If you haven’t been paying attention, EMC announced a strategic partnership with FatWire today.  I couldn’t be much more pleased.  I’ve been pretty clear that I don’t feel that EMC’s Documentum Web Publisher has the chops to compete in the market and that as long as its release cycle was tied to the Content Server, it never would.

That is no longer a problem.  What does this mean for EMC and FatWire?

• EMC now has a WCM offering! Yes, they are calling is Web Experience Management, which is a better term in many respects than Web Content Management, but the point is that EMC now has a viable story to tell people.  We’ll talk about the “Experience” aspect of it later.
• This is strategic to EMC and they want to succeed. Seems obvious, but they put some money where their mouth is.  EMC is buying a minority equity stake in FatWire.  That means that if FatWire does well, EMC does better.  It also gives an investment boost to FatWire.
• We have WCM Application Separation! FatWire can evolve their offering as fast as they desire in order to keep up with the other vendors in the space.  The joy is that FatWire can develop for the market and not what Gartner thinks an ECM solution should offer.  More, and tighter, integration between the two will make this a potentially strong offering.
• FatWire is selling Documentum Digital Asset Management. This is important because a stronger stream of license revenue for this product-line may mean more investment in the product.  Like many of the Documentum products, it is strong under the hood, but it isn’t the prettiest thing to look at in the showroom.

Lee Dallas has some good thoughts on this announcement, as does Barb Mosher over at CMS Wire.  Lee tackles the philosophical side of this partnership and Barb explains why this could be a win-win for both the companies and their clients.

There is a webinar on February 17th on the partnership.  It should provide some more insight on the marketing side of the solution.

Personally, we’ll know more in a year after we track one critical item, Execution.