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2008 saw a flurry of reports by market research giants - Forrester, IDC, Gartner and Radicati group - predicting exploding growth in the Enterprise 2.0 space by 2013. Forrester, being the most optimistic, claimed not only that 2008 will be the year when web 2.0 his the enterprise, but also that by 2013 it will be a $4.6 billion industry. Others like IDC and Radicati have been more cautious. Though IDC predicted a staggering 191% growth and market size of $1.3 billion by 2012, Radicati made modest predictions of $842 million by 2012. And mind you, these predictions stand ground despite the fact over half the enterprises have blocked facebook, twitter and other pillars of social networking. While the reports and the market size they predict remains widely debated, it is evident that social software is making inroads into the enterprise, slowly but steadily.

It therefore comes as no surprise that organizations, big or small, new or old are trying their best to cash in as much from this new breed of buzzwords either by developing new products, or by adding ’social’ features to their existing product lines. While startups like Yammer and Xobini were very quick  to take the best of social web and apply it to the enterprise, old players like Microsoft and IBM were not too late to join the party. Microsoft added social features like Wiki and blogging to its existing Sharepoint server, IBM added a host of social features to its two decade old Lotus Notes suite of software. Almost every one of major enterprise vendor has now either a product dedicated to this new form of collaboration or is busy building it. One of not so visible impact these new breed of tools and suites has had is on the margins and sales of traditional collaboration suite vendors like EMC. EMC with Documentum and eRoom has long enjoyed leader status in Document management and Collaboration space, but lack of innovation, updates and features have almost given away this EMC’s space to Microsoft. To me, it almost seemed like EMC didn’t see it coming - or if they did, they ignored it completely. Microsoft with its Sharepoint server, has slowly been eating away big in this space. 

EMC however, took rather late note of this and after huge amount of research announced a new breed of collaboration suite called ‘CenterStage‘ for the knowledge workers. As they say, better late than never. EMC announced a private Beta of the product to a selected handful of organizations (about 200) and the beta closed in December. Although, they have not announced it publicly, it does seems like the product is going to be somewhat of a replacement for eRoom. The product will be launched in two versions - CenerStage essentials (The Basic version) and CenterStage premium (high end). And moreover, to make up for the delay and try and retain some eRoom customers, they are giving away CenterStage essentials for free. According to EMC, CenterStage essentials will be available for production use by second quarter of ‘09 and the premium version will only be available by late ‘09. 

But what exactly is CenterStage? Is it a replacement for webtop or a replacement for eRoom or both? If yes, is it a backward compatible with eRoom? If not, what is different? Or is it none? Is it something like Sharepoint? Will it be the next killer collaboration app for you organization? Will it make sense for you to wait for CenterStage or should you just upgrade to Sharepoint? Of if you’re like my current client and are struggling with Sharepoint, is CenterStage for you?  Or you are just locked up in eRoom and are itching to break free ? Maybe you are a CIO just flirting with the idea of Enterprise 2.0 in your organization and wondering if CenterStage is for you. If all that sounds familiar, than read on.

CenterStage: Collaboration tools of the second (2.0) kind

This blog provides and in depth discussion of a new offering from EMC in this space and tries to clear some confusions around the product. It also compares some of its features with those of competition and outlines some key differences that may serve as guiding factors for an enterprise wide adoption or rejection.

CenterStage is the next generation collaboration suite from EMC. The product is designed on the principles of web 2.0 is and is being touted as an Enterprise 2.0 product. However, being document centric, one might find it a little different from the rest of the pack. CenterStage is not a webtop replacement, though it can be used as a very basic client for Documentum. CenterStage is not the next version of eRoom and quite obviously it is not backward compatible with eRoom either. CenterStage is, however, a completely new web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 collaboration suite for Documentum that has been written from scratch and It can be used to write collaborative applications just like eRoom. The form of collaboration, however, differs significantly. eRoom employed web 1.0 tools of communication - static workspaces, chat rooms, emails and static documents that can be routed with workflows. CenterStage changes all that - from static workspaces to dynamic spaces where users can decide members, adds blogging, wikis, dynamic documents via templates, RSS feeds, commenting system and a faceted search facility based on Apache Lucene. The most attractive and interesting feature is perhaps, the addition of Social networking. Yes, CenterStage will finally bring Social Networking to the enterprise, something that not many applications can boast of at this time. 

