In my last post I introduced the concept of Fedegration as the ability to leverage and manage data and content across applications for new purposes and still leave it in place for use with the existing application.
I will now discuss how our team has built and integrated what I think is the best set of technologies for a Fedegration Platform.
Let’s hit the requirements first. I believe an ideal platform should:
· Integrate and master content across multiple ECM repositories
· Integrate and master data across multiple databases
· Have federated search and the ability to track changes
· Have the ability to import data and content from a wide array of sources (paper, fax, email, images, etc)
· Provide tools to export data efficiently to users and customers via multiple channels (web, print, email)
· Provide a built-in application development environment for build new applications and workflow using composite data and content sources
Of first and key note is that most applications these days rely on the presenting of multiple types of data (structured information) and content (unstructured information). Clearly, we have extended out Documentum products to include many capabilities to help federate content. CMIS support, federated search, virtual retention management are just a few of the elements that make up our capabilities here.
To really have the best offering, we also needed to be able to integrate and master data from multiple databases into the overall solution. This is one of the key elements within our partnership with Informatica. By integrating their Siperian MDM technology with our platform, we can access and combine structured and unstructured information to provide a totally new level of functionality.
Other components of our overall Documentum xCP platform give you the ability to easily compose new applications, provide new analytics, derive new intelligence, and export information for consumption. Separate, these are all interesting technologies, but the concept is to radically simplify the solution to a point where building new applications that leverage information from multiple sources becomes realistic rather than a multi-year exercise in futility.
This is a big task and while I think EMC now has the ONLY integrated platform for building applications from federated content and data, this is still not quite as simple yet as booting up my iPad. I don’t want to exaggerate here, this is still very tough stuff but, in conversations with many of you, it is also the most critical issue in IT today.
The real breakthroughs in discoveries and process improvements lie in our ability to combine and leverage both data and content in ways that have not to date been possible or economical. Just as we “mash up” best of bread web services to create new applications, we need to mash up our information create new insight and intelligence.
I am looking forward to seeing what is possible!
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