Executives in charge of information management at various companies find themselves at a critical juncture as cloud technology matures.
Navigating the New Era of Cloud-Centered Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
In the predicted sixth era of people, process, and information, as highlighted by AIIM CEO John Mancini, organizations are being urged to embrace mobile, analytics, cloud, and collaboration to stay competitive. This shift towards a cloud-centric approach to Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is not just about adopting new technology, but about strategic, integrated management of content, costs, and compliance to drive innovation and business value.
According to David Jones of OnBase, a cloud-centered ECM strategy could deliver nearly three times the return on investment compared to on-premise equivalents. However, CIOs need to be aware of their options in deploying hybrid versus private cloud, who is responsible for data privacy, and what sort of return on investment to expect from the various strategies.
Organizations are moving to the cloud for reasons such as greater efficiency, managed costs, enhanced user support, and new functionality, often around mobile and tablet device interfaces. Yet, the location of content (on-premise or cloud) is not the defining factor in security; the information security and governance mechanisms put in place are what make the difference.
The weight of managing data privacy falls on the organization that owns the data, regardless of whether the data is stored in the cloud or on-premises. This means that organizations need to be vigilant about their data privacy practices, especially when using file sharing solutions without proper authorization, which could potentially put them on a slippery slope.
Public cloud solutions are the cheapest of the cloud offerings, but they have limited configuration capabilities and a shared architecture, making them a non-starter for most organizations for ECM. Hybrid cloud, on the other hand, is seen as a main way for organizations with large investments in existing on-premise solutions to gradually move to the cloud, with a management overhead on the solution. The most similar cloud offering to an on-premise solution is a hosted private cloud, which has high costs compared to other cloud deployment methods.
To navigate a successful cloud-centered ECM strategy, organizations should emphasize clear objectives, careful IT landscape analysis, secure migration, cost management, governance, and continuous optimization. Key best practices include defining clear business-aligned goals for ECM in the cloud, thoroughly analyzing existing IT and content landscapes, planning and executing secure, phased cloud migration, adopting a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud approach carefully, implementing advanced cost management and optimization practices, embracing cloud governance frameworks and automation, enabling cross-location collaboration and agility, and continuously optimizing cloud environments.
In conclusion, while the benefits of moving to the cloud are widely recognized, the question is whether they outweigh the risk of disrupting internally managed systems. By following these best practices, organizations can ensure their ECM systems scale effectively, remain secure, control costs, and foster the agility needed to thrive in evolving digital enterprises.
Technology plays a crucial role in data-and-cloud-computing strategies for Enterprise Content Management (ECM), as organizations shift towards a cloud-centric approach to stay competitive. CIOs need to consider their options in deploying hybrid versus private cloud, understanding their responsibilities for data privacy, and evaluating the return on investment from various cloud strategies, such as hybrid cloud and hosted private cloud.
