In an effort to demonstrate the speed and ease of use of its dynamic applications compositions platform, Documentum xCelerated Composition Platform (xCP), enterprise content management firm EMC instituted a designer”s challenge earlier this year, the five finalists of which were announced this week.

The EMC Documentum xCP Designer”s Challenge, which was unveiled in May, asked its customers and partners to build a case management application using the xCP platform.

The challenge”s five finalists were selected based on their application”s breadth of functionality, completeness, and emphasis on composition and configuration versus custom code. They include Trends Global, Selectica, MatchFirst, Booz Allen Hamilton and Avantias.

The top three winners – which will be announced in early November – will take home $35,000 for first prize, $10,000 for second prize and $5,000 for third prize.

The xCP platform – which provides fully integrated technologies, development and deployment tools that emphasize configuration versus coding – is for use with development solutions for enterprise content management, business process management, intelligent capture, customer communications management, collaboration and compliance.

According to EMC, the platform can cut down case-based application building time by up to 50 percent.