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By Chris Riley, ECMp, IOAp, Product Manager / Product Evangalist at cloudshare
October 30, 2011 - 3:25 PM
As consumer technologies take over the world, you can’t help but notice the interesting paradigm shift that comes with it. I’m not talking about the shift in technology, but how we perceive technology. Like all consumerized technologies, users start adopting the technology before they think about how they will adopt it. Whereas with enterprise technology, you think about how you use it first. Cloud storage is one of these new technologies and at the forefront of an ECMers mind. How is Cloud storage changing end-user habits?
The ease of adopting Cloud storage is frightening, as the chances of poor adoption are very high. But In some ways the approach of adopt first, think later, is benefiting end-users understanding of content management. Cloud based storage changes the way a user thinks about content in general, the structure of the content.
Thinking about content in a different way:
- Users identify the difference between just storing content to how it’s used
- Users experience the benefit of content and infrastructure agility
- Users turn the magnifying glass on the content
The purpose of Cloud storage systems is to actively interact with the content, not just for a backup. If you are using Cloud storage as a glorified FTP or archive, NO! Stop doing that. Why would you waste the space and the cost of a system that was not designed for long term retention? If you are an individual, go out and buy a consumer grade SAN instead and open it up the web. If you are a company, just shame on you. Its likely Cloud storage allows you to eliminate an external drive or two, but its purpose is substantially more than file storage. For end-users in the past they usually were not confronted with the difference between active content and stagnant long term content, but now they have an opportunity to consider it. Suddenly users are understanding meta-data, versioning, and basic document security.
Thinking more about structure:
- Users are forced to consider organization
- Users are forced to consider file size and type more
Free or Pay, Cloud Storage systems pose a storage limit of 2GB, 50GB, 100GB and so on. This limit can be frustrating when you are close to it, but it’s also very good. Users have to consider what they put into these limited sized buckets. The tension between the limit and a drive to maximize it creates positive thought processes. The idea of efficiency is activated and has users thinking about file size, types of files, priority of files, what to keep, what to dump, and the organization of the content.
Thinking more about scanning, if you’re doing it:
- Users see more consequences of bad scanning
- Users must consider two stage scanning
And now for a specific business use case: document scanning. Organizations that scan and have Cloud storage consider how they can start scanning to the Cloud. There is no easy or straightforward answer to this, as with all things document capture, but that is where they opportunity lies. Organizations who are blindly scanning documents today (there are many) to an on premise file share, are forced to take a step back to consider how to do it right in Cloud storage. Some of the considerations become:
- Scan in the right format before final storage
o TIFF Group 4 Image Only
o PDF full-text searchable
o Leverage Compression, but be careful
- Consider two stage scanning based on priority of document ( for example full page OCR or DataCapture )
o Single stage, scan directly to cloud
o Double stage, scan locally, then upload to cloud
We all know about the direct benefits of Cloud storage. If you are on this blog you probably understand ALL the risks as well. What I’ve been noticing is there is a residual benefit, almost psychological benefit, helping to educate end-users on content actualization.
This post and comment(s) reflect the personal perspectives of community members, and not necessarily those of their employers or of AIIM International
