Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

The Different Flavors of Cloud Software Deployments

// February 22nd, 2013 // No Comments » // Cloud Computing, Enterprise content management, IT, Software as a Service // Glenn Gibson

When I was young, I admit I didn’t realize vanilla was an actual flavor.  I thought it just meant “plain” or “standard” and a bit boring.  Tubs of Neapolitan ice cream usually started a war between my brothers and I, as the three striped flavors came with an invisible ranking of desirability.  Chocolate was clearly the most exciting, vanilla was just standard and strawberry got some traction simply because it wasn’t vanilla.

That was, of course, until a slice of warm apple pie appeared on our plates.  Then we abandoned chocolate and strawberry and the vanilla got pride of place.

What does all this  ice cream talk have to do with deploying software in the cloud?

Clearly, cloud deployments are the flavor of the month, perhaps the chocolate in the analogy above.  Software deployments are easy and payments are straightforward, with your monthly fee covering your software subscription and use of the infrastructure supporting it.  Both of these factors make it a very appealing option, leaving many wondering why deploying software on-premises ever seemed like a good idea.

For others, the cloud is not the right fit for what they have on their plates. Like the apple pie and vanilla example, they enjoy the comfort they get from the standard approach to software deployments by deploying their software on-premises.  They are happy to pay for the software and then deploy and support within their own environment.

But there is one flavor missing.  Because there is more than two choices - there are three.

The third choice is often overlooked, just like strawberry ice cream.  This choice is called “hosted”.

With a hosted model, you buy the software outright, which means no subscription fee.  This is very appealing for some budget models.  You then host your software in the cloud environment, taking advantage of both the infrastructure and dedicated expertise of the folks managing it.  This allows you to alleviate any burden on your own IT staff or IT infrastructure and can be very cost effective.

Which of these three choices is right for you?  The answer is simple: The one that tastes best.

As this poll and discussion board on the topic “Neapolitan ice cream: what do you eat?” shows, there is not one right answer for everybody.  In fact, the most popular answer in this poll reflects the same response I know I’d get if I polled 200 organizations and asked about their favorite deployment choice.

The most popular is not chocolate, is not vanilla and not even strawberry.  The most popular choice was “all of them”.

ECM in the Cloud? Not as Scary as You Think

// January 29th, 2013 // No Comments » // Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, IT, Software as a Service // Glenn Gibson

I distinctly recall the moment a few years ago when, as a bumbling new dad trying to calm down a very loud screaming baby boy in the foyer of a theatre, I was confronted by a random stranger.  This lady’s proposal/demand was that she hold the baby while I could go and locate his mother.  Are you kidding me? I don’t remember my exact response, but I am glad my son was too young to understand.

That’s what came to mind when I started thinking about how someone might feel putting their content in the cloud.  The idea of putting the thing that you care most about into the hands of strangers, in an un-known environment might feel like this.If you are thinking about it, there are three issues which must be addressed before you put your information in the hands of a cloud based ECM solution.  Trust, Comfort and Control. Let’s start with:

Trust
I started thinking about a different time when strangers took my baby, and I didn’t mind one bit.  The night my son was born, and we were all exhausted (It was so tiring watching my wife give birth), a nurse I had never met before came in and asked “would you like to keep your son with you tonight, or would you like us to take him to the nursery?”

“Take him to the nursery!” was our reply in unison. We wanted to get the last good night’s sleep we were going to get!  He was out of our sight most of the night, and my wife and I had a great night’s sleep.

So what was the difference? Why did we have total peace of mind in this case? In the hospital, we were surrounded by people who were more qualified to look after our baby that we were, cared about him (almost) just as much as us, and we were in a totally secure environment.

That well illustrates how you can think of a cloud ECM vendor like Hyland Software.  When the people who are dealing with your data are well qualified to do so (we have 10 years’ experience managing content in the cloud and is maintained by certified ECM, networking and virtualization experts) and you know that the environment is secure, you can have real peace of mind.

We checked out the hospital ahead of time, before we chose to have our baby there, and this illustrates how you should ask questions of the ECM cloud vendors to ensure you can trust them.  Ask the vendor to prove you can trust them by producing a list of certifications (such as ISO 27001) and relevant audits of their data centers (For example, SOC 2 to ensure all necessary and correct physical security measures are in place).

Comfort
O.K., so let’s say that, logically you know you can trust the vendor.  But are you comfortable with it? Let’s go back to the stranger I mentioned at the outset.  Even if she’d produced her pediatric Ph.D., I still wouldn’t have been comfortable handing over my boy.

