Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

Mobile ECM: Your Content In Your Pocket

// October 5th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT // Glenn Gibson

Put mobile ECM into the pocket of your employees

The world of computing has changed. Forever.

These days it seems archaic to have to wait until you get home or to the office just to check your email, because now your email is in your pocket. The idea of printing off maps before heading out on a journey seems crazy because GPS on our phone gives us turn-by-turn directions. Lively pop-culture debates over a pint are now a thing of the past, because we can look up the answers on the internet immediately.

Yes, mobile computing devices have changed the world and changed us.  We expect instant access to information from wherever we are. The iPhone and the iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7 and the Blackberry give us this access like never before.

So what does the explosion in mobile computing have to do with ECM?  Everything. 

Think about it. What is one of the primary driving factors behind an organization developing an ECM strategy? The need to get critical business information into the hands of the right people at the right time. That’s what ECM is all about. 

But what if the right people are in the wrong place at the wrong time? What I mean is, what if the people who are responsible for making important decisions, from approving a critical business expense to agreeing to hire the perfect candidate, can’t physically get access to the information and systems they need in order to execute business decisions, simply because they are travelling or not in the office?   

The reality is that these individuals spend a lot of time on the road and out of the office. This lack of real-time access causes bottlenecks in your processes as the decisions have to wait until they get back online. This causes on-the-fly workarounds with emails and phone calls to get someone, anyone, with authority to make the decision. And once that decision has finally been made, it is very difficult to track all the activity that supports it. 

Yup, bottlenecks and workarounds caused when people who play a critical role in business decisions are out of the office have come to be expected as a normal part of business because, until recently, that’s just how it was. There was no other choice.

But, the world of computing has changed. If the ability to access email from anywhere in the world is not only a reality, but expected in today’s world, why is it any different when thinking about your other important business content and processes?

It shouldn’t be. And when you partner with an ECM vendor who understands this, it is not.

Today you can put your ECM content in your pocket. With mobile ECM applications you are able to not only able access your important content, but also participate in business processes, reviewing, approving and denying requests from wherever you are, directly from your mobile device. 

Now it is likely, for many good reasons that you may not want to make ALL your business information available via mobile devices. If mobile access to your information is part of your requirements when you are choosing an ECM vendor, you should look for a vendor which allows you to control what type of content and processes to make available via these mobile devices. You should choose an ECM system that can truly deliver on the promise to get critical business information into the hands of the right people at the right time, wherever they happen to be.

For your business this is both simple and profound. No more waiting to get back to the office. No more driving to coffee shops just to get access to your system to approve a request. No more bottlenecks caused by business travel. No more un-documented workarounds.  

It is that simple. It is that revolutionary. Because now your content is right there in your pocket.

What is the correct definition of “The Cloud”?

// August 9th, 2011 // 3 Comments » // Cloud Computing, IT // Glenn Gibson

In my last blog post, “What’s Wrong With Today’s Definitions of The Cloud,” I discussed why I believe the term “Cloud” is so confusing to the average person. And it’s not getting any easier. Not only are we hearing about the Cloud around the office and in TV commercials –   it’s also begun its infiltration into our pop-culture, too.

The July 2011 edition of the well-known technical and scientific journal, Entertainment Weekly, had an article called “Who’s Winning the Cloud Race?” that caught my eye. In the article, this glossy entertainment magazine takes a foray into the Cloud discussion, specifically delving into the major players now offering music in the Cloud, comparing Best Buy’s Music Cloud with Apple’s iCloud and Amazon’s Cloud Drive.

But that’s just the beginning of the confusion. The article then goes on to say “the biggest threat to the iCloud isn’t a cloud service at all. It’s beloved Pandora radio.” Okay, so now you’re saying that music in the Cloud doesn’t include online radio?! How then are we supposed to understand the article on Forbes.com which describes Pandora as “Cloud Radio”? 

This brings me back to my point. To the average consumer all this talk about Cloud is confusing at best. So then, let’s ask the question and get it over with: What is the correct definition of “The Cloud”?

