Comments on: Is it Content Management or Storage?

By: lopataru

lopataru — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 11:08:33 +0000

On one hand i fully agree with you, i have the same impression. On another hand, I am fortunate to work in ECM world with some other vendors also and i just came back from IBM's conference on Information Technology. I must say I saw vision there. I saw something totally different than the EMC speech, so i think they have a fair chance to stand out from the pack in the near future, since they are talking about the light. IBM could start meeting part of the "naive" customer expectation of one stop shop for information management.

By: msillanp

msillanp — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:59:54 +0000

Really great analogy. I wonder if real estate agents had really cared, about what they land they were selling was being used for and who they were selling it to, would we’d have these current headaches in the real estate market. It simple to see that when someone in control of a market need provides it without any real knowledge or respect for their customers it doesn’t bode well for the ecosystem.

I don’t think we’re naive. We just simply expect real estate agents and lender, oil executives, and software executives to understand what we really need and work in our best interest. Oh right, that is naive.

It’s true that folks are losing contacts with EMC as it becomes all about the hardware. It’s just a fortunate situation that IBM, Open Text, Oracle, Microsoft, Alfresco, and Hyland still understand it’s about the business need. And at the end of the day, most content management systems are generally the same.

So instead of having an entire segment collapse we’ll just have one company suffering through the months ahead. That is until they see the light.

By: ldallas

ldallas — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:55:33 +0000

When is comes to storage – the best analogy I can come up with is real estate. The guy that sells you the land really could not care less what you do with it so long as the check clears. If you want to build a duplex or a million dollar mansion – it doesn’t matter. Location does – and he’ll charge you more for it. The storage equivalent is speed or management features but even if its a gated community – the agent just wants his $$.

EMC makes land. They make oceans of money selling it. You’ll never make then care what its used for. They don’t have to know to sell land. Documentum at the end of the day is manufactured housing. REALLY expensive housing, but just an app that gives people a reason to buy storage.

The thing that surprises me most is that people actually expected different behavior. Are we all that naive?

Rather than looking for visionaries in keynotes to inspire us – maybe we should focus on educating the customer and realize that we have to sell our product (and ourselves) differently to the operational infrastructure people that own the real EMC relationship in most companies.

Application teams are slowly loosing contacts with EMC as the hardware side covers more of the relationship. The people that know the core reps by name now are getting peppered with software pitches. These people care about different things, but at the end of the day – the same customers are at the other end of the phone screaming at them. Frustrated Nancy in accounting that can’t find her invoice. Same problem, same solution – different path to deliver it.