Critical dates for OpenText Documentum solutions entering maintenance mode

Critical dates for OpenText Documentum solutions entering maintenance mode

by | Jan 19, 2023 | Insights, OpenText Documentum, Technical Services

OpenText has announced critical dates for OpenText Documentum solutions for 2023, but instead of a problem you should consider this as an opportunity. Now could be a great time to make a more strategic move to a more intuitive user interface, to a cloud-based platform, or to wider system consolidation involving archiving of inactive content. A timely review will reveal your best options and roadmap. 

Solutions entering maintenance mode 

There’s nothing like a new year to usher in change. For IT teams and business tech decision-makers, January 2023 signals a countdown to a whole raft of OpenText™ Documentum™ products entering maintenance mode, halting functionality updates to make way for new and updated product versions.  

This April will mark the lifecycle end for several products in the Documentum stack including: 

  • OpenText Documentum Archive Services for SAP® Solutions 16.4 
  • OpenText Documentum  Content Services for SAP Solutions 16.4 – upgrade to 22.2 
  • OpenText Documentum D2 16.4 – upgrade to 22.2 
  • OpenText Documentum D2 +Pack 16.4 – upgrade to 22.2 
  • OpenText Documentum D2 Advanced Publishing Services 16.4 – upgrade to 22.2 
  • OpenText InfoArchive 16.4 – upgrade to 22.4 

With more to follow by December 2023: 

  • OpenText Documentum D2 16.5 – upgrade to CE 22.4 
  • OpenText Documentum D2 Advanced Publishing Services 16.5 – upgrade to CE 22.4 
  • OpenText Documentum for Capital Projects 16.4 – upgrade to CE 22.4 
  • OpenText Documentum D2 +Pack 16.5 – upgrade to CE 22.4 

This phasing out of current versions of critical content management applications (a full list can be found here, or contact us to get full details) means that performance and features will no longer be enhanced or improved. From the beginning of December 2023, there will be no more hot fixes, new releases, Java versions, or browser updates without significant extra fees. 

Opportunity for improvement 

While possibly frustrating, reaching a crossroads like this can be quite useful, encouraging new decisions and actions to improve, augment, or upgrade existing solutions.  

Most companies don’t gain value in absorbing extended support arrangement fees, continuing costs of maintaining aging on-premise environments, or additional costs for performance that steadily deteriorates. Nor do they benefit from legacy applications that tie users to old databases and inefficient versions of operating systems. 

Commonly addressed frustrations reported by fme clients include: 

  • Upgrading to latest system versions to take advantage of fixes, improvements and enhancements; 
  • Replacing underlying OS or database versions (for example exchanging Oracle with PostGres or similar); 
  • Migration to/system consolidation on the latest/cloud-based version of a current platform; 
  • Implementing new and modern desktop and mobile user interfaces that will truly engage end users working on-site and in remote locations; 
  • Strategic content archiving designed to free up capacity, reduce costs and boost system performance of core, critical business systems; 
  • Retiring legacy systems altogether and starting over with a new application. 

Rather than persist in a state of inertia, this is a good time to review current infrastructure and identify opportunities for effective streamlining and modernization to achieve new agility, performance, and ROI from IT spending. 

There are also many opportunities to improve user acceptance, motivation, and system adoption by implementing a modern, efficient interface.  

Here’s a practical plan

First step: Understand what you have 

It’s vital to first understand where your current systems are, which solutions will be impacted by the changes, how they are interconnected, and how important each of those solutions are to your business processes and workflows. We recommend conducting a comprehensive review and analysis of your current technology estate to define and prioritize your environment, risks, and solution options. As an OpenText and Documentum implementation partner, fme has developed and refined a series of specific workshops that can walk you through this process and provide a list of options on how to proceed. 

