Network Appliance And Documentum Keep Content Management Simple

The holiday season means unprecedented demand for many companies and organizations. During these times, a good handle on content could make this a joyous holiday all around.

Storage vendors would probably morph into content-management vendors if they could, because storage hardware has become such a commodity. Some would acquire to reach such a goal, but most would settle for partnerships. EMC-owned Documentum Inc. is still able to honor such partnerships, and it's ready to work closer than ever with Network Appliance Inc., arch-competitor in the storage-networking market to parent EMC.

Network Appliance said Monday that it will devote resources to Documentum's lab to help certify the content-management expert's enterprise content-management software on Network Appliance storage appliances. The partners claim to store 1 billion objects in a content repository on Network Appliance gear. And they suggest that customers could manage that many objects using industry components including Windows, Ethernet, and Network Appliance's NearStore appliance.

One analyst says Network Appliance needs the Documentum partnership to make up ground on EMC, which has a big lead in content-management storage. "So NetApp will get another shot at the content-management market," says Peter Gerr, an analyst at Enterprise Storage Group, "but it's more of a political move for Documentum, showing it can still operate and be an independent software vendor."