Whether this is the definitive definition will be subject to debate, but here is what I believe is certainly a correct definition: “The Cloud” is a term used to describe a wide range of technologies, which are accessible through high-speed connections to the internet and private networks.

Now, before the technically-minded folks among us start gnashing their teeth and tearing their hair out in frustration that this simple definition does not do justice to the amazing technology which makes the Cloud possible or begin to cover the different types of Cloud available, please bear with me. As I stated in my last post, much akin to electricity, the average consumer does not require a detailed scientific explanation of “how it works” in order to be able to use it or what it can do for them. 

At the same time, I also believe that intelligent, curious and savvy consumers deserve a better explanation than simply “The Cloud is the Internet” if for no other reason than the fact that “private clouds” can function without any connection to the internet whatsoever!

But is the above definition all we need? No! We need to understand the “wide range of technologies” which are available thanks to the Cloud, and what this means for our lives. If you are prepared to spend a little time understanding each one, I believe that a reasonable understanding and comfort level with the term is well within everyone’s reach.

So, what are these aforementioned “wide range of technologies”?  Well, although the internet has been around for many, many years, it’s just been in the very recent past that the ability to access it (and private networks) across incredible high speeds from almost anywhere in the world and from so many affordable devices has exploded. With this availability has come an amazing growth of things we can do with such reliable, fast connectivity. Some of these things are (and are not limited to):

• Access software applications (Cloud Applications)
• Store our personal files, photos, music, etc. (Cloud Storage)
• Get more computing power (Cloud Computing)
• Use computer network and infrastructures (Cloud Infrastructure)

 If you’re thinking that you’ve been able to do some of these things for many years, you would be correct. The term “Cloud-Washing” describes that the word “Cloud” is being slapped on a lot of existing technologies, for right or for wrong.Now if butterflies of enlightenment are not flying around your head yet, stay tuned. I’m working on a whole series of Cloud-focused posts discussing each of the technologies listed above, including examples of why and how you would use them – and what you should consider before you do.

Once we get a good understanding of these, I’ll also tackle some of the technologies that make all this possible, hopefully helping you to distinguish between the different types of clouds out there (public, private, hybrid, etc.).

So while a really clear definition of “Cloud” is still being baked out in these posts, my current favorite was found in the most obvious of places: the dictionary. “Cloud: A dim or obscure area in something otherwise clear or transparent.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

What’s Wrong With Today’s Definitions of “The Cloud”

// June 16th, 2011 // 4 Comments » // Cloud Computing // Glenn Gibson

The Cloud.  The iCloud.  Cloud Computing. Cloud Power. Global Cloud. Local Cloud. Elastic Clouds. Public Cloud. Community Cloud. Hybrid Cloud. The Intercloud. Things can be “In the cloud” and according to Microsoft, you can go “To the cloud.”

Yup, just when we thought the word “cloud” was overused, it became even more overused. It might feel embarrassing, but I think it’s about time somebody asked: What exactly is “The Cloud”? 

When encouraging me to ask questions, my dad used to say “it’s better to look stupid for a minute than remain stupid for the rest of your life.”  This is usually excellent advice. However, I have found that asking  “what is The Cloud?” doesn’t usually result in enlightenment.

This is best illustrated by the first thing you find on this topic in Wikipedia:

Considering this is the hottest trend in IT at the moment, this is amazing. So why is it so darn confusing?  In efforts to explain the cloud I have noticed the Goldilocks syndrome. Some explanations are too hot (overly technical) and some are too cold (not technical enough). Finding the one that’s “just right” is easier said than done.

Why are both of these approaches not useful to the average person? 

Too Hot:  Over-Technical Explanations

Don’t get me wrong.  Cloud computing is a technical concept, but here’s the thing.  I understand the underlying technology, I have certifications in VMware and Citrix, I use it and I teach it. But even I find many of the explanations of the cloud to be jargon-riddled techno-babble. The Wikipedia article begins: “Cloud computing refers to the logical computational resources (data, software) accessible via a computer network.” Oh, now I get it.   

