OzHub, the Macquarie Telecom-led cloud computing alliance, has come down firmly on the side of Optus over the copyright controversy surrounding Optus TV Now, warning that any moves to change the law "risk branding Australia a global luddite state."
read moreMonday, 15 February 2010 12:47
Rationalisation and convergence of content, collaboration and communications infrastructure will be the hallmarks of the enterprise content management (ECM) market over the next ten years according to research released today by Open Text™ Corporation, a global leader in enterprise content management. The changes are expected as a result of increasing levels of awareness and compliance requirements and maturity in public sector organisations, more advanced technical capabilities and consolidation of ECM software vendors.
The study conducted by independent IT industry analyst firm, Hydrasight, examined selected Open Text customers within the public sector in Australia with the intention of determining their beliefs, intentions, activity and experiences with ECM. The study was based on interviews with nominated individuals inside organisations that have already deployed content and records management and ECM solutions.
The findings note that the clear business expectation of ECM is that records management is embedded within the fabric of the organisation’s IT systems and that appropriate record keeping practices and adherence to corporate policies are as transparent to the end-user as possible. More specifically, users adopting ECM suites cite:
- a desire for improved document sharing capabilities
- enhanced visibility and access to enterprise content regardless of where it resides
- support for compliance and management of business records and non records
- support for more distributed, remote and mobile access to enterprise content.
Traditionally, major barriers to ECM adoption have been the lack of adequate funding based on unclear business value and the need for sustained executive commitment. Hydrasight suggests that this is unlikely to change in the near future.
According to the Hydrasight study, Microsoft SharePoint has emerged as a likely “front-end” for many organisations that require a document retention solution but is best coupled with a comprehensive ECM records management system if the organisation has to meet specific regulations or manage content that resides in a number of applications. Participants identified it as a first and easy step in deploying an environment to begin improving their information management practices.
John Brand, research director at Hydrasight, said, “Microsoft SharePoint is developing a role as the primary user interface for collaboration and record keeping. It is effectively “pre-processing” organisational content to reduce the burden of compliance and record keeping for end-users.”
Participants stated that the benefits include improvements to information capture, classification, search and discovery, document security and integrity, records management and information availability. In summary, the integration of ECM systems helps to build a complete and defensible information governance program.
Open Text has demonstrated that SharePoint offers real benefits to organisations as a client interface for information management when integrated with the Open Text ECM Suite. Open Text Content Lifecycle Management Services for SharePoint enables content from SharePoint to be saved into Open Text’s Enterprise Library alongside content from other applications such as Outlook, Lotus Notes, SAP, and File Systems. This allows organisations to create a centralised set of records policies to control the lifecycle of an organisation’s enterprise content in line with various international standards such as VERS 2.0, and to take advantage of the ECM Suite’s intelligent storage management capabilities to reduce the cost of information or content ownership.
The Hydrasight research suggests that while the baseline for Microsoft SharePoint may be simplified collaborative document management, the increasing pervasiveness of the platform and the current market’s “collective wisdom” means that organisations would be well advised to integrate SharePoint into their overall information management plan.
Brand added, “We see that Microsoft SharePoint will increasingly become a key component of a structured information management process improvement program for the majority of Australian and New Zealand based organisations through 2015.”
Open Text is in a strong industry position to capitalise on this customer and industry interest in SharePoint.
About Open Text
Open Text, an enterprise software company and leader in enterprise content management, helps organisations manage and gain the true value of their business content. Open Text brings two decades of expertise supporting 50 million users in 114 countries. Working with our customers and partners, we bring together leading Content Experts™ to help organisations capture and preserve corporate memory, increase brand equity, automate processes, mitigate risk, manage compliance and improve competitiveness. For more information, visit www.opentext.com
