ECMProfessional

Paradoxical – A business is ok storing its banking records and financial transactions in a central core processing system commingled on the same server with other customers but not ok with storing general business files on a cloud content management system.

Last week I submitted a discussion topic to the Cloud Computing group on LinkedIN asking Why?

On the one hand companies have been commingling sensitive financial data on a single server with other customers since the beginning of mainframe computing. Individuals have never had their health records, 401K or stock trades isolated on their own servers. Multi-tenant data storage is the norm not the exception. Yet you have a vestige of legacy IT managers and senior executives concerned that storing a word document in a public cloud based file system is not safe. Nearly all of the arguments are thin, repetitive and fly in the face of practical decision-making and common sense business. Continue

Short read, interesting. Who owns your stuff in the cloud? – latimes.com. Bottom line is cloud isn’t going away, its just another example of the technology being ahead of law on the books. A couple of other things to consider are:

  • Do the benefits outweigh the risks, universal access, easy sharing and auditing all at a price point most business and individuals can afford.
  • Do cloud providers really have time or elicit any business benefit from snooping or scouring the billions of bytes looking for something valuable?
  • Transparency, If your not doing anything wrong do you really have to worry about police or government authorities?
The real risk I see is bad apples at these companies or government agencies. If Google or Box do have staff that really don’t have anything better to do but snoop. Taking the conspiracy theory one step further they might accept money from your competitor or private investigator to give them access to your content in kind of a content black market. Also the possibility of a public servant who decides to send a bunch of content to an organization like wikileaks.

If you are a SharePoint shop (and who isn’t) you should really check out http://cloudshare.com – They recently launched CloudShare Pro as an enhancement to an already great service and they revamped there website for easier navigation and a SharePoint showcase http://cloudshare.com/solutions/showcase

  • Sync SharePoint with Box
  • SharePoint 2010 Server Farm (3-server config w/RepliWeb Replication)
  • Innovative-e Program Management and Information System (PMIS)
Also cloudPWR has published its TimeLine View on FaceBook and updated several trade show events where you can find us. Click the cloudPWR link below for more details about the following events:
  • ABA Tech Show – Chicago
  • AIIM 2012 – San Francisco
  • CloudFair 2012 – Seattle

cloudPWR <– Link to our FaceBook page with event details

I began researching what we now call Cloud Content Management and Social Business in the fall of 2008. I had spent nearly a decade working with a very dedicated group of professionals to build a nationally recognized systems integration company in the Northwest. Over the years the company worked with many familiar content management products including Optika, Kofax, OTG, Cardiff, Stellent, OnBase, OIT and many others. Like many regional VAR’s and Systems Integrators we worked in familiar verticals like government, transportation, financial services and healthcare to build out accounts payable, claims processing, human resources, electronic health records and many other document centric and workflow oriented business processes. Continue

Many cities, municipalities and state agencies are facing massive budget shortfalls, furloughs and even employee lay-offs. I have worked with government entities for most of my career. Today the environment for working with government entities is very different from any other time I can remember. In a 2006 article featured on the cover of Business Solutions Magazine I stated: “Back in the late ’90s, many state, county, and city governments made significant investments in imaging and document management technologies, where their criteria for provider selection was based largely on price,” I went on to conclude that many entities ended up scraping large ECM initiatives in part due to underfunding of the project by focusing on the lowest bidder and not enough on the overall solution or project delivery models being proposed by vendors. “Unlocking the secrets to Government ECM Sales”.

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