Now, if you already understand cloud computing and you enjoy regaling others with your wealth of technical knowledge on the subject, you may be thinking that I am talking nonsense.  People have to understand the technology because that’s what the cloud is, right? 

Not necessarily. To illustrate, think about electricity. We use it every day. We know that we need it to power our devices. We know we will get a shock if we put a fork in a plug. But do how much do we actually understand about it?  There are concepts of subatomic particles, and electromagnetic interactions and electrical potential. Do you need to understand all of this to use it every day? No.

Most of the articles attempting to explain the cloud are not written for a cloud consumer –  they are written as though everyone learning about cloud is studying to be a cloud engineer. So, if you find some explanations of the cloud overwhelming, don’t worry. It’s not you; it’s just that you aren’t getting the explanation that you need…which brings me to the other end of the spectrum.

Too Cold:  Overly Simple Explanations

Realizing that the technical approach is not appropriate for the common consumer, the other trend is this: Don’t attempt to explain it at all. Just throw the word “cloud” into marketing slogans and hope that people will figure it out. Examples of this are Microsoft’s “To the Cloud” or Apple’s “This is the Cloud the way it should be.” 

I asked my wife, a very smart business professional, what she thinks the cloud is. “It’s a place on the internet where you can store all your files so you can access them from any device,” she responded.

Yes, Apple did a good job explaining its “iCloud” to Mrs. Gibson. It proves the bigger point: That consumers don’t need to understand the technology, they only need to understand how it benefits them.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that “The Cloud” is not just online storage as defined by Apple. It is not just the ability to collaborate on documents over the internet as defined by Microsoft. It is much, much more than all of that, and that’s what ends up being confusing.

What’s the “Just Right” explanation? What is the actual definition of “The Cloud?” Look for my next blog post in this series where I will answer just that and explore the path to cloud enlightenment.

I will leave you with one last thought. Maybe this quest for enlightenment is coming to an end. Now that Apple have put the letter “i” in front of the word “Cloud,” we might find that people no longer need to understand what it is, they will just use it anyway.

What We Can Learn About the Enterprise Content Management Market from the Launch of iCloud

// June 6th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Cloud Computing, Software as a Service // Justin Alexander

Today, Apple announced its new iCloud service, which follows on the heels of similar “media locker” service announcements from Amazon and Google. At first glance, this set of new hosted consumer services seems completely unrelated to enterprise content management. But, if we dig deeper, I think the reflection of three larger trends can be observed.

Mobile Media

The explosion of mobile devices has been well-documented. And now, this trend transcends consumer and business boundaries. We’ve become accustomed to having access to email and websites no matter where we are. I personally live on the coast of Maine. I can still remember feelings of astonishment the first time I responded to a work email while I was on one of the small islands in my community. Today, this kind of “anywhere computing” isn’t even noteworthy. It’s just expected.

As I’ve previously noted on this blog, the amount of data being generated and stored is also expanding rapidly. For consumers, the most significant source of data is media files. iTunes and NetFlix are probably the two most obvious examples.

Apple’s iCloud, Amazon’s Cloud Player, and Google Music are all attempting to capitalize on these trends by adding hosted services that complement their existing mobile and/or e-commerce platforms. Microsoft is rumored to be working on a similar strategy to more closely tie their Windows Phone 7 platform to their Zune marketplace.

Everywhere Computing

Within the enterprise, these same trends are pushing ECM beyond the corporate firewall and office building. Employees will increasingly be empowered to work “anywhere” by a new generation of software applications commonly known as “smart clients,” like Hyland’s client that was released in OnBase 10.0. These applications typically include “off-line” functionality that allows information to be retrieved, taken off-site, updated when network access is not practical and then synchronized with those changes once they are back in the office.

These feature-rich clients will be complimented by a variety of lighter-weight productivity tools. The simplicity of these mobile applications is currently being offset by the fractured smart phone and immature tablet markets. As a result, difficult decisions will need to be made by many organizations because their preferred ECM vendor may not support the mobile devices which their IT department has already standardized on.

