Documentum takes eRoom enterprisewide

Content management company Documentum Inc. last month unveiled its first integrated product from eRoom Technology Inc. since acquiring the collaboration software company late last year.

Called Documentum eRoom Enterprise, the product combines eRoom's collaboration features with Documentum's enterprise content management.

ERoom provides a virtual meeting room that allows users to share documents and information and conduct conference calls. However, one of eRoom's weaknesses, said Whitney Tidmarsh, vice president of product marketing at Documentum, is that the content lasts only as long as the project. "There's no way to share content between eRooms or share other discussion threads with people who aren't part of the project team," she added.

ERoom Enterprise fixes this problem by centralizing content and giving multiple applications access to one shared repository, Tidmarsh said. That way, others can access and use the documents later. Also, content created elsewhere or by using other applications, such as Siebel Systems Inc. products, can be accessed in other eRooms.

The company also made searching easier by allowing users to search and index anything stored in Documentum. And it offers better version management by adding the capability to track different versions of a document as users comment on or change it.

Lt. Michael Whitecar, head of the Navy Medicine Online portal for the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, said the agency has used eRoom for about a year and a half to collaborate and make decisions online, and officials are interested in the new product's enterprise features.

"Right now, a lot of our data is stovepiped," he said. Data is posted in one room and retrieved, but it stops there. "It doesn't cross over into other rooms. ERoom Enterprise will allow us to take [data] across different communities of practice and allows archiving for future use."

ERoom Enterprise is on the General Services Administration Schedule. Pricing starts at about $50,000 for 100 users, but costs less if agencies are current Documentum or eRoom users.