An end-to-end run

Claiming to be the only offering to power content-rich applications throughout the business value chain--from R&D, operations and manufacturing to sales, marketing and customer support--Documentum 5 is said to have been developed to meet the following goals: ease of use and deployment, strong collaboration and compliance capabilities, support for broad content types and services and, finally, to become the platform of choice for content applications.

The company says that new usability features include a unified framework for all Web-based user interfaces, providing consistency and easy, intuitive point-and-click commands. The framework is based on its Web Development Kit (WDK 5) and provides a common J2EE architecture for Web-based user interfaces as well as easy customization. Documentum reports it also provides tight integration with application servers, platforms, databases, enterprise applications, directory services and storage infrastructure.

Also new to Documentum 5, the company explains, is the Collaboration Edition, which is said to allow organizations to further leverage their ECM investment and achieve maximum ROI by:

• speeding project initiation, product development and time to market;

• building tighter bonds between employees, partners, suppliers and customers;

• helping facilitate resolution of problems and issues;

• enabling the flow of new ideas across departments and across geographies; and ;

• securely capturing and reusing best practices to streamline project delivery.

The Documentum 5 release expands its predecessor’s compliance capabilities by:

• setting a new standard for security capabilities;

• enabling compliance with evolving regulations and standards, including 21 CFR Part 11, new SEC requirements, DoD 5015.2, Common Criteria (C2),OSHA, ISO, etc.;

• securing content within and beyond the repository, incorporating new digital rights management and records management capabilities; and

• building upon core EDM strengths with enhancements to content services such as lifecycle management, workflow, privilege management and digital signatures.

Documentum 5 also incorporates a new set of services into the Content Server, including support for encryption for both data communication and data storage, two-factor (passwords, smart cards, token cards, etc.) and single-sign-on authentication support, PKI support, digital signatures, etc.

Documentum says V 5 is fully integrated and fits well within the enterprise IT infrastructure to power a variety of applications (B2B, B2C, B2E) and is unified to support all content types and services (documents, Web, rich media, reports, records). Further, says the company, it extends ECM to include final form content incorporating both output and records management as well as production-level imaging and scanning. Digital asset management technology into the platform is also fully integrated into the platform..

Documentum 5 also includes a number of signficant new enhancements for developers