The Cloud is Foggy

Finally, (in my opinion) the launch of iCloud confirms that the term “cloud computing” has lost almost all of its meaning. Apple isn’t the first company to re-categorize traditional “online services” as “cloud services.” They’re just the most recent and obvious example.

From a technical perspective, the Cloud has always been a nebulous concept. Now that it’s become mainstream, it’s even harder to pin down. In my personal opinion, John Gage’s original vision that “the network is the computer” has basically evolved into what we now refer to as “the cloud.”

Many have argued that “the cloud” refers to a specific business model. Indeed, usage-based pricing is one of the most consistent qualities shared by the major cloud vendors. The fact that iCloud appears to use a flat annual fee structure further supports the assertion that pricing is a key aspect of what the term “cloud” has come to embody. But, it’s just as easy to prove that usage based pricing has been around for decades. In my opinion, most of these concepts are part of larger business trends, like outsourcing and the mythical realignment of business and corporate IT.

In short, “the cloud” has devolved into a loosely defined marketing term, easily bent to serve the interest of entrenched technology companies. As a technology professional, this is disappointing. But, for technology buyers, this will almost certainly result in confusion, misunderstandings, and disappointment. Caution is warranted.

Over the coming weeks, I will attempt to highlight key concepts that (I hope) will empower companies to look beyond trendy marketing terminology and silver bullets in favor of clearly defined value propositions.

Amazon’s Cloud Collapse: Know Your Cloud Terms – IaaS, PaaS and SaaS

// May 2nd, 2011 // No Comments » // Cloud Computing // Justin Alexander

In my last post, we explored some of the conditions that caused Amazon’s cloud to collapse. Today, I’d like to broaden the discussion with the intent of highlighting some important lessons that buyers can apply when evaluating cloud providers. I’ll also reflect a bit on how this experience has impacted Hyland’s SaaS platform, OnBase OnLine.

Can this IaaS, PaaS, SaaS stuff I keep hearing people talk about protect me from future service failures in the cloud?

Actually, yes it just might.

As Ron McClellan has previously evangelized, the cloud is part of a larger spectrum of deployment methodologies and customers should be free to choose the deployment option that best aligns with their organizational needs. That means rejecting “all or nothing” thinking by considering all the available options. This even includes moving back and forth between the extremes or building hybrid systems that comprise both on premises and hosted components.

Here’s some pragmatic advice. If the technology for a project has been selected, but the business processes and requirements are still largely undefined, you’re headed for trouble. Unfortunately, in my experience, this happens much too frequently in organizations of all sizes. No matter the deployment option, you should define your business processes first and then select the technologies – and the deployment option – that best enables those processes.

Within the cloud, deployment options can be further broken down into Infrastructure, Platform, and Software as a Service. My advice is to make sure you thoroughly understand the obligations each of these places on your organization. Here’s a brief primer.

Amazon’s EC2 belongs within the IaaS category. This service (and IaaS overall) places the largest burden on the end user – as the name implies, the hosting provider is only taking responsibility for delivering the “Infrastructure.” Performing backups, installing software, and patching operating systems are almost entirely the customer’s responsibility.

Furthermore, services like EC2, by definition, cannot offer an SLA that addresses the availability of a specific business function or application. Clearly, many of Amazon’s customers were either unaware of these responsibilities or failed to give them adequate attention. The benefit of the IaaS model is that it provides a high level of compatibility with legacy applications and provides the end user with a higher level of control.

Here’s an example we can all relate to. If EC2 was a swimming pool contractor, they would dig a rectangular hole in your backyard and give you most of the tools needed to install the pool. But, you’d be expected to design the pool, buy and pour the concrete, buy and install the liner, buy and install the pump and then fill it with water.

PaaS Clouds, like Microsoft Azure and Google AppEngine, assume responsibility for both the infrastructure and a set of APIs that are running on top of that infrastructure. Within the context of the recent EC2 failure, this represents only an incremental improvement over IaaS. Each customer is still responsible for designing, authoring, testing, deploying, administering, and monitoring applications that correctly utilize these APIs to meet their underlying business needs.

