EMC, FileNet blend content management, storage, BPM

The role of content management in the enterprise is expanding as vendors such as EMC and FileNet build new hooks into storage and business process management technologies.

EMC this week will roll out a new policy engine designed to connect content management intelligence with storage arrays. Meanwhile, FileNet last week introduced Version 3.0 of its P8 content management platform with new business process management capabilities and Web services support.

With its Documentum Content Storage Services, EMC is bridging the once separate areas of content management and storage, said John Magee, vice president of product marketing at EMC.

The engine is a set of tools for automating the placement of unstructured information on specific storage platforms and moving specified content, according to policies, from one storage platform to another throughout the information lifecycle, according to Magee.

"This makes it possible for organizations to manage unstructured content in the day-to-day and in the long term," Magee said.

Content and document management technology provides deep intelligence about unstructured data. For example, Documentum Content Storage Services tags information with a rich set of metadata, illuminating not only that a piece of content is a Word document, but that it is a contract that has been approved by sales but not yet by legal, and it carries specific retention requirements, Magee said.

"Previously this was a manual process and very expensive," Magee added.

In addition, with its capability to define retention policies, and automate the process of implementing policies where content is stored, Documentum Content Storage Services can aid regulatory compliance efforts.

"It can trap a point in time when something becomes a record and needs to be tracked differently and apply rules," Magee said.

Documentum Content Storage Services supports all EMC storage platforms and, through a file system interface or custom connectors, competing storage arrays from Hitachi, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Network Appliance.

Whereas many products can automate data migration and set policies based on files, EMC's product offers deep knowledge about content attributes, according to Nancy Hurley, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

"Because they are leveraging the Documentum content management solution, the granularity of what attributes I can set those polices on is greater than anything I've seen," Hurley said. Attributes such as "ownership, access control, the type of file, and where it is in its process. That is something you don't get anywhere else. The only way you get that whole concept of approval status or workflow routing is if you are married into the document manager," she added.

With its BPM and Web services hooks, FileNet's P8 3.0 aims to improve visibility with regard to content usage and business processes, according to Ullrich Leuthner, senior product marketing manager at FileNet.

"The marriage of content and process lets us have visibility into what content gets used in the process and where it is in the process. This is especially important when you are building a process around [regulatory] compliance," Leuthner said.