To get comfortable, you need evidence of a track record, examples and testimony from others.  Ask the vendor for customer references, and then call those people.  Hyland Software hosts solutions for hundreds of organizations, these are the people that you should talk to!

Control
After you do that, you now think about control.  By putting content in the cloud, are you losing control over it?  Do you relinquish some level of ownership because you can no longer go see the comforting red blinking lights on the servers in your own data center?  Absolutely not.  The data is still yours, but you are now paying someone else to look after it for you.

One key question you should ask is “Will I be charged or restricted in the amount of bandwidth I use for accessing, uploading or downloading batches of documents?”. Unlike some cloud-based ECM and content vendors, Hyland Software does not limit or charge based upon bandwidth, meaning that you have complete control over how you use the system.

So when thinking about ECM in the cloud, a lot is up to you.  Without any research, you will feel exactly like I did when a total stranger offered to hold my son.  However, with some careful thought and by asking the right questions, you can feel completely comfortable entrusting your precious information into the hands of qualified professionals.

So, do your research (you can get started here), deploy your ECM solution in the cloud, and you’ll sleep like a baby.

Top 3 Reasons to Consider a Cloud-ECM Solution

// January 8th, 2013 // Comments Off // Cloud Computing, Enterprise content management, IT, Software as a Service // Glenn Gibson

The idea of running enterprise applications in the cloud is no longer revolutionary.  SalesForce.com single-handedly managed to slip cloud-based CRM into many high-profile organizations, without anyone seeming to bat an eye.  And Office 365 is now boasting some great success stories.  It’s safe to say that people are distinctly warming up to the idea of running their important applications in the cloud.

So, what about enterprise content management (ECM)?  Is it time to put your content in the cloud?  Here are three good reasons as to why you should seriously consider cloud-based ECM:

1. Take advantage of infrastructure you may not be able to afford or don’t want to put the effort into

Common components in an ECM deployment are: Web servers, application servers, database servers and storage servers.  Beyond the cost of this basic equipment,  the old “cost versus risk” discussion rears its ugly head as the “up-time” of your solution is discussed, and whether you can justify purchasing extra equipment for load-balancing, high-availability and back-ups.

When deploying cloud-based ECM, you won’t have to worry about any of this, because your provider supplies it all for you. OnBase Online, for example, utilizes six world-class data centers strategically located around the globe, filled with top-tier hardware and infrastructure equipment and using the very best in virtualization technologies.   They provide N+1 redundancy, which means that there is no single-point of failure in your solution.

2. You can save on capital expenditure

The beauty of cloud ECM goes beyond the initial cost savings on hardware. Fundamentally this can be easier to finance.  Purchasing all the aforementioned equipment usually means these are going to come from your cap-ex budget, which often requires lengthy justification and approvals.

By using flexible month-to-month, subscription-based licensing, these costs can typically come from your operating budget, which is often far easier to get approval for, meaning that your project can get up and running much faster, which means you can see value faster.

3. You can free up your IT resources

Rather than training and allocating individuals on your staff to support the infrastructure for your ECM solution, they can focus on other high-value projects.  When you select a cloud offering, your solution is maintained by trained, dedicated ECM professionals who install and upgrade your solution for you.

Don’t take that last part lightly. When you choose cloud-based software, the very latest version of the software will always be available to you, without you having to allot significant resources for an upgrade project on off-hours.

These are just three reasons to consider, and are common across almost any cloud-based enterprise deployment.  Actually SalesForce.com put it very succinctly when they describe it this way “No Hardware, No Software, No Problem”.  That same holds true if you choose to cloud-based ECM.

Top 5 Questions You Should Ask Any Cloud Services Provider

// December 13th, 2012 // No Comments » // Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, IT, Software as a Service // Glenn Gibson

Are you taking your enterprise content management (ECM) solution to the cloud?

Or maybe a better question is, “Have you considered taking your ECM solution to the cloud?”

If you have, chances are you have questions that center around one word: trust.

As a pioneer in the cloud-based ECM market, Hyland Software knows that a proper cloud ECM provider will not shy away from direct conversations with you regarding trust.

So ask. And make sure you’re comfortable with the answers. And then ask a few more questions before selecting a cloud-based ECM provider. Questions like:

1. Who has access to my information and how are changes to my solution securely managed and audited?

Whether you manage your own servers or take advantage of cloud services, you need to know that your data is secure. For example, you should be able to verify that no unauthorized access has occurred inside or outside of the cloud application. In general, you want to make sure that content is secure from administrator access; it’s your content and only authorized individuals should have access.