These providers still can’t offer SLAs that are defined in meaningful business terms because they are intentionally limited to delivering technology rather than the ability to complete a given business process. Perhaps the largest liability is that switching from one PaaS platform to another, or spreading load over multiple PaaS platforms, can be very expensive. The system is, by definition, tightly coupled to the platform. Conversely, the primary benefit of the PaaS model is that it forces customers to explicitly design for failure.

Back to the example. If Azure was a swimming pool contractor, they would dig an irregularly shaped hole in your backyard and pour the concrete. But, you’d be expected to design a pool that fits into their concrete mold, which may not be an easy task. You’d also be expected to manufacture and install your own liner, manufacture and install your own pump, and then fill the pool with water. If you ever decide to relocate, you’ll have to buy a new pool and move all of the water yourself.

SaaS providers offer the greatest potential coverage regarding data protection, disaster recovery, and business continuity – the vendors assume responsibility for delivering specific business capabilities, not just technical possibilities. OnBase OnLine, for example, offers tiered SLAs that are tied to the ability to complete specific actions such as “retrieve documents” or “import documents.” Similarly, Hyland commits to providing an array of overlapping data protection services that include backups, document-level data validation and periodic disaster recovery planning tests.

Although our customers must still define their own business continuity strategies to account for compensating controls that are located outside of Hyland’s data centers, this is a significantly smaller burden that is consistent with the customer’s own core competencies.

If OnBase OnLine was a swimming pool contractor, we would ask you to select from several hundreds of pool designs, allowing you to mix and match until you had a custom solution that fit your needs. We’d take care of almost the entire installation. Your only responsibility would be to fill the pool with water (AKA documents, metadata and customizations). Oh yeah…and if you later changed your mind, we’d help you move the entire pool to whatever location you preferred without spilling a single drop of the water.

From a SaaS perspective, what has this outage taught us?

This is a great question.

From my perspective, this service failure has reinforced the need to continue to educate our employees, partners and end users so that they understand this overarching necessity for any cloud solution:

Disaster recovery and business continuity planning is a business function requiring cooperation across organizational boundaries.

The Amazon situation also underscores the need for us to double down on our commitment to transparency. We already have several active initiatives that will extend our leadership in these areas. I look forward to discussing them within this forum at the appropriate time.

Finally, I consider the specific nature of how the EBS service failed to be a validation of many difficult decisions we have made within the past 11 years. Those decisions were strongly influenced by the recognition that platform, temporal and spatial coupling are top level concerns in a shared hosting environment.

Will OnBase OnLine ever experience this type of service failure?

I’m not going to spend my time convincing you that failure is an unavoidable aspect of any distributed system, only to claim that this could never happen to our own SaaS cloud. I’m also wary of using this forum to advertise Hyland’s services. But, it’s a valid question that deserves an answer.

The most direct answer is “we have.” In 2004, four years after Hyland first began offering SaaS services, our primary datacenter suffered a direct hit by a tornado.

This was a disaster in every sense of the word. It ultimately led to the demolition of a building that housed roughly half of our provider’s data center floor space. But as a result of some excellent business and technical decisions, as well as a healthy dose of good luck, our customers never experienced any downtime related to this incident.

After reflecting on the Amazon incident in these blog posts, and in a Computerworld article (“Amazon cloud outage was triggered by configuration error”), there are a slew of other questions I could answer on the topics of business continuity and hosting services. To whet your appetite, here is a list of questions I will attempt to answer in future posts:

• Can data replication guarantee data integrity?
• Can an ECM system be “highly available” if each release isn’t backward compatible?
• Does multi-tenancy actually provide business value?
• Does an elastic cloud service make managing a corporate budget easier?
• What is the difference between high availability, disaster recovery and business continuity?

Amazon’s Cloud Collapse: The Blame Game and the Future of Cloud Computing

// April 29th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cloud Computing // Justin Alexander

Editor’s note: To accurately reflect the incident since Amazon published its postmortem statement to its customers, this blog post has been amended as of 6:00 p.m. ET on April 29, 2011.

