There was a time not that long ago when conversations about cloud solutions had almost a theological flavor. Organizations were either 100% committed to the cloud, or they would “never” consider trusting the cloud with their important business information.
Today, the cloud content management gap is closing. In a recent AIIM survey, 78% of organizations say that “if they were considering a new, replacement or consolidated ECM system,” hybrid cloud capabilities would be important. 18% say these capabilities would be “vital” and an additional 32% say they would be “very important.”
Organizations are coming around to the value of automating document management and workflow solutions in the cloud. Here are the three strategic drivers we encounter most often:
Reason 1 – The “weight” of on-premises.
Despite the commoditization of storage, on-premises scale is difficult to achieve. With price points that are typically driven by the number of software licenses, enterprise on-premises software is expensive to buy, install and integrate.
Reason 2 – The “lightness” of cloud.
One of the primary benefits of the cloud is the “as you need it” model. Instead of purchasing large on-premises systems and implementing complex, cross-departmental models, cloud office automation scales, no matter how small or great your business demands.
This inherent flexibility enables your teams to grow productivity at the pace of your business. Plus, you can start small and scale as your business requires.
The “lightness” benefits of cloud include:
- employee “centricity” (anywhere, anytime, any device access)
- cost structure: lighter subscriptions to services can be categorized as operational expenses rather than capital expenditures
- near-instant scalability
- simplified maintenance
- rapid deployment
- security leverage by scale
Reason 3 – Benefits of scale available to even the smallest players.
Cloud services enable even the smallest competitor to deliver a game-changing experience via massively scalable storage and computational firepower to crunch the largest sets of data, to provide the analytics to understand it, and the security to lock it all down.
Cloud content management and office automation has matured to the point beyond theological arguments. Put another way: the cloud is here to stay. Hybrid information management strategies will be part of just about every organizational strategy.
Where are you with your planning your move to the cloud? Download the ebook Plan Your Move to Cloud Office Automation for a practical, step-by-step guide on making this real for your organization.
Learn more about enterprise content management.
