to organize, store, and selectively publish the thousands of pages of information for the Boeing 777 training manuals, and they developed another customized system for Syntex, a pharmaceutical vendor, to automate the assembly of New Drug Application (NDA) documents when seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Documentum introduced its Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) in 1993, a client-server product for electronic document management. End users connected to the repository through desktop client applications. Documentum EDMS included a full-text search engine for retrieving documents from the repository.

Company growth

In 1993, Jeffrey Miller, a Silicon Valley marketing executive, joined Documentum as president and CEO with a mandate to transform the company from a technology-driven start-up into an established software firm. Under Miller's leadership, the company raised its first round of venture capital funding from Brentwood, Merrill Picker Anderson, Sequoia Capital, Norwest Corporation, and Xerox Venture.

Documentum was floated on NASDAQ on February 5, 1996, listing with the DCTM symbol.

Web versions

In 1998, Documentum launched its Web Application Environment, a set of Internet extensions for EDMS, offering web access to the documents stored within an EDMS repository. In 2000, Documentum released Documentum 4i, its first web-native platform. Documentum 4i could integrate with external web applications.

In 2002, Documentum launched Documentum 5 as a unified enterprise content management (ECM) platform for storing content types within a shared repository.

Products

Documentum Server

Documentum Server, formerly known as Documentum Content Server, is the core platform that manages content in a repository consisting of three parts: a content server, a relational database, and a place to store files. Items in the repository are stored as objects. The file associated with an object is usually stored in a file system, and the object's associated metadata are stored as a record in a relational database.

Documentum Clients

Smart View

Formerly known as D2, Smart View, a configurable, content-centric client that provides access to ECM applications, is the primary client for Documentum.

Other clients

• Documentum xCP: a development platform for automating business processes. The platform consists of a web-based client and a platform for user interface development and server-side components.
• Webtop: a browser-based interface that provides access to the repository and content management services (CMS).
• My Documentum (deprecated) provided content management services and information access within the infrastructure.

Documentum functionality is made available through application programming interfaces (API), including web services, WebDAV, FTP, Java, Documentum Foundation Classes, Documentum Query Language (DQL), Web Development Kit API (WDK), SMB/CIFS, and CMIS.

Most customizations in basic products are done using the DFC (Documentum Foundation Classes), a collection of Java APIs. Customization can be done via configuration, particularly through the extension products D2 and xCP.

Technological Evolution

Web Versions

• 1998: Launched the Web Application Environment, providing web access to EDMS repositories.
• 2000: Released Documentum 4i, the first web-native platform.
• 2002: Introduced Documentum 5, a unified ECM platform.

Integration and Extensions

Documentum integrates with external systems and supports extensive customization via D2 and xCP. It is widely used in industries requiring secure content management and regulatory compliance, such as pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and financial services.