With a clear understanding of your current state, you will be able to consider current and emerging opportunities, as well as requirements on the technology or business side that are currently unfulfilled. Emerging opportunities might include a previously talked-about move away from local systems and inhouse application management to a cloud-first set-up as part of an IT modernization or digital transformation initiative. Or maybe just a version upgrade is all that is needed to be future-proof.  

Next: Look to the future 

An in-depth analysis process is an excellent way to have a comprehensive IT health-check before committing substantial resources, and will allow you to create an informed cost-benefit analysis.  

Some companies delay IT investment for as long as possible, even if limping by with a patched system could cost more in the long run, increase the potential of risk, and absorb more internal resources in ongoing maintenance. For many, a smaller, strategic investment now can minimize or even eliminate future issues, and ensure systems will meet their requirements for the coming years. Others choose to start a large initiative now and realize the benefits of new solutions before their competition.  

Regardless of the chosen scenario, implementing the new set-up and migrating the designated content could take several months, so the sooner teams are aware of their current state and can make an informed decision, the better the chances of a smooth transition. 

Now: Engage the experts 

fme is perfectly positioned to help companies evaluate and navigate the forthcoming OpenText Documentum upgrades, thanks to the long-standing partnership between our companies and our expertise across all of the linked platforms. Our pedigree includes:  

  • Over 100 experienced Documentum consultants 
  • Over 1,200 person-years of Documentum project experience 
  • Multiple Industry awards: Documentum Partner of the Year, EMC Top Service Partner, OpenText Technology Partner, OpenText ECD Silver Partner, OpenText Partner of the Year Finalist, DELL/EMC Partner Innovation Award, Rising Star Award Finalist, and more. 

Additionally, fme has led the industry by developing our proprietary platform solution migration-center, specifically designed to provide highly automated, large-volume migrations without system downtime for complex migration scenarios. This allows our customers to reduce costs, manage risks, increase productivity, and speed up the go-live of enterprise content management (ECM) applications. 

End-to-end solutions 

We offer a full suite of end-to-end services to solve your current and future challenges. With our talented and experienced team of experts we can: 

  • Execute discovery and roadmap workshops  
  • Analyze existing IT estate and identify improvement opportunities 
  • Implement or update systems and solutions  
  • Integrate disparate data silos across systems 
  • Migrate complex data and content
  • Run, maintain, and support the applications on-prem or in the cloud  

    Please find more details about our approach for your success here: 

    Whatever the scope of your OpenText Documentum-related projects in 2023, why not let us help lighten the load? 

    Contact us today 

    For more information, please complete this contact form and we’ll schedule a time to discuss how we can help you eliminate your challenges, increase your IT ROI, and decrease your system TCO. 

    What Digital Transformation Has to Do with High Jump – Thoughts on the Current Buzzword

    What Digital Transformation Has to Do with High Jump – Thoughts on the Current Buzzword

    by | Mar 5, 2018 | Insights

    Digitization – Digital Transformation

    First of all, I notice that the term “digitization” is often referred to as “digital transformation”. In my opinion, this should be clearly separated from each other.

    I see digitisation as the transition from analogue to digital. This is, for example, the replacement of paper documents (holiday request, material requisition, travel expense report, scanned invoice) by forms/dialogues on the intranet. The advantages compared to conventional in-house mail with only one analogue copy are clear: faster processing on the computer without waiting times. And other new technologies and applications (e. g. mobile devices, sensors, networking and apps, frameworks, cloud storage…) ensure that more and more areas are opened up for digitization by computer science/IT.

    Although this is a change (transformation) it does not mean a great revolution, but rather an expected steady growth, as it is to be followed e. g. also with progressive motorization and automation. With the usual procedures “look for qualified employees and regularly train them further; adapt the product range to the latest technology, remain innovative in your own core business” you will continue to do well… or should we use the subjunctive “would”?

    An important point is the progressing digitization as a basic building block for the real “Digital Transformation”: the digital twins! The images of the analog business objects of the real world are now digitally and cross-linked available.

