AIIM Industry Report: Collaboration Driving Content to the Cloud

In the recent AIIM Industry Report, almost half of the responders believe that document and content management applications will be cloud by choice within three years. But the study also reports an oft-cited conflict between business users and IT staff: users want to share content easily with external partners, while IT is keen to keep it controlled.

Business users are enthusiastically embracing the cloud, especially when it comes to sharing documents with external users. We’ve talked extensively about the challenges life sciences companies face when working with external teams as well as their affiliates (check out our article in PharmaPhorum for a deeper look). While traditional, on-premise content management systems often support collaboration within the confines of a company, they aren’t designed for external communication. Oftentimes, IT has to set up a complicated, expensive VPN or send company laptops as a way to secure the data.

The business side sees this as a huge roadblock since these steps take significant time (sometimes weeks or even months). In order to simply get their work done, these users often resort to non-compliant and unsecured methods of content sharing. The AIIM report backs this up, stating that the need to share content outside the firewall is the most cited reason these users are bypassing on-premise content management. So, in an odd twist, the systems that companies deploy to secure their content actually end up encouraging the risky methods they hoped to prevent.

But this doesn’t have to be the case. Despite security concerns, the regulated cloud is often more secure than you think, and especially so when compared to on-premise systems. “For many,” AIIM reports, “cloud deployment can offer a more controlled and secure environment, particularly in smaller businesses with on-site servers rather than dedicated data centers, or where security expertise is lacking.” Indeed, smaller companies were shown to be more eager to embrace the cloud, in part for this reason.

It’s not just small companies, however, that can benefit from the regulated cloud. In our previous blog post, we detail the benefits all life sciences receive with the regulated cloud, including SAS 70 Type II certification and features like SSL encryption (which prevents intrusion as information travels over the network).

With proper research and with a reputable vendor, life sciences companies of any size needn’t sacrifice compliance and security for the benefits of the cloud.