One of the most striking feature of web 2.0 has been amazingly unstructured information beyond reals of relational database - which is in part the reason why we dont see many large integrated enterprise 2.0 applications. Enterprises have always strived for organizing and structuring information untill it is normalized to some extent and fits in a RDBMS - and there is even a dedicated stream of IT that deals with it. Web on the other hand has been anything, but relational. newsgroups, bulletin boards, chats, blogs, wikis, to facebook, you tube and twitter more recently all strive to promote more natural forms of communication. CenterStage is an attempt by EMC to bridge the two worlds. By supporting most of web 2.0 features in an enterprise, EMC is trying to structure the largely unstructured web.

Features: Revenge of the fallen?

They may have come late, but they are sure to stay. Being late can have its own advantages. You know what everyone is upto, you know what works and you’ve got more time to create something that works. Despite its late entry, CenterStage packs a handful of features. CenterStage will be launched in two flavours - vanilla and strawberry called the CenterStage Essentials and CenterStage pro. Essentials will be a very basic and trimmed down version of CenterStage and will support  basic content services

- Rich UI built using javascript and flash.  Are you bored using the same old Java/HTML webtop interface for your whole life? Do you need some excitement in life? CenterStage is for you! Without a doubt, the UI is much much better than Webtop. The javascript UI looks much light and feels more fresh. And there’s no Java applets this time around - so long UCF exceptions! Documentum has been the dark work horse for a long time, but the User Interfaces always slogged, and had me asking for more - be it Webtop, DA or even Desktop. I’m amazed (and surprised, in a good way) to see this come from EMC. They’ve worked hard at making UI’s more friendly and it shows. The screenshots below show the login screen and user home page.

- Dyanamic workspaces (users can create their own/add members themselves): Not only users can define permission settings for their own workspaces, but they can also define rules about the content that can be imported into a space i.e. a user can only allow a marketing document to be created if its in PDF format or an engineering document if its only in Word format. I would have liked a ‘file size’ rule as well, but nevertheless, it is indeed a very useful feature. You can also add custom welcome messages to each workspace.

More eye candy: Apple style slider control for permission and access control instead of roles and permissions (Remember None, Browse, Relate, Read, Version, Write, Delete?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- Visual organization (choose between carousel, details or list views): Another great feature introduced in CenterStage is ‘Visual Organization’ of documents. If you own an iPod or have used iTunes ever, you must already be aware of different views of your music files - List view, Grid view and Cover flow. CenterStage presents the same three choices to the user - a regular multi column list view, a detail view which is almost like a Grid view in iTunes and a ‘Carousel’ view - which presents cover flow like display of folders and documents. These views are backed up by a thumbnail generator service that runs with Documentum Content Server and generates thumbnails that can be used in these different views. The usability of these views needs no explanation. Imagine yourself sieving through hundreds of client documents or engineering designs to find the right one. Instead, you can just switch to carousel view and search them visually. Of course, the example is a lame one - you can tag and name your documents as “Client 5667837 ID Document” or “Time Travel Machine draft 1″, but you get an idea.

- Commenting system : The commenting system is Essentials is very basic. Select a document in any view of your choice and just add a comment! What more could you ask in life. Though, from the looks of it, it seems like Pro will have something close to social commenting - like that supported by DISQUS and like.  

