OpenText Cloud Announced for Faster, Cheaper Information Management #OTEW2012

One of the really big announcements this week from OpenText’s customer conference in Orlando is the release of the OpenText Cloud, which according to OpenText CEO Mark J. Barrenechea in his keynote speech, is the only cloud on the market at the moment specifically for enterprise information management (EIM).

It’s hardly surprising that OpenText Cloud should focus on EIM — after all OpenText is an EIM vendor, if nothing else — but it is the breath of what it is being made available that is really surprising.

OpenText Cloud

From the word go, Barrenechea says, the new cloud will provide all OpenText’s offerings as cloud products and services that will run in parallel to its already extensive list of on-premises products. The result is, that as of this week enterprises will have access to more than 20 ready-to-use OpenText applications and services.

The difference with other cloud vendors, he says, is that the vast majority of them focus on providing infrastructure and applications in the cloud. OpenText, in contrast, is focusing on providing its full stack as well as specific knowledge and contextual support for deployment and maintenance, management, monitoring, security, optimization, upgrade and application management of all aspects of the cloud.

It also provides a service-level agreement on application availability, which we have seen in the past is one of the things that enterprises considering a cloud move need to look at from the very outset.

But the 20 applications and services are only the start, Barrenechea says:

The OpenText Cloud is purpose-built for EIM. Over the next two years, all OpenText software will be available both on-premises and in our Cloud. With over two million end users and 21,000 customers already in our cloud, we are making great progress."

OpenText EIM Stack

That’s a pretty impressive statement and probably the kind of thing that we’re going to be hearing a lot more of from vendors in the near future as enterprises take the advantages of cloud to heart and forget about concerns around security and the availability of applications.

For OpenText, the services it provides will be divided into four core areas:

• Infrastructure Services: It provides an infrastructure that runs the cloud from 10 data centers around the world along with storage, networking, backup, virtualization and monitoring abilities.
• Hosting Services: The provision of complete IT services that range from deployment to disaster recovery. Along with service-level agreements, current hosted offerings include: Tempo Social, Tempo Box, Content Server, Records Management, Content Lifecycle Management (CLM), Business Process Management (BPM), Web Content Management (WCM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM).
• Information Services: Information exchange from any device to any device and includes seamless business process integration across the entire global infrastructure of any data format. Current services include: fax, message archive, EDI VAN, capture and recognition, notifications and telex.
• Social Collaboration Services: Provides a pervasive layer of collaboration, social marketing, synching and sharing abilities across all applications through the OpenText cloud.

OpenText Cloud Financials

This is such a major project that there is really not a lot more to be said about it until it is actually running for clients. The initial offerings are available already, but the idea of a whole stack up in the cloud is a pretty interesting idea.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Business Process & Architecture Forum Focuses on Digital Disruption #ForrForum

At its 2012 Business Process & Architecture Forum, which will be held October 18-19 in Orlando, FL, Forrester Research is focusing squarely on effectively managing digital disruption in the enterprise. In an interview with CMSWire, Forrester Research Director Steve Powers explained the philosophy on digital disruption attendees can expect to learn about.

Customer Experience Evolution Creates Disruption

“We’re seeing the whole idea of customer experience changing very quickly,” said Powers. “There is a customer inflection point where the customer will either continue to work with you or try someone else. Customer experience is a huge factor in influencing the outcome of that inflection point.”

Powers said the rapid evolution of multichannel and cross-channel customer interaction, as well as increased expectations for personalized service, present a serious technological challenge. “Traditional IT teams can’t keep up,” he said.

Agile Response Combats Disruption

As a result, Powers said marketing teams often outsource or subsource their technology needs.

“What do you, as an IT department, have to do to get marketing to work with you and not around you?” he asked.

The answer, according to Powers, is a dismantling of the traditional silos separating IT and marketing. He gave the example of one Forrester client who embedded the IT and marketing departments into a “digital experience group." This got IT involved in developing marketing tools during the initial design process, instead of serving as a “black box” at the end of the project. He also mentioned that some companies maintain a traditional IT department but divide it into a front office group responsible for designing and delivering customer experience, and a back office group responsible for functions such as ERP and HR.

Powers also advised companies to consider a best-of-breed approach when implementing customer experience technologies — but cautioned against using too many different point solutions. “No one vendor can provide all the right components,” he said. “You should use solution sets from different vendors and see how to tie them together.”

For example, Powers said an organization might use marketing automation and testing/optimization tools from one vendor and then integrate them with e-commerce and analytics tools from another.

Key Sessions on 'Disrupting' Disruption

Several key sessions during the Forrester conference will focus specifically on how companies can disrupt disruption, so to speak, by using technology and business process to turn digital customer experience trends to their advantage. They include:

• Thursday, Oct. 18, 8:45-9:15 AM - The Disruptor's Handbook: How To Make The Most Of Digital Disruption: This keynote from James L. McQuivey, Ph.D., Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will help attendees understand the transformative effect of digitally empowered customers, assess their company's readiness for digital disruption internally and externally, and adopt the skills and policies that accelerate their organization's embrace of digital disruption.
• Thursday, Oct. 18, 11:25 AM - 12:10 PM - Implementing The Different In The Age of Digital Disruption: Craig Le Clair, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will explain how to make the shift from analog to digital business processes and use mobile as a catalyst for driving digital process transformation.
• Thursday, Oct. 18, 4:05 PM - 04:35 PM - Don’t Let Digital Disruption Cause Information Corruption: Michele Goetz, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research will discuss a framework for data quality to ensure that customers can rely on the information they use on any device from laptops to mobile.
• Friday, Oct. 19, 1:15 – 1:45 PM – Innovating for Disruption: Nigel Fenwick, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will explain how business architecture can help integrate innovation into existing planning processes.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com