In this post I would like to relay some advices around the upgrade to Documentum 7.2 I have got in the session from Patrick Walsh about “What’s New, what’s Next: EMC Documentum Platform”.

With Documentum 7.2 the processes for the upgrade is more cleaner and there are less restrictions. For instance more upgrade scenarios are documented, that can help us to define the best upgrade path to use.

There was also a slide which listed the following points to take into account when we have to define the right time to upgrade the current installation.

  • Features
  • Costs
  • Dates

Is there not something missing?
On my point of view, there is at least an additional point to consider. When I do the impact assessment to know if we have to upgrade or not and when, I study the list of issues that have been fixed with this new version – if we are impacted or not by them – but also which open issues (who knows an application without bugs? ) are coming with it that are acceptable.

Another helpful information – which can give an insight to customers – is the time to achieve a typical upgrade project.
Documentum considers 6 to 12 months for the planning (evaluation of the release, gathering business requirements, budget approval aso) and 6 to 24 months for the implementation and testing.
Based on that, customers still using the version 6.7 (End Of Support is April 30 2018) should think to upgrade to version 7.x

To facilitate the upgrade, the client and platform do not have to be upgraded in one big bunch. the D6.x clients can be upgraded first and then the 6.7 platform.

Documentum introduced also “Phased Service Upgrades”. For instance, we have the possibility to upgrade xPlore from version 1.3 to 1.5 in phase one and a couple of months later in phase two the platform from 6.7 to 7.2.
Or vice-versa, we start with the platform and later on we upgrade xPlore.
With this approach, having de-coupled services, we have more flexibility and less downtime.

And now, last but not least, the aim for the future is to have no downtime at all during the upgrade. THIS would be wonderfull !