Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC Corp. announced its new content-enabled solutions strategy, a strategy designed with partners in mind to streamline development processes to help businesses better manage their business problems.
Steve Robins, director of industry solutions and marketing at EMC, says the strategy was created to make it easier for customers to manage business content and concerns by providing them with a comprehensive solution that answers their needs.
“Instead of having to weave together different technologies, our content-enabled solutions give customers the ability to pull together the right products and services to help them solve their business problems,” Robins said.
Robins says with the introduction of EMC’s content-enabled solutions strategy, this means good news for the company’s over 500 partners.
“For the channel, this strategy puts the spotlight on the fact that you can use content management products to help solve specific business problems,” Robins said. “The companies who are purchasing these technologies are more aware of how these work now, so there are more opportunities for partners to deploy these solutions to their customers.”
EMC recently introduced its Documentum 6 platform and Documentum Solution Frameworks, both of which are critical components for this new strategy. Documentum Solution Frameworks are reusable frameworks that aid its users with the overall enterprise content management (ECM) aspect of the business and also help with the actual deployment of various business applications. These frameworks, says Robins, also come with a reference architecture that explains how to build on top of the Documentum ECM platform. Robins says the Documentum frameworks and the platform are more than just products, as they require additional services and even perhaps applications from the partner, which he says, leads to more revenue opportunities.
“When you’re a customer building an application or wanting to solve a business problem, up until now, you’d have to do some additional work on top of the platform,” Robins said. “The frameworks streamline this work to address any specific needs they may have around a class of business problems.”
Robins also points out that with content-enabled solutions, a shift needs to be made on both the partner and customers’ behalves from thinking about the product and technology, to understanding how the actual technology works to solve any given business problem.
Perhaps what is most important to note about these frameworks, Robins adds, is the fact that they can more efficiently solve both horizontal and vertical business problems and functions which could include transactional content management, case management problems and marketing functions or other applications. Robins says this is a great selling feature since customers can now spend their time elsewhere because less time is taken up.
For partners who deploy these solutions, EMC also has what it calls its Designed for EMC Documentum partner program, a program that certifies partner applications and integrations. The program, Robins says, is ideal for ISVs, OEMs, VSPs and SIs because it allows them to design and develop customized offerings built on the EMC Documentum platform.
“Everything we’re doing with these solutions is very partner-focused,” Robins said. “This is great for our partners who can provide applications and services that compliment these solutions. Our partners have always been a critical part of our strategy and this strategy helps us take things further because we expect our partners will help us determine the direction where things go from here.”