Documentum announces release 2.0 to improve business process management; industry leader raises the bar for enterprise document management through functionality that leverages corporate intellectual capital.

PLEASANTON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 6, 1994--Documentum(TM) Inc. Tuesday announced Release 2.0 of the Documentum Enterprise Document Management System (EDMS).

The Documentum EDMS is a family of open, client/server software products designed to help Fortune 1000-class companies create and reuse their intellectual capital effectively across the enterprise.

With Release 2.0, the Documentum EDMS delivers new functionality for collaborative management of business processes, expanded application tailorability and enhanced usability features for greater user productivity.

Documentum EDMS applications derive their power from the Virtual Document, a unique combination of document objects that can be retrieved from any source across the enterprise and assembled upon demand according to a company's business rules. Release 2.0 is designed to streamline the business processes involved in assembling and managing Virtual Documents throughout the organization.

A major new enhancement to the Documentum EDMS is the Virtual Document Manager(TM)(VDM), a powerful tool for managing all the collaborative efforts involved in managing and assembling configurations of business-critical documents.

Release 2.0 also includes expanded workflow capabilities for defining, initiating and processing complex workflows and Documentum's Quickbuilder(TM), a new screenpainter product, that allows easy customization of the user environment. In addition, Release 2.0 includes user productivity features that greatly enhance ease-of-use and which accelerate training and performance time.

"Intellectual capital is a highly prized resource, comprised of the knowledge assets of professional workers and the best practices of an organization," said Jeffrey A. Miller, president and chief executive officer of Documentum.

"Documentum Release 2.0 was designed to help our customers leverage their valuable intellectual capital to shorten time to market, improve product quality and enhance the overall effectiveness of their organizations."

"Today's Fortune 1000 companies with complex documentation requirements need more than just library services or workflow capabilities in order to succeed; they need a complete package that enables management of their business-critical processes," said Ann Palermo, director, electronic workplace consulting, International Data Corp. (IDC).

The Documentum EDMS includes: the Documentum Workspace(TM), a graphical user environment; the Documentum Server(TM), featuring a set of services for all information objects, including storage, retrieval, work process management and dynamic document assembly; and the Documentum Toolkit(TM), a set of APIs for building custom solutions.

Enhanced Collaboration Management

Virtual Document Manager -- Documentum's Virtual Document

Manager is a unique and powerful tool for managing collaborative

efforts and business-critical documents. The VDM provides a

universal view into a business process that allows users to

construct and look at compound documents, annotations, approved

documents and the relationships among document objects, and to

preview the document's configuration. It improves the team's

effectiveness, allowing authorized users to see a program's

progress, exchange concepts or comments and view finalized

documents. The VDM arranges compound document objects in a

hierarchical outline structure so users may easily navigate

for construction, editing and management. The VDM also

supports drag-and-drop operations for inserting document objects,

as well as for workflow and printing.

Expanded Workflow -- Documentum Release 2.0 features greatly

expanded workflow capabilities, enabling the storage and reuse

of workflow templates, including a task sheet capability that

allows users to define more complex workflows. Customized

in-box processing is also available through Release 2.0 so users

can sort in-boxes by status, priorities and tasks. Documentum

uses serial or parallel document distribution with electronic

sign-off, using existing e-mail systems to speed the review and

approval process. The system also includes triggers which

enable automatic notification of users who are impacted by

events.

Viewing and Annotation -- Workspace 2.0 will include Adobe's

Acrobat Reader (a viewer product providing universal access to a

document independent of the application program that created

it). Through Adobe's Acrobat Exchange, Documentum has provided

an annotations interface that allows approved users to view

"sticky note" annotations associated with a document.

Annotations are stored as objects with the same attributes as

the documents they're associated with, including profiling,

workflows and user clearances. With Adobe's Acrobat Exchange,

Documentum also supports term-hit highlighting, enabling the

software to search a document for a particular term and

highlight each occurrence of the term as it's found.

Metrics Tracking -- Metrics tracking features provide new

reporting and tracking facilities for improved management of all

documents and processes. Managers can track processes to

improve effectiveness, identify resource constraints and

automate metrics capture to improve productivity. Bottlenecks

can be easily pinpointed via router reports as well as workflow

and task summaries.

Application Tailorability

Documentum's Quickbuilder -- Documentum's Quickbuilder is a new

Documentum screenpainter that allows users to customize dialogs

and windows by changing labels, tailoring dialog language and

modifying the look and feel of the windows. Users can now

easily create customized attribute windows for specialized use.

Quickbuilder complements the Documentum Workspace application

programming interface (API), which is part of the Documentum

Toolkit. Because the Documentum Workspace is built around

desktop messaging standards such as Microsoft Windows Dynamic

Data Exchange (DDE), OLE 2.0, Apple Events and UNIX ToolTalk,

it's easy to create tailored desktop applications and reports

that seamlessly exchange data.

Enhanced User Productivity

Ease-of-Use Enhancements -- Workspace 2.0 accelerates the

acceptance and use of Documentum applications with an easy and

intuitive client interface. New features include an improved

dialog box that retains user preferences for access to a

appropriate Docbases, simplified window management and

hierarchical views, single mouse click operations such as

editing a document and drag-and-drop capabilities for document

import.

Platforms, Pricing and Availability

Release 2.0 of the Documentum Workspace is immediately available on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh, and in Q1 1995 for Motif clients. Release 2.0 of the Documentum Server is immediately available on Sun Microsystem's Solaris and HP/UX servers, and in Q1 1995 on the IBM RS/6000 under AIX.

Documentum Release 2.0 immediately supports ORACLE6 and ORACLE7 and will support SYBASE SQL Server on all of the above platforms in Q1 1995.

Pricing for the Documentum EDMS is volume-and-option-dependent, and ranges from $500 to $1,500 per seat depending on configurations and size of deployment.

About Documentum

With headquarters in Pleasanton, Documentum sells the Documentum Enterprise Document Management System through a direct sales force, system integrators and affiliated distributors in Canada and Europe. The company was founded in 1990 to offer a new class of enterprise document management applications that provide dramatic improvement in business-critical document processes.

The Documentum EDMS is the first family of open, client/server software products that can be tailored to specific enterprise document applications. Documentum has more than 100 customer sites in pharmaceutical, manufacturing, regulatory and government applications around the world. Documentum is a registered Sun Microsystems Catalyst Program Third-Party Supplier. -0-

Note to Editors: Documentum, Docobjects, Docbase, Documentum Server, Documentum Workspace, Documentum Toolkit and Documentum Quickbuilder are trademarks of Documentum Inc. All other companies and products may be trademarks of the respective company with which they are associated.

CONTACT: Documentum Inc., Pleasanton

              Sarah J. Rollins, 510/463-6800
                or
              Blanc & Otus, San Francisco
              Matt Duncan or Julie Sauter, 415/512-0500