Are there proper change management procedures? Do you have visibility into audit logs? Do you have encryption options that prevent anyone anywhere from viewing your content except through the application and with proper authentication? Does a trusted third-party auditor assure that the controls and processes to protect your data are followed?  These are things you need to know.

2. What is the services providers’ data protection strategy?

Data is your most important asset.  Your cloud provider should take both strategic and tactical steps to ensure your data is protected.  This means redundant copies, multiple geographic locations, storage system security, online storage, and data integrity.  For example, through the OnBase Online content management cloud, your data is replicated to a secondary copy and transmitted to a secondary geographic location where it is stored on the same, top-tier online storage as your primary data center and validated it’s a good copy of the data.  Your data remains in only the specified data centers so you will always know exactly where your data is lives.  You should ensure any cloud provider you evaluate offers this level of data protection.

3. How is multi-tenancy handled?         

One of the great benefits of cloud providers is shared resources, which create valuable economies of scale.  But, question how your solution is logically separated from other customers in the cloud environment.  Do you share memory, disk space or databases with their other customers?  OnBase Online keeps each customer logically separate and in its own dedicated instance of OnBase.  All of our OnBase solutions are deployed with the architectural principle of collocation with high isolation.

4. If I use the service, am I locked in?

As your business changes, so should your IT strategies, and you should have the flexibility to modify your IT strategy to meet those business needs.  Ask every cloud provider you consider questions about the use of proprietary file formats, the ownership of your data, and the ease of migration to another solution or vendor or both.  With OnBase Online, data is processed in its native format; there is no proprietary file type prohibiting the use of your content outside of OnBase.  Also, find out if you will maintain ownership of your data.  In the event that you request for your data to be extracted and delivered to your organization, OnBase Online provides your data on an encrypted hard drive (or similar media) for only the cost of our labor to retrieve and deliver your data to you.

5. What is the service provider’s financial status?

This one is pretty straightforward. Only vendors with solid financial footing should have the duty and privilege to store your content.  If the vendor has a shaky financial past, there could be a higher risk that the company could fold or change hands, possibly resulting in the unavailability of your critical business content.  Make sure the vendor you choose has a history of stability and can prove its viability in the market.

Hyland Software maintains a strong balance sheet and cash flow while also continuing to forecast strong revenue and income growth.  For Hyland Software, cloud based ECM in OnBase Online is not a new concept. It is a key contributor of Hyland Software’s business.  We pioneered the cloud based ECM market nine years ago and continue to invest in the technology and people today. This has translated to strong growth year over year of Hyland Software’s customer and revenue base.

Thoughts on the Government IT Roadmap – Three Roads to Consider

// November 27th, 2012 // No Comments » // Document Management, Enterprise content management, Government, IT, Mobile, Software as a Service, Workflow // Terri Jones

In government, we struggle to develop a consistent, multi-year roadmap. Sometimes, we’re too busy, but often, it’s because our mission and initiatives change with every election cycle. One of the things I love about enterprise content management (ECM) solutions is that no matter who’s in office, they support the heart of government – the documents that record and drive our processes.

To be successful, it’s important to analyze your political environment and select a path for your ECM solution that is appropriate and sustainable through multiple elections. Despite political changes, an ECM solution will always improve government. However, since documents are a key component of every department and process, how do you select what to do next? If you are not sure where to start, consider the following ideas to begin the quest for faster, cheaper and better government:

1. Be strategic. Always think of how you can leverage your ECM solution to:

• Increase transparency – Provide constituents and vendors with visibility into transactions to offer insight to decisions. Give staff visibility into processes to see the progress of the work they do.
• Create more self-service options – Reduce pressure on staff to complete these tasks and meet the growing expectation of a connected constituency.
• Share services with other government entities – Share technology licensing, hosting and expertise to save money and provide a way to procure critical solutions, even with a reduced budget.
• Use mobile devices – Not only do constituents expect mobile apps, staff also benefit because mobile devices reduce response times while enhancing their capabilities in the field.

2. Use ECM to develop a roadmap. Things to consider include:

• Adoption and buy-in rates for an investment – If you can pick technology and processes to impact, why not choose the ones that will impact the greatest number of people or processes first?
• Lowering your total cost of ownership (TCO) and enhancing your return on investment (ROI) –What projects will reduce the TCO while enhancing your ROI? In bad budget times, every dollar counts.
• Prioritizing projects and available funding – Some funding streams survive or increase – even today. Perhaps your roadmap should start in a department with available funding. Those investments can then be leveraged over time by other departments.