    A striking technology for this is the emerging Internet of Things. In my opinion, this is still very experimental at the moment with funny gadgets or questionable pseudo products… But also the first steam engines, airplanes, computers and mobile phones were smiled at.

    Disruptive developments

    Undoubtedly and very attentively to observe is the immensely increasing generated connected data volume. Today, the technology is also available to record these data volumes as Big Data. In addition, the methods of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have been added to the processing and use of this data. These data volumes can thus be controlled.

    With these new and simultaneously occurring aspects, all the necessary ingredients for a disruptive development full of force and speed come together, as if the three aspects would unite as single waves to form a tsunami-like “monster wave”.
    And it is precisely this wave, which is rolling towards established companies, that must be taken into account!

    (Digital) transformation

    This is because the processes, from customer requirements to product selection/purchase to service and support, are subject to constant change. With changing business models or completely new distribution channels, the importance of companies’ product know-how and the experience of employees towards a unique selling point can decrease. From my point of view, only these completely changed processes are the “digital transformation”.

    Let’s get back to the paper documents mentioned above and their digitization in the Intranet/Internet. Is it possible to approve these documents automatically? Can an AI learn to handle the simple cases autonomously, send only complex cases to manual approvers for manual approval, and even discover hidden errors and irregularities using statistical means? I think so, yes. And only then do I see the processing transformed digitally.

    And so, even established companies have to expect that their rigid sales/service routines will be replaced by completely different processes in the newly established competitors, that they will be overtaken by the competition, in a surprising way, so to speak, previously assumed to be unthinkable or unlawful. To put it vividly,”at excessive speed” or “on a forbidden track”… and that, in my opinion, is the real meaning of digital transformation: there are new players/competitors and the “cheat/trick” because they don’t adhere to the usual mechanisms and surprise everyone:

    • … there is someone who runs the 100 meters at the World Cup with a short cut and wins – this is only unthinkable, not yet happened but not explicitly forbidden in the rules?
    • …. or jumps under the crossbar and wins – there was something once? Right: > Dick Fosbury 1968 at the Olympic Games in Mexico.

    The competitors of the > straddle style were unfortunately no longer satisfied with the tried and tested methods “sifting of the best talents, hiring the best trainers and organising the best training camps”.

    The solution-invariant customer problem

    The Fosbury-Flop has efficiency advantages, because the centre of gravity during the jump curve is always below the high jump batten to be crossed by the body. This corresponds to the “solution variants (customer) problem”.

    This is exactly the view you as a company must have of customer problems. In other words, check your products, services and solutions in the digital environment to see whether similar (previously unthinkable) advantages in business processes can be made visible and usable in the future by networking, IoT, Big Data and KI/ML.

    For example, are you a manufacturer of measuring instruments? Your customers don’t really want to buy or own any measuring devices. They only need them to check their production facilities and the quality of the manufactured products. Another process (for an exemplary simple case) could be to use the motion/vibration sensor of a mobile phone to record the resonances/oscillations of the production plant. The digitization would be accomplished and they would have the “digital twin” of the required data. These could now be compared with large quantities of known characteristic curves of intact and faulty plants (e. g. in the cloud at a service provider) of an AI. This would have involved a change from the acquisition/ownership of products to the results service.

    There are similar ideas among the major automobile manufacturers who are pursuing a move away from the “owning a vehicle” model towards “mobility solutions”. It is only such changes of processes and business processes that I would like to call “digital transformation”.

    Your Digital Transformation

    Finally, I would like to point out the need for action in view of the possible disruptive developments. Examples such as Uber and AirBnB have shown that it is not enough to keep ahead of well-known competitors. You have to face completely new competitors and offers that can appear very fast, surprising and dominating.

    Test your digital maturity level, make a workshop on new ideas/procedures and their implementation with your IT. Be ready for your own digital transformation and feel prepared for the new approaches of your competitors. We will be happy to support you!