EMC has announced a multi-year vision and new product offerings related to the future of content management.
As part of this vision, EMCs Enterprise Content Division has revealed ’Project Horizon’ - a next-generation content platform and apps marketplace - designed to help CIOs and enterprises “drive digital agenda, strengthen competitive advantage, and harness untapped value of business content.”
Launched at EMC World in Las Vegas, the Project Horizon marketplace will be curated by EMC, including both EMC-built and partner-built apps and solutions.
Project Horizon, built upon Pivotal CF, an enterprise PaaS powered by Cloud Foundry, has been built with the vision of enabling all digital content flows for the digital enterprise.
Bringing what EMC brands a “unique approach” through a mobile-first, cloud-first mindset - a term coined by Microsoft - Project Horizon aims to deliver a next-generation, multi-tenant content platform for enterprises across the world.
“To understand where we’re going, we have to understand where we came from,” says Rohit Ghai, President, EMC Enterprise Content Division. “EMC has been a leader in the ECM market for the last 25 years, helping our customers transform business by connecting information to work.
“We understand content, and having a complete content strategy is more critical than ever. Digital enterprises are moving away from monolithic solutions.
“Unlocking the way people will experience content in the future will depend upon a revolution in how content is accessed, managed and delivered.
“Project Horizon will help these organisations create a digital workplace, a digital value-chain and operate with a digital mindset regardless of where they are on the journey to Digitalisation.”
According to Ghai, speaking at EMC World, Project Horizon highlights include Agile Foundation, a multi-tenant foundation offered as shared services platform for building cloud native applications.
Furthermore, Ghai says Bridge to Future allows existing current-generation Documentum, solutions based on D2 and xCP to be hosted on Project Horizon, enabling customers to advance their digital journey while continuing to access its UI and platform services.
New solutions to be hosted on Project Horizon include Documentum Capital Projects Express and Documentum Life Sciences Solutions Suite 4.0.
Built with a microservices-based architecture, Ghai believes that Project Horizon is “DevOps and Agile ready.”
“The architecture supports continuous integration and deployment thereby enabling a cycle of innovation of days or weeks rather than months or even years,” he adds.
“Each of these Modules or “Tiles” will also have an out-of-the-box app and the ability to embed that app to build solutions by assembling these modular blocks of functionalities.
“This enhances time to value and allows customers to use what they need and pay only for what they use.”
Also part of Project Horizon is the Co-Innovation Program, specifically designed to engage customers from early development cycle through rapid visual prototyping, involving partners and customers working with EMC teams to build Project Horizon Tiles.
“Component- and cloud-based architectures offer enterprises significant benefits in time to market, economies of scale and business agility,” adds Melissa Webster, Program Vice President, Content and Digital Media Technologies, IDC.
“At the same time, customers need a path to the future that lets them leverage and extend their existing investments.
“We are seeing growing interest in cloud - in its many variations - for ECM and for cloud-based content applications that automate critical enterprise business processes.”