Several days after an isolated network failure within Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)  cascaded into their most significant service outage to date, it’s clear that the event will generate a series of critical questions about cloud computing that will echo across conference rooms around the globe in the coming days, weeks and months.

Who should we blame?

It’s human nature to ask this question first, even though it is a completely illogical starting point for analysis. But, most of the media coverage on the incident has been focused on asserting blame, like Justin Santa Barbara from FathomDB who said that “the blame here lies squarely with [Amazon Web Services], who ‘guaranteed’ a contract they then broke.”

Others, like, Alan Perkins from Cloud81 proclaim “Just because systems are moved to the cloud doesn’t mitigate the responsibility to ensure mission critical outages are mitigated. If a business has a use-case that cannot tolerate down time then that business needs to architect their solution in a way that prevents downtime.” After all, the availability limitations of Amazon’s Elastic Block Store (EBS) have been well documented for at least a year.

The trouble is…they’re both right.

Clearly Amazon has to assume responsibility for the failure of its service. Yet, several SaaS providers who rely upon the US East Availability Zone were “not affected by the AWS issues” because they designed systems that explicitly account for the fallacies of distributed computing and Brewer’s CAP Theorem.

Yes, I know this is dense, technical content. But, as the era of cloud computing and big data takes hold, these are quickly becoming fundamental concepts.

The ability of these organizations to withstand “Amazonageddon” by applying engineering concepts (that were established between ten and twenty years ago, no less) perfectly illustrates Perkins’ point. The proper alignment of business and IT can lead to technical designs that adequately address the cost of downtime. This idea falls right in line with Ken Burns’ reflections on the increasing pressure on CIO’s to balance long term risk with short term ROI during last year’s Gartner Symposium & ITxpo.

Okay, can we put away the pointy fingers now?

Is it over?

Yes and no. Amazon restored availability of their EBS service within a few hours. However, it took nearly two days for the backlogged workload to clear. By now, normal operations should be restored for nearly all affected businesses, albeit not as quickly as they would have liked.

What’s the opposite of eventual consistency; immediate loss? Unfortunately, as I write this there are still a fair number of companies like milesplit.com who are working through data integrity issues created by the EC2 failure. That’s a serious problem. A large percentage of companies who experience a significant data loss go out of business, which is why other companies, like Hyland, offer data protection services.

Will the EC2 outage kill cloud computing?

I can’t predict the future, but I feel safe asserting that it shouldn’t.

Service failures aren’t a new dynamic in corporate IT. All networks, including corporate data centers, clouds, and the Internet will experience failure when measured over a sufficient period of time. The question is not “if” a given data center will fail. The question is “what impact will the failure have on my business when it occurs.”

This is a “big B” Business question that largely revolves around when the failure occurs and how long it lasts. Technology can only be effectively applied to meet the business’s needs once these questions have been adequately addressed. If the need for high availability is understated, service interruptions are likely to result in unacceptable losses. If the need is overstated, valuable resources are likely to be wasted on systems that have been over engineered to achieve levels of availability that are ultimately excessive.

A more useful question to ask is “How will the EC2 outage change the way that cloud computing is utilized?” My hope is that it encourages administrators, developers, and CIOs to see private data center and public cloud deployment as a spectrum, instead of an all or nothing decision point. Most corporate IT departments are too quick to buy into a never ending stream of so-called silver bullets and best practices. A healthy dose of nuance and best thinking are badly needed.

At least Amazon’s SLA will provide some financial relief for the organizations impacted by the outage, right?

Amaz-ingly (sorry, I just love a good pun), it appears that this outage did not violate any of EC2’s SLA provisions. In fact, the EBS service that was at the root of the failure doesn’t appear to be covered by any SLA whatsoever.

Although I am happy to report that Amazon has decided to voluntarily grant a 10 day credit to all customers who were using the affected hosting services, as Phil Wainwright points out, this is still an important lesson. First, define the business side’s tolerance for availability failures, then work with your cloud provider to define an SLA structure that is aligned with those business needs. Service credits should be the result of a contractual agreement, not a discretionary choice.

