Capgemini links up EMC and Microsoft content platforms

LISBON: Global consultancy Capgemini has launched an enterprise framework designed to integrate EMC's Documentum content management technologies with Microsoft's SQL and SharePoint platforms to deliver compliance-oriented content to collaboration portals.

The Collaboration+ framework helps businesses execute processes, including asset and human resources management, more efficiently while adhering to compliance standards, according to Capgemini.

Any business process which requires collaboration and compliance can be managed via the framework, the firm said.

Collaboration+ was designed initially for Network Rail, which had complained of having no consistent way to manage projects.

"Most of the time in organisations different groups come to work together on the same projects and that creates a lot of tensions," said Pascal Simons, practice leader for enterprise content management (ECM) at Capgemini.

"The communication from Microsoft has not been very clear up to now about its position in the content management market, so our role is to provide guidance on the best use of [EMC and Microsoft] technologies and their integration."

Capgemini claimed that companies could lower costs by 25 to 45 per cent and double or quadruple user productivity by using the framework.

Mike Davies, an analyst with Ovum, warned that the proliferation of SharePoint use among enterprises is a cause for concern if they do not have other systems in place to manage and control the back end.

"The functionality of SharePoint 2010 isn't enterprise content management, it isn't even ECM-light," he said.

"Any organisation which ends up putting its intellectual property assets in SharePoint also needs something like the structure which EMC Documentum provides."