3. Meet the needs and challenges of your organization. These issues include:

• Reduced staff – Reductions in government rarely come with less work. With ECM, you can manage the same amount of work with less staff.
• Funding cuts – Losing funding may mean that you must change the way you run a program. ECM reduces administrative burdens by eliminating slow, paper-based processes that consume time and budget.
• Constituent demands – The relationship between constituents and government can be a key reason for implementing projects, especially for things like transparency, online services and faster/easier processes.
• Compliance problems – When documents are lost or processes don’t follow required procedures, your agency may perform poorly on audits. If this has happened, a starting point could be an ECM solution – it’s a signal to your auditors that you’ve taken their findings seriously and are addressing their concerns using workflow automation and document management.

In each of these cases, technology like ECM or document management can help government craft a roadmap for upcoming IT projects. And with that roadmap, a new type of government can be created – one that is digital, automated and paperless.

Live@Gartner Symposium: Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management

// October 23rd, 2012 // No Comments » // Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, IT, Mobile, Software as a Service // Lindsay McCune

Today on the ITxpo show floor, Gartner Analyst Kenneth Chin presented the 2012 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management (ECM), which was just released last week (click here for a complimentary copy of the 2012 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management).

Chin started by explaining how to use the Magic Quadrant model. He emphasized that the Magic Quadrant model is meant to be the conversation starter as you look for an IT solution. Viewing it as a starting line rather than a finish line, IT departments should use the Magic Quadrant reports as:

• A snapshot in time of a market and its participants
• A way to narrow down a vendor shortlist
• Stimulus for further discussion
• A tool whose usage is determined by your specific needs and circumstances

Chin then had three big recommendations for IT executives looking to implement, expand or consolidate their ECM strategy. Aligning closely with yesterday’s keynote on the “Nexus of Forces,” they include:

• Look at solutions that offer both cloud and traditional on-premises offerings. Having both options will be an absolute requisite in the next few years as IT departments solidify their cloud strategies. Many ECM solutions will soon be hybrid solutions, with some parts of a solution existing in the cloud and some existing on your own infrastructure.
• Consider tablet and smartphone options, strategies and roadmaps. Chin noted that for every five tablets sold, there is one less PC sold. With smartphones and tablets sales growing and PCs sales declining, your ECM strategy will have to be mobile.
• Make usability and low cost of deployment a priority. ECM solutions continue to improve usability, and new releases scheduled for 2013 will continue to push them in that direction. At the same time, proving return on investment in the same year as you deploy is more important, especially as CFOs become more interested in IT spends and results.

In addition, it’s important to take into account the four different quadrants: Visionary, Niche Player, Challenger and Leader. Chin explained each, noting that Visionaries are often smaller companies and newer to the market. Niche players focus on a specific geographic region, making them an important consideration for companies operating in those areas. Challengers are often executing fairly well, but still lack the market vision to make them Leaders. The Leader quadrant owns 60 percent of the ECM market and the vendors are executing strongly today and are well positioned for tomorrow.

Depending on your needs, your best fit could be in any of the quadrants, and if you use the Magic Quadrant as a starting point as Chin recommends, you’re prepared to make the right ECM choice.

Live@Gartner Symposium: What the Nexus of Forces Means to ECM

// October 22nd, 2012 // No Comments » // Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, IT, Mobile, Software as a Service // Lindsay McCune

Day 2 of Gartner Symposium started off with the Analyst Keynote and Senior Vice President of Research Peter Sondergaard explaining Gartner’s major theme of the 2012 Symposium: The Nexus of Forces. What are the forces? The major movements rapidly propelling IT – cloud, mobile, social and information. These four phenomenon are changing the IT world and the world in general as we know it and will continue to for the foreseeable future.

How do these forces play in the world of enterprise content management? Let’s take them one at a time.

Cloud. According to Sondergaard, this is the “end of the beginning” for the cloud. The cloud is a permanent fixture in the IT world and is just coming into its own. The cost benefits are often the major reason for choosing to deploy in the cloud, but the greater “capacity, parallelism, resilience” will be more and more important as the cloud continues to mature. This is certainly true in the ECM world. More and more customers are moving toward hosting and software-as-a-service models for deploying their ECM solution. Solutions with options for both on-premises and cloud deployments will help bridge the gap as IT departments choose which applications to deploy in the cloud and which to keep onsite.

