Content Management In The Cloud: ECM SaaS

July 3, 2009

The advent of cloud computing in all its forms is changing the software landscape forever - but what are the best ways to take advantage of these new solutions? How do you manage the risks in SaaS and cloud deployments? And what is the ROI of SaaS applications relative to installed software?

Enterprise content management is a strategy, not a product. The market for traditional ECM solutions have been hampered by high cost, technology fragmentation, and failed projects. How does SaaS address what is wrong with ECM?

The SaaS (software as a service) delivery model has become a mainstream phenomenon, with adoption by companies doubling between 2007 and 2008, because of some widely documented advantages. SaaS deployments tend to cost much less, deliver business benefits faster, and are easier to adapt to changing business needs than traditional on-premises software. In ECM, however, there is one more key advantage —: the ability to preintegrate a broad set of ECM technologies spanning document management, imaging, workflow e-forms, full text search, records management, and so on — and deliver a SaaS platform that can address most of the needs of a typical company.

If you are now at the point where you can see how SaaS-based ECM can bring many advantages to your organization, then the next logical question you may be asking is, "How do the economics of SaaS solutions differ from that of the traditional on-premises software model?"

http://www.ecmconnection.com/article.mvc/Why-SaaS-Is-The-Fix-For-Whats-Broken-In-ECM-0002