And that’s really the point, right? This whole incident is just that – a lesson. Organizations should take away that while they’re dependent on the cloud provider for some things, no SLA will fully account for the true cost of downtime or data loss. After all, the reality is that the financial remedies will be limited to the hosting fees paid to your cloud provider. Additional mechanisms, like business insurance, may be needed to adequately mitigate this risk.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I’ll cover more lessons learned that organizations can apply from this situation.

HIMSS Day 1, Part II: What About the Cloud?

// February 22nd, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Cloud Computing, Healthcare, Software as a Service // Kaitlin McCready

What’s my favorite part about HIMSS? You never know who you’re going to run into.

Waiting for the hotel shuttle yesterday, I ended up having a conversation about the future of healthcare IT with none other than the founder of Quality Systems Inc. and NextGen, Sheldon Razin. Sheldon is the classic entrepreneur – he knows so much about a field – healthcare IT – and wants to share it with anyone who’ll listen.

So, naturally, he lit up when I asked him, “What do you think is the future of healthcare IT?”

In short, he said, “the cloud.” We didn’t have a lot of time, but we did discuss how there are so many healthcare solutions needed to really impact patient care, and that at some point, it’ll make more sense for some healthcare organizations to outsource the management of the infrastructure and data management.

This brings up an interesting point. At the CIO Forum on Sunday, a major theme was how CIOs have to focus not on the cost of technology, but rather on how risky the investment is and how much value it’s going to provide long term.

The healthcare field is changing a lot now. With all the competition and big systems only getting bigger, the needs of the healthcare organization are continuing to change. So if a healthcare organization is looking to invest in technology now, wouldn’t it make sense for the long-term value of the solution to at least have the option of being SaaS-based? With larger systems purchasing home healthcare providers and smaller physician systems, the healthcare field needs to be ready to accommodate that kind of IT environment.

Something that Sheldon and I didn’t get into on the topic of SaaS was security. Many other industries have acknowledged that the risk isn’t really as high as was first perceived, but healthcare is still holding tight to that perception.

On that note, is cloud a viable option for healthcare? Or do the words “patient information security” inspire too much fear into even try it out?

IT strategy rapidly evolving as virtualization grows

// December 30th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Cloud Computing, Enterprise content management, Government, Healthcare, Insurance, Software as a Service // Glenn Gibson

Just when you thought it was safe to get back to work, your IT world is changing again. Or at the very least evolving.

It’s been doing so since at least 2008, when Gartner, the well-known information technology research and analyst firm, spotlighted one trend, which it calls “the highest-impact issue, changing how organizations plan, buy, deploy and manage IT through 2012.”

And that’s virtualization.

It sounds a bit Matrix-y, and that’s okay, because it is in a way.  Virtualization refers to the virtual rendering of an actual thing, like an operating system, storage device, server and so forth. Your employees encounter it most often when they’re running virtual desktops from their computers at home.

If you’re avoiding it, you might want to rethink your approach. Agile businesses are moving quickly to adopt virtualization, allowing their employees to access information anywhere, anytime with any device. Powerful, powerful stuff, as workforces become more nimble, mobile and spread out. WiFi, 3G, 4G, smartphones and tablets connect workers to their work – and each other – like never before. And virtualization is letting it happen.

As IT infrastructure and datacenter strategy moves toward this new reality ­­­– and we believe it is a reality that’s here to stay – more and more companies will rely on vendors who have the virtualization experience and understanding needed to support their long-term business goals.

We’re so sure this is one of the main avenues business IT is heading down, Hyland regularly updates its virtualization support statement to underscore our commitment to making OnBase run seamlessly on our customers’ virtual infrastructure. And it’s why we find maintaining our VMware ready and Citrix ready certifications so important.

And it’s not just talk. 

Hyland’s own Software as a Service solution, OnBase OnLine, runs almost entirely on virtualized servers hosted by VMware ESX Server.  Many of our customers also host their OnBase solution on virtualized servers. 

One customer runs 30 physical VMware ESX Servers which host ample virtualized servers, providing a server environment that can sustain some 22,000 users. 

So there you have it. Virtualization is the future. And the future is already here.