Businesses must switch from a gradual multi-year cloud first approach to a much more rapid “cloud now” mindset if they are to overcome the information sprawl and security challenges faced by all organizations in today’s “new reality”.
That was the message from OpenText™ SVP of Cloud Services, Savinay Berry, at this year’s OpenText™ World 2020 conference.
Data, data, everywhere
The information sprawl that organizations face comes from documents being stored in many different places – shared drives, hard drives, in a public cloud, in an on-premises data center – and the increasing number of applications in use.
But Savinay said the ongoing pandemic has seen information sprawl become more complex because information is now also scattered across personal devices, often located way outside the corporate network. Increasingly, organizations are needing to rapidly embrace digital ways of working and doing business – something the cloud enables – in order to survive, thrive and respond to changing demands and behaviors in the market.
The need for speed: From ‘cloud first’ to ‘cloud now’
The acceleration of information sprawl means organizations must move faster. They require a “cloud now” mindset, where even existing applications are moved to the cloud more rapidly than previously planned. “Not in the next three to four years, but more likely in the next three to four quarters,” said Savinay. “We are seeing that urgency.”
One organization that has embraced the cloud is engineering company ABB, which has migrated its core information management platform, used for construction projects and industrial customers, into the OpenText™ Cloud. This provides improved functionality to assure quality and information management compliance so that ABB can now better manage its huge volume of documents – currently 30 terabytes, with millions of user requests per day.
Driving modernization and innovation in the cloud
Another challenge for organizations is how they can modernize and innovate once they have moved to the cloud. And Savinay explained how OpenText™ Developer Cloud – a new release as part of OpenText™ Cloud Editions (CE) 20.4 – gives organizations the ability to innovate and digitize their businesses by enabling them to take services such as Capture or OpenText™ Core Signature and create their own applications and embed them into their workflows.
Belgian utility company Farys showed how it is using this cloud development capability with Core Signature to innovate and improve customer service.
Inge Opreel, CIO at Farys, explained that the company’s online customer portal, which has seen increased usage as a result of COVID-19, requires a digital signature for processes such as a customer moving in or out of a house.
“Core Signature really helps us to digitalize the move-in, move out process,” she said. “We have about 80,000 move-in, move outs a year. If only half of them would be through the digital way it would save us a lot of effort – and the call center and back office – to deal with all these.”
The OpenText Developer Cloud is now generally available for developers to build applications and solution extensions quickly and cost-effectively using services in the cloud. Learn more about the OpenText Developer Cloud and other innovations in OpenText Cloud Editions 20.4.
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