Users increasingly view storage as a smart way of meeting business
challenges. James Rogers talked to users and suppliers at Storage
Expo 2003 in London last week
Analysts have given a cautious welcome to EMC's £1bn acquisition of
content management supplier Documentum.
Sue Clarke, senior research analyst at Butler Group, said cost
savings promised by EMC might be difficult to achieve. "Reducing
the total cost of ownership depends on the individual requirements
of the customer," she said.
"There could be benefits if you are looking for a total package of
storage as well as the document management application," she said,
but not all companies will look to use hardware from a specific
supplier to support their document management.
"A company looking to implement an enterprise content-management
solution may not be looking to implement storage hardware at the
same time."
Enterprise software products from Documentum let users manage a
range of content, from electronic documents to medical records and
audio/video content.
The document-management specialist is the leader in its market and
already boasts a blue-chip customer list including the Foreign
Office, British Aerospace, Cathay Pacific, Ford, Toyota, Abbey and
Goldman Sachs.
Forrester Research said the deal is good news for users, with EMC
moving quickly to integrate enterprise content management, data
management and storage management.
EMC said the takeover would make it cheaper for users to transfer
documents to storage systems. Chris Gahagan, senior vice-president
at EMC, said users would be able to save money by moving documents
across a range of EMC systems.
"You have choice about how long you want to retain the data with
Documentum, but with EMC you also have a choice of how much you are
willing to spend for storage [availability] and performance," he
said.
Gahagan also reassured users that EMC had no plans to sideline
Documentum products and would continue to invest in them.
"Documentum customers should be completely at ease that whatever
they have today will move forward." he said.
EMC has more than 2,000 UKcustomers, including GlaxoSmithKline,
Norwich Union and Nationwide.