EMC: Bigger and Hungrier

Documentum, founded in 1990, built an early lead in the document management market. In December 2003, the company became part of EMC, one of the biggest and most aggressive vendors in the data storage systems market—and some of EMC’s hard-charging culture appears to have rubbed off.

David Beyers, manager of training technologies at Alteon, Boeing’s flight and maintenance training subsidiary, says he notices the difference in the Documentum sales team now that they work for EMC. “The sales guys were low-key before,” he says. “Now they want more commitments up front. They’re a little more aggressive.”

Beyers adds, though, that EMC has also brought more depth to Documentum’s technical support staff. “They’ve been really good about putting us in touch with engineers at no charge,” he says. “Before, I just don’t think [Documentum] had the staff. It costs money to provide those kinds of people.”

While Documentum used to have a reputation for being expensive—at one time costing more than twice as much as competitors—its pricing is now in line with the rest of the market, according to customers. However, getting the code customized can still be pricey, says Brian Madden, director of information technologies at Boston Capital, a real estate financing firm.

Documentum developers can command hourly rates of $175 or more, whereas standard Web developers run $130 per hour, according to Madden. “It can add up very quickly if you need to make customizations,” he says.

Still, Documentum’s system stands apart in providing a soup-to-nuts ability to handle multiple types of content, says Steve Servais, director of human resources information systems at The Manitowoc Co., a manufacturer of ships and cranes. “We really looked for a vendor that could meet our document management, Web content management and collaboration needs,” he says. “We felt Documentum delivered that.”

And many customers like that Documentum is large and well established, particularly now that it’s under EMC’s wing. Darrell Delahoussaye, manager of information systems in Bechtel’s oil, gas and chemicals division, has worked with Documentum since the early 1990s. As Documentum expanded it has incorporated more sophisticated features into its system. “They’ve maintained their relationship with customers they’ve had for a long time,” Delahoussaye says, “and as part of EMC they have even more resources.”

Enterprise Content Management

EMC
6801 Koll Center Pkwy.
Pleasanton
CA 94566
(925) 600-6800
www.documentum.com

TICKER: EMC (NYSE)

EMPLOYEES: 22,700

Dave DeWalt
Executive VP, Software
Previously president and CEO of Documentum. In 1997, he co-founded Eventus Software, a Web content software firm now part of Segue Software.

Rob Tarkoff
Senior VP, Software
In charge of strategy for the software group. Previously, he was the chief strategy officer of Documentum. Before that, he headed business development for Commerce One, a provider of supply chain management software.

PRODUCTS

Documentum 5.3 software provides storage, retrieval, search, security and other services for documents, records, images, e-mail, Web pages and other content. eRoom Web-based software lets distributed teams share documents and manage tasks.

Reference Checks

Boston Capital
Brian Madden
Dir., I.T.
(617) 624-8642
Project: Real estate financing firm uses Documentum 5.25 to store documents for 2,500 low-income housing properties.

Bechtel
Darrell Delahoussaye
Mgr., IS
(301) 228-8020
Project: Firm’s oil, gas and chemicals group uses Documentum to store documents, such as engineering diagrams, associated with 200 major construction projects per year.

Concordia University
Andrew McAusland
Exec. Dir., Instructional and I.T. Services
[email protected]
Project: Montreal university stores 15,000 student applications per year and 6 million pages of faculty-related documents in Documentum.

The Manitowoc Co.
Steve Servais
Dir., Human Resources IS
[email protected]
Project: Wisconsin ship and crane maker replaced homegrown content management systems with Documentum.

Bristol Myers Squibb
Doug Winning
Mgr., Document Design and Integration
[email protected]
Project: Drug maker stores 45,000 documents, such as floor plans, for 200 buildings worldwide in Documentum.

Alteon
David Beyers
Mgr., Training Technologies
[email protected]
Project: Boeing subsidiary uses Documentum to store about 1 terabyte of technical data used to produce maintenance-and flight-training publications and programs.

Executives listed here are all users of EMC’s Documentum products. Their willingness to talk has been confirmed by Baseline.

EMC operating results*

2005YTD20042003
Revenue$2.24B$8.23B$6.27B
Gross margin52.3%51.2%45.6%
Operating income$323.21M$1.04B$401.16M
Net income$269.83M$871.19M$496.11M
Net margin12.0%10.6%8.0%
Earnings per share$0.11$0.36$0.22
R&D expenditure$234.30M$847.90M$718.47M

*Fiscal year ends Dec. 31; YTD reflects first three months

Source: company reports

Other Financials**

Total assets – $15.80B

Stockholders’equity – $11.72B

Cash and equivalents – $1.68B

Short-term investments – $1.38B

Long-term debt – $128.08M

Shares outstanding – 2.44B

Market value, 4/25 – $31.96B

**As of March 31, 2005, except as noted