- Recent documents and comments view (I know what you did last session) : This is another one that I liked. It is almost like having a version control system like subversion coupled with RSS feeds for your documents. Imagine this - you are working on a couple of documents make small changes to each of them and leave for home. The next day, you log onto your team workspace and it shows you all the recent documents that have changed since you last logged on! You no longer have to subscribe to each document to know which one has been updated. It is all implemented in your workspace. All documents that were in your workspaces and have been updated by your unreliable and crooked peers, simply show up in this screen without any effort. Zap. 

- Faceted drill down search: Documentum always provided a fairly fast and accurate search feature. The search got better with Documentum 6 and adoption of Apache Lucene. It got even better with CenterStage. Although the search engine remains the same, the presentation has evolved. More specifically, like the remaining interface, it has been web 2.0′ed. Again, it is much like iTunes’ search results in list view. When you search in CenterStage, you not only see matching documents, but the documents are automatically categorized. Categories include document types, size, dcoument types amongst others.

- Events and notifications - This feature notifies you automatically when a document is updated (Stalker!) CenterStage supports notification related to document updates out of the box. No need code or write business objects. And they can be templatized too! I love it.. Very easy to configure. +10

- Rich and Customized ‘homepages’ for spaces and each folder : Another feature that stands apart loud from both eRoom and webtop. If like me, you also think rich user interfaces should be included in United Nations’s list of Human Rights and every plain HTML interface should be treated as a violation, then you’ll be pleased with CenterStage.  CenterStage has got Rich text boxes everywhere! Yes, you can add rich home pages to each folder, a welcome message to each space and a rich notification message on few events. There is a HTML editor too, for the brave hearted.

- LifeCycles

-Workflows 

CenterStage Essentials provides almost all features that might be needed out of simple Documentum client. And given that it is free, it would be on the watch list of many enterprises like mine. The biggest advantage is perhaps the cost. It can be used to replace “read only” or basic Webtop licenses as a first step which would be a tremendous cost saver. Although, EMC will not support customizations to essentials, if you are a code junkie, you can hack it to any extent give its free and open nature.

CenterStagePro: Sign of things to come

CenterStage pro will be full blown enterprise 2.0 application. Although, EMC has not released a trial yet, reports suggest it will support at least the following features, in addition to essentials:

- Social Network (sorts of like facebook in an enterprise)

- Blogging (like blooger, wordpress)

-Wiki (like wikipedia) 

- Document templates (like sharepoint)

- RSS feeds

The only thing missing from that list is perhaps a twitter or yammer like communication tool. Otherwise, the list is just bang on.

Sharepoint Vs. CenterStage

I initially thought it would be out of context to mention this topic here, but I think its worth it, given the curiosity around the two. I would say Sharepoint finally found someone of its own size and perhaps Documentum too found a worthy competitor! I’ve had clients who asked me to compare Sharepoint with Documentum and suggest the better of the two. My answer used to be something like - “If you wanted to buy a cell phone, what would you buy - A TV or a Typewriter”. That kinda sums it up. There was no comparison. Sharepoint was a portal and a collaboration product while Documentum is a hardcore Document Management systems. Many a times, organizations with a budget and perhaps without a DMS mindset tend to pick up Sharepoint only to realize the mistake later. 

With the launch of Sharepoint server 2007 and CenterStage, the two can be directly compared. Microsoft is trying to make inroads into Document Management space dominated by players like EMC and IBM while EMC is trying to make way into space dominated by collaboration tools like Sharepoint. Both products provide almost similar features and are centered around Enterprise Collaboration. Microsoft has tremendous advantage of integration with office suite and other windows infrastructure - it can be quite easy to setup, install and administer compared to Documentum, but perhaps lacks scalability. Documentum on the other hand is tried, tested and proven, but complex. I would not dwell into feature by feature comparison here and would rather leave it for a later post. If you have any interesting bit to share, drop me a comment!

Stay tuned for more on CenterStage - including a “under the hood” look and a preview at CenterStage Pro!

           

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