Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

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.

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.”

Finding the Nimble in Government IT

// May 24th, 2012 // No Comments » // Affordable Housing, Cloud Computing, 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

Last week, I attended the National Association of State CIOs midyear conference. While there were comments about budgets, broadband and mobility initiatives, the conversation took an unexpected turn – people were discussing the speed of new technology deployment.

Given that this is an election year, the challenges associated with new technology investments – from the glimmer of a great idea to going live – has special urgency. Elections mean changes to staff and, more importantly, priorities. The effect of periodic election cycles is often a source for discussion, and CIOs are affected more than other government staff.

Long development and deployment cycles are common with government technology projects, and it seems to be the case now as state agencies prepare for healthcare reform and to replace legacy systems. The problem is there’s often a mismatch between the urgent need for better systems and the length of time needed to design, test and deploy those systems. In the meantime, government suffers as it tries to do the same work with less staff and aging systems.

Government has to be nimble in order to implement key technologies, keep ahead of changing political initiatives and support government work. Consider these principles as you select, design and implement government solutions:

Simplify, standardize, optimize and centralize – Whatever word you use, it’s a call to simplify your organization’s IT architecture, reducing the number of systems to support so you speed up deployment and continue building your expertise on smaller, more manageable applications. Start by reusing and building upon existing systems used by other departments to speed up discovery. This also means looking for solutions with horizontal potential – solutions whose core services many departments. Sharing solutions means building upon the collective development of your organization. In this case, simple means affordable.

Avoid custom-code solutions – Custom coding is the single greatest cost factor and must be carefully explored in current budget conditions, especially given the long usage of systems.

When selecting a solution, ask vendors the hard questions about their software, like:

• How many hours of service are needed?
• What configuration tools are used – especially for workflow automation?
• How long will it take to respond to ever-changing mandates the system must support?

Make sure you also talk with peers and check references beyond those provided by vendors.

Go mobile – Mobile solutions are key to engaging faster with your constituents AND providing better, faster service to them. Your solution must be able to easily support field staff without difficulty and multiple moving parts. As we replace the current generation of solutions, we need to take advantage of mobile capabilities to improve government service.

Cloud – Cloud solutions offer web-based delivery of computing and storage, and may be the answer for ECM challenges that need immediate solutions. This is because the software provider deploys, manages and maintains the solution while you focus on more important initiatives.

Things to ask vendors when considering a cloud-based solution include:

• Is there an available hosted option?
• Is it proven?
• How many deployments have been done?
• What security features are offered?
• Who owns the data?
• If you chose a premise-based solution, what’s the ease of migration?

Government isn’t known for nimble IT, which is understandable given the disparate legacy systems they run. Fortunately, our collective technical know-how is vastly better than it used to be – better code, applications, mobile ability and hardware. So, there is no reason government can’t move faster on IT deployment while surviving political cycles and changing regulatory environments. These ideas are just part of finding the nimble in government IT and making it successful.

SaaS solutions: the answer to meeting “meaningful use” requirements in healthcare?

// June 14th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Cloud Computing, Healthcare, Software as a Service // Susan deCathelineau

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a popular topic on the blog lately.  So, it seems like a great time to piggyback on what Jacqui Conn and Terri Jones had to say about it – but, from a healthcare software perspective.

A hosted software model isn’t new in healthcare, or any industry for that matter.  Providers from community hospitals to physician practices have already seen the benefits. Minimize IT staffing and support. Avoid the costs of equipment, servers and other necessary hardware. Identify budget as an operating expense instead of a larger, capital expense. Accelerate deployment.    

Let’s take a look at faster deployment times. Right now, this is the key to why SaaS is so important to healthcare. And it all comes down to two words: meaningful use.

As part of the HITECH Act in ARRA, healthcare providers are now required to meet certain standards, not just based on what technology they use, but also how they use it. We already discussed why ECM or document management is a critical technology piece in answering this “how they use it” part. But here’s the catch – these “meaningful use” requirements aren’t just about the “what” or the “how” – they’re about the “when.” The federal government has set a deadline for the requirements to be met – 2011.

Photo credited to Neil Versel’s blog with the original source as Pat Wise of HIMSS.

That means that providers must have the people to research, choose and implement a solution, the hardware to support it and the budget to do these things – all within a limited time frame. For an on-premise solution, this would certainly be a challenge to get done, and get right. But not for SaaS.

Because SaaS solutions boast short start-to-finish deployments, they might be the only way for some healthcare organizations to get up and running in time for the deadline.  They also answer the budget, staffing and hardware issues – a rent-like pricing model and outsourced staff and servers to manage the data.

But despite the obvious potential of this deployment option, I have yet to see SaaS mentioned in the same article – let alone the same sentence – as “meaningful use.” At the same time, the major healthcare providers and associations continue to suggest that the deadlines are too restricting to meet. And maybe they are. But one thing is absolutely-without-a-doubt too restricting – limiting software to a single deployment option, and not even considering one that might make more sense – SaaS.