Mobile. According to Gartner, by 2016, 70 percent of mobile workers will use a tablet to complete their work and by 2020, 30 billion devices will have Internet connectivity 100 percent of the time. Another 70 billion will have connectivity intermittently. “It’s about computing at the right time and the right place,” says Songergaard. Customers and employees are forcing their IT departments to move towards mobile applications, and ECM has to keep up with the demand for mobile applications for retrieval and workflow.

Social. The obvious play for ECM is managing the content created on social networks. However, there’s more to social than social networks – social is about designing IT solutions for how people work. It’s about giving people the information they need, when they need it. For ECM and other enterprise solutions, it means that your information finds you instead of you going out and finding information.

Information. Social, mobile and cloud forces will create massive, unprecedented amounts of data. It will be CIO’s “biggest opportunity and biggest challenge,” says Sondergaard. IT will have to manage “hybrid data – data that is both structured and unstructured” to create the analysis that will drive enterprises forward. While many core line-of-business systems handle structured data, it will be up to technologies like ECM to handle the unstructured. By handling big data well, enterprises will serve their customers and citizens better and create competitive advantage.
 
These forces promise a bright future for IT, albeit difficult. Change and transformation is never easy and there is a lot of work to do and a lot of skill sets to develop before we get to the point where this nexus of forces becomes comfortable, but as Sondergaard noted as he closed the keynote, “May the nexus of forces be with you.”

What to Do on November 7th – Driving Efficiency in Government

// October 5th, 2012 // No Comments » // Affordable Housing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Finance & Administration, Government, Health & Human Services, IT, Justice & Public Safety, Mobile, Public Works, Software as a Service, State and Local Government, Uncategorized, Workflow // Terri Jones

During an election year, the phrase “improve government efficiency” is heard and promised, usually with little detail provided. That’s because until you work in an agency, it’s hard to really understand what efficiency is, let alone how it would improve your working environment. At the same time, there is wide acceptance that technology is essential for government transformation. However, at times there is little guidance regarding how technology can drive your government organization toward that misty and often elusive goal of “efficient government.”

As an IT director, what happens when you wake up on November 7^th to face new directors, commissioners, mayors or governors who were elected on a platform of improving government efficiency? When you’re asked to contribute to briefings for newly elected officials and you sense the opportunity to improve your organization and provide some direction, how do you explain efficiency in government?

Here are three ideas to keep in mind:

1. Time to retrieve – Addressing the time it takes to retrieve critical documents and the information they contain is one of the strongest and most basic ways to improve government processes. Consider how long it takes your staff to find the information needed to move the day-to-day tasks forward. How much time is spent searching for documents instead of focusing on more important tasks?
2. Time to process – One of the reasons improving efficiency is common during election years is because of the time it takes to complete government processes. However, current revenue struggles in government have led to even fewer staff members available to complete processes like human service eligibility, plan reviews and public records requests. Typically, it’s the speed – or lack of it – of government processes that lead to candidates running on an “improve government efficiency” ticket. As a result, targeting ways to speed up these processes despite staff cutbacks will be a winning strategy for efficiency-minded officials while also relieving the pressure on your overworked colleagues.
3. Time to take action – Decisions regarding courses of action define government. How can technology make sure these important decision points aren’t lost in the pile of work? When speaking with newly elected officials, it’s important to consider how long it takes your organization to address problems, issues and requests. Despite backlogs, government must address emergencies – such as child welfare and traffic accidents – in a timely manner.

Now, let’s say these ideas really resonate with your incoming elected officials. Next, you’ll be asked to propose ways to drive efficiency using technology. Consider the value an enterprise content management (ECM) solution offers. Typically, government has a split between data in department solutions and the documents that drive and record actions. Government must utilize ECM to contain costs and position itself to be the mobile, transparent and engaged force that constituents demand.

Here are two ways ECM can improve government processes:

1. Integration – An ECM solution connects all of your data systems and the documents that drive government. When you integrate systems, staff instantly access information, reducing the time spent retrieving information from days and hours to seconds. And, with codeless integration tools, government can implement it affordably across all departments as time and budget permit.
2. Automation – With ECM, government can use workflow automation to route critical work, notify staff of important tasks and digitize paper moving through agencies. Not only does this reduce the time needed to complete these processes, it also allows overwhelmed staff to focus on more important tasks like improving constituent services.

So, this election year, when you are asked to drive efficiency, think about how ECM can make government more efficient while also helping newly elected officials propose and support the technology investments government needs today and in the future.