Bringing content lifecycle management to small & midsize market.

The pace of convergence and consolidation we are seeing in the market should come as no surprise to anybody who has been in data storage or data management field. The reason can be pinned on saturation at all levels. The flow of information to the end-user, coupled with the introduction and change in implementation of low cost disk resulted in landscape of undifferentiated vendors, technologies and channel partners.

That brought us to the point of data management: back-up, replicate, migrate, snapshot, virtualization, all policy based. (With one criterion to base your policies on: time.)

All of this investment, marketing, training, and rhetoric is still focused on the back end. The point being only when the right information gets to the right people in an organization at the right time can a customer begin to drive value to the bottom line from the content as well as the technology that warehouses it ... We have not done that though. EMC, whether it was by design or accident, made the right move in their Legato/OTG/Documentum acquisition. If nothing else they can bring cost of sales down and dollar per customer up. They are taking advantage of one of the two only redeeming characteristics of the situation; a well-established sales channel. They have the opportunity to educate and sell to the customer the piece of the puzzle that actually brings value to the specific application of the organization or vertical. The front end distribution and presentation of the information to better serve the current customer and create a new customer. It might actually be in a vertical, niche, or segment that is also unique.

At the recent Association of Image and Information Management trade show in Philadelphia it became evident that storage vendors have come to realize that software solutions are key components to their future. This represents a significant shift in the market. It is not only important to provide storage and a secure back-up strategy to the market but it is becoming more critical to manage the lifecycle of content. Content management solution providers are focused on managing the lifecycle of the content they can ingest, classify and index within their own application. Depending on the sophistication of the application this can include structured as well as unstructured content. This can realistically encompass 75-90% of the content that resides in the enterprise. At this point in time let's assume 100% is unrealistic and in reality, not a critical issue.

Software solutions that manage content in this fashion have been limited to enterprise level systems or limited applications that can cost justify these systems. In order to manage the lifecycle of content many of these systems require the addition of workflow or other consultative approaches to implementing the solution. They focus on addressing the Business Processes of the organization which means that there are consultative engagements. The examination of an organization's Business Processes is a healthy exercise, however, in today's market it is difficult to free up their already stretched personnel or budgets to accomplish this effectively. Therefore, without the addition of work-flow the ability to present critical documents to users during their height of activity becomes severely limited, requiring users to employ time consuming search methods for content.

Targeting SMEs

These solutions often price themselves out of the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) market, with complexity (for both users and ongoing administration) as well as pricing. Besides the upfront set-up costs demanded by workflow many of these solutions require daily administrative intervention to insure processing has occurred. Most companies fitting this SME market do not have the extra personnel to accommodate this extra administration which is necessary to monitor events such as:

* New content entering the system needs to be classified.

* Users need to be incorporated to a new security system.

* Re-classifying content and its history because business requirements change.

* Regulatory requirements add accountability of content access and use.

* Distribution of software and updates.

This market faces a difficult challenge to meet new regulatory and audit requirements with solutions that make it difficult to manage without major new investments of time and money. Technology has advanced to the point where Content Management solutions in them-selves can solve many of the basic issues facing companies today without a major upfront investment of time and resources.

The SME depends very heavily on technology provided by Microsoft; it is reasonable in cost and has been scaling up to meet new demands. The advantage of a $4 billion investment into its latest tools driven off the Net framework is proof of Microsoft's commitment not only to meet the next generation of demand for this market but to provide technology that scale to accommodate growth.

The SME market not only demands a scalable product that has a reasonable ROI, but the solution must be easy to support and administer for often stretched IT staffs. To accomplish these demands Content Management solutions must meet the following criteria:

* Easy to manage organizational change which often leads to different uses and classification of content within an organization.

* On the fly change to index criteria, not only this day forward but also the entire history.

* Automatic delivery of the content required by each user to accomplish their daily work tasks.

* On demand audit reports to meet compliance issues.

* Organizational level security fully supporting inheritance of rights through existing directory structures.

* Intelligent processes that insure work is being accomplished without IT intervention.

Managing the lifecycle of content encompasses several stages that impact how and why content is used. The traditional precursor was Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) which focused on age or event driven events to automatically move content from on-line during its heavy use to off line for the final archiving. The difference now is that content management systems are used to proactively deliver content to users in a quick and efficient manner. It is no longer a tool to manage storage efficiency in an optical jukebox, but an automated tool designed to deliver specific content to end users when it is in its active phase. As the content ages it remains important to keep this organized as it migrates to through the system. As the content enters that phase of its lifecycle in which it is less likely to be active it is handed off to a data mover which keeps track of its location on near or off line storage.

Automating Content Management

Without the implementation of workflow system or re-engineering of the business processes of an organization content can still be prioritized, delivered and organized within the enterprise. Technology has enabled this to be accomplished; focus, understanding, and experience are now bringing it to the SME market by solutions providers who have fully adopted the Microsoft .Net strategy.

Very few businesses remain static, therefore the content they use by default will not remain static in its use within an organization. In order to truly manage the lifecycle of content one must assume that changing business requirements will force changes in the lifecycle of content. New regulatory requirements can easily change the active cycle of a particular report or document. Once again, using the new technology available solutions can be designed to be able to easily change the priority with which that content is accessible to the end-user. The formerly daunting task of changing how content is classified and indexed, not only for the current content but also modifying entire histories can now be accomplished on the fly.

By incorporating an intelligent process that has been enabled in the Microsoft .Net framework, it is possible to limit IT administration. For example, the direct support of inheritance at the organizational level in Active Directory means quick and easy methods of adding new personnel or changing job functions for security rights. By adding the person to the organizational job all rights and privileges are automatically inherited, savings IT staff hours of administrative time and getting users up and running quickly. This benefit has the additional implication of making it easy to have employees transfer positions within an organization as well the fact that it is necessary to support only one security structure.

Change in the organizational structure for most content management solutions are often cost prohibitive. In many cases a major organizational change will give companies in the SME market enough heartburn to consider implementing an entirely new system. This introduces the aspect of another implementation, new user training and the conversion of old content in the new system.

Taking advantage of the new technology offered by the Microsoft .Net Framework Xenware enables users to make organizational changes as easy as it is to drag and drop folders. The advantages of writing content management solutions in Microsoft's managed code enables an experienced team of developers yield results that have been able to address organizational changes that other content management systems can only accomplish with extensive IT support.

In summary, this is the front-end. This brings new value to the customer and channel. This creates value for the customer as well as prevent your storage resources to be used on data that should not be backed up in the first place.

Steven J. Leichtman is the CEO of Xenysys, Inc., Auburn Hills, MI

www.xenysys.com