migration-center vs. EMC’s EMA – Differences

Author

Florian Piaszyk-Hensen
Director Products @ fme AG

July 4, 2013

EMA is NOT an out-of-the-box product, it’s a tool set (framework) that ONLY the Documentum Professional Services Team uses. This tool is exclusively available through EMC IIG Services. Once the engagement is over, EMA leaves with the team and cannot be used for additional migrations. Partners and customers are not able to use EMA without IIG Consulting in a project because EMA bypasses the API (DFC).

The main use case for EMA is the high speed cloning from Oracle based on-premise Documentum installations to MS SQL Server based off-premise (EMC onDemand) installations. For this approach a simple dump&load is not feasible and a tool for cloning is needed. In addition EMC addressed some other use cases at EMC World 2013 like version upgrades (DCM to D2 life sciences and Webtop to D2 or xCP) and third-party migrations.

Speed vs. business requirements & methodology

Cloning or a 1:1 migration of all objects located in a repository without reorganization and clean-up has no additional business value, the result is just a new platform and/or version (garbage in, garbage out). With EMA, changes on business requirements can not be applied easily during the migration (e.g. new metadata, new object types, business logic etc.). The results of the actual migration can not be discussed with the business department before the content is imported in the target system. If needed, duplicates can not be dictated and managed. And furthermore it is not possible to apply changes during the project with just a few clicks of the mouse as you could with migration-center.

migration-center is designed for administrators to support them in all phases of a migration project and not just during the import. Over the last eight years migration-center has been developed together with our partners and customers into a product which integrates a full project methodology and all essential capabilities for the different steps during a project. Today migration-center is not only a product but rather a migration platform which covers numerous migration scenarios.

Summary

Unlike EMC’s EMA, migration-center is an out-of-the box product and comes with a user-friendly interface, full maintenance and support as well as regular updates. The product has been EMC certified since 2005 and is a proven migration platform for any type of platform independent content migration. migration-center has proven its quality in more than 130 projects around the world, especially within regulated environments. The product may be either leased or purchased by customers, partners or other preferred system integrators. migration-center is scalable because of the open architecture which is designed for large migrations without interrupting daily business operations. It reaches the maximum performance of the source and target systems without any restrictions. A large variety of algorithms and commands are available to meet all migration requirements without additional programming or scripting effort.

migration-center’s abilities will make a positive difference in your business if you are challenged with migrating enterprise content. Convince yourself and let us demonstrate your data working within migration-center in just a couple of days before you lease or buy the whole product.

Benefits of using migration-center instead of EMA

No service engagement with EMC IIG Services required
migration-center is a proven product since 2005 and was used in more than 130 projects around the world
It is a full function, out-of-the-box software, fully documented, easy to deploy, with an excellent graphical user interface
Product and migration project support available
NO DOWNTIME – It works without interrupting any of your normal business operations because of the delta migration capability
The software is designed to efficiently move and classify large volumes of documents into the chosen target repository (up to 1 million documents per day with just a single process)
A large variety of algorithms and commands are available to create a very specific mapping and transformation logic, covering every migration requirement possible and all this without additional programming or scripting effort
migration-center is able to apply the business logic of highly customized applications (e.g. D2, TBOs, server methods etc.)
Complete rule simulation and error handling are provided, allowing in depth testing of transformation rules before committing content to the actual repository import
The migration-center grants more than 55 out-of-the-box connections from various sources to various target systems
migration-center supports Documentum versions from 4i to D7
migration-center reflects proven migration methodology in its step-by-step processes
migration-center has been validated and approved by many companies in regulated environments, e.g. international pharmaceutical players
The migration-center pricing model is simple and very flexible
Through its enormous flexibility the migration-center may be deployed for a variety of migration scenarios
With our international partners we offer customer product training as well as complete implementation by highly competent professionals
migration-center is much more than a simple ETL tool
migration-center offers a variety of proven pre-configure services