"Look what IBM did to Lotus Notes," tends to be his answer.

"But EMC could make Documentum even better," I say. "That could happen..."

"It could," says my friend." But I have a feeling he wouldn't put two cents on the bet. "I'm not sure how a storage company and an enterprise content management company can share the same vision," he says.

"Why not?" I say.

It's an easy question to ask and a much harder one to answer. But analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe may shed a ray of light on the matter.

Here's what he says:

My core issue with EMC's acquisition of Documentum was that they have opposing business models: Documentum follows a consulting-oriented sell designed to reduce the amount of enterprise information to core essentials, while EMC wants to store as much of that information (that Documentum wants to eliminate) as possible.

Our EMC readers will probably be too busy this week to read this post; they're all down in Orlando trying to teach EMC users to sing We Are Family in perfect harmony.

And to my friend who got me to feed his paranoia, never mind the drink; you owe me an ibar