What is cloud content management?

The first content management systems were all about compliance and risk minimization. They served the needs of records management and legal departments, with little consideration…

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Alison Clarke

June 6, 20237 minutes read

A cloud with ethernet cables connected to illustrate cloud content management.

The first content management systems were all about compliance and risk minimization. They served the needs of records management and legal departments, with little consideration for the experience of the knowledge workers using the content. They didn’t aid in productivity or efficiency. In fact, they required extra labor, and as a result, users often found ways to work around them.

Times have changed. The new generation of content services platforms and applications operate on the basis that information has ongoing use and value in workflows and processes. That content and data need to be readily available to drive a dynamic enterprise, not languishing in isolated silos and vaults.

These evolving business needs have paved the way for content services applications that enable seamless storage, retrieval and distribution of information—while ensuring governance best practices are upheld.

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) have replaced manual filing and searching. The end-user experience is now effortless and unobtrusive. Content and data can be automatically captured and surfaced as needed. And user adoption is no longer an issue.

What is cloud content management?

The next logical step in this progression involves moving content management systems and the information they manage into a cloud content management environment for even greater agility, access and cost control.

By this point, cloud computing has become a no-brainer for business. It increases business agility and flexibility; improves performance, efficiency, scalability and security; and allows organizations to work better with customers, partners and suppliers. All this, plus it can save a huge amount of money compared to the traditional, on-premise IT infrastructure.

According to IDC’s U.S. IT QuickPoll on Content Services[1], the biggest benefits organizations can expect by shifting content services technologies to the cloud are:

  • Increased efficiency
  • More secure
  • Enables remote accessibility
  • Quick to deploy
  • Easier to maintain

Content management vendors such as OpenText have evolved in stride, offering a cloud-based content management system that offers customers more capabilities and benefits, with less organizational disruption and cost.

Cloud content services dramatically simplify and accelerate one of the primary objectives of content services applications: to integrate with the lead applications that drive business processes (like SAP®, Microsoft®, Salesforce®, etc.), and connect them to the central content management platform.

This level of integration allows corporate governance policies to be automatically applied to previously isolated information as soon as it’s captured or created. It creates a bridge that allows information to flow between processes and the people who use it.

With organizations managing new levels of information sprawl and more systems and applications than ever before, a cloud-native content management solution can facilitate the interoperability process and break down information silos.

What’s the difference between basic cloud and cloud enterprise content management?

Not all cloud content management software is created equal. It’s important to distinguish between basic cloud content management and cloud enterprise content management.

The first category, cloud content management, could be as simple as file-sharing services such as Box. They’re generally limited in purpose, consumerized and lack the integration and security features of more full-bodied systems.

The second category is based solely on the needs of the enterprise. These solutions include all the performance, management, security, compliance and business continuity functionality that’s required to meet the requirements of a multi-layered, multi-functional organization.

Organizations are realizing that the first type of system isn’t enough to meet today’s requirements for stability, compliance and privacy. As a result, the niche cloud content management market is forecast to shrink, while the market for full-scale enterprise content management is expected to grow to $33.6 billion by 2026.

What are the capabilities of a cloud content management platform?

Enterprise-level cloud content management is a combination of centralized, cloud-native content services with advanced security and governance. It’s all built around an enterprise cloud content management platform that seamlessly ties this wide range of content services together.

In its 2023 Market Guide for Content Services Platforms[2], Gartner lists the following content services capabilities:

  • Content repository
  • New work hub connectors
  • Security intelligence
  • Privacy intelligence
  • Metadata
  • Library services
  • Search
  • Reporting
  • Mobility
  • Transformation services
  • Content collaboration
  • Enterprise administration
  • Open APIs

A note on microservices and containerization

The new generation of lightweight content services is a combination of microservices and containerization. Microservices break down the monolithic content management solutions of the past into smaller components and functions. Containerization packages these pieces into standalone applications that can be deployed quickly in any combination, on any IT environment.

A container holds everything needed to operate the app within it, in any infrastructure. Although containers are cloud-native, they are adaptable to any on-premise, cloud, mobile or hybrid deployment. This simplifies the process of software updates as well as enables one container to be taken offline without affecting the operation of others or the overall system.

What are the benefits of cloud content management?

There are many benefits of a cloud-based content management system for both enterprises and users working within them, helping to accelerate digital transformation efforts with more flexible implementation options.

From an enterprise perspective, cloud-based content management creates a viable path to the future by:

  • Identifying and extracting the most value from content and data
  • Managing and controlling information sprawl and avoiding isolated silos
  • Ensuring efficient, seamless access to information for sharing and collaborating across the organization and within the external ecosystem of vendors, partners and customers
  • Achieving the flexibility and agility to meet ever-changing privacy, compliance and security issues

For users who are more task or goal-focused, cloud-based content management offers a number of more tactical benefits:

  • Quickly and easily accessing the most accurate information, wherever they are
  • Automating and accelerating the classification and filing of newly created content
  • Eliminating the need to jump from system to system to access the information they need to do their jobs
  • Improving collaboration across functional groups by ensuring everyone has access to the most recent documents and the most current data

While the majority of an organization’s content is still stored on-premise, Forrester research found that, across the board, there are significant benefits to managing it through a cloud content management platform, including improved customer satisfaction, security, usability and more, as shown in the chart below.

Why choose OpenText as your cloud content management provider?

If you’re not getting what you need from your current vendor, it may be time to move on. Partner with an enterprise content services platform provider that delivers what you need, when you need it.

Here are three reasons to choose OpenText as your cloud content management provider:

  • Address any use case. Unlike other vendors, OpenText offers a breadth of content services solutions to meet nearly every enterprise requirement. As the #1 Content Services Platform vendor in the market, OpenText helps thousands of organizations solve records management, capture, viewing, transformation and enterprise content sharing challenges.
  • Eliminate process friction. Only OpenText offers the ability to seamlessly embed its content services and content collaboration solutions into the applications users are already working in, such as SAP and Microsoft.
  • Deploy flexibly and globally. Some vendors restrict their data centers to the US while OpenText supports all regions with global data centers, to ensure secure, uninterrupted access. OpenText also offers the flexibility to choose from private, public or hybrid cloud, multi-tenant SaaS or on-premises deployments.

[1] Jan 2022 – IDC U.S. IT Quick Poll — Content Services Survey

[2] Garter® Peer Insights™ for Content Services Platforms

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

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Alison Clarke

Alison is Director, Product Marketing for OpenText Content Suite and Extended ECM. Alison and her team are passionate about helping organizations use content services technologies to distill more value from information, supporting the needs of individuals and teams to improve productivity and strengthen information governance for the organization with content services-enabled solutions.

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