Category Archives: Content & Applications

Amazon, AWS, Azure, Content & Applications, Microsoft, NetSuite, News & Analysis, Steve Guggenheimer, Vendor, Zach Nelson

NetSuite ditches AWS in Microsoft partnership

NetSuite and Microsoft are linking their cloud services, and NetSuite is moving its services onto Azure

NetSuite and Microsoft are linking their cloud services, and NetSuite is moving its services onto Azure

NetSuite has inked a deal with Microsoft in a move that will see the two companies link up the cloud-based financial and ERP platform with Microsoft Office, Windows and Azure.

As part of the deal the two companies have already integrated NetSuite and Azure Active Directory to enable single sign-on (SSO) for customers using NetSuite together with Azure AD, and in the coming months plan to drive further integration between NetSuite and Office 365 – for instance, to be able to do things like connect NetSuite data to Microsoft Excel and PowerBI in a more seamless way.

The partnership will also see NetSuite move its service off Amazon Web Services, a long-time partner of the firm, as well as take its on-premise deployments and move them into Azure, now its “preferred cloud” provider, by the end of the year.

“We’re at the ‘end of the beginning’ of the cloud, in that the cloud business model that NetSuite pioneered in 1998 is becoming the de facto standard for how fast-growth businesses are run,” said Zach Nelson, NetSuite chief executive.

“We’re thrilled to work with Microsoft to deliver a fluid cloud environment across the key NetSuite and Microsoft applications that companies and their employees rely on to continually improve their day-to-day operations and run their business better and more efficiently,” Nelson said.

Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of developer platform & evangelism and chief evangelist for Microsoft also commented on the deal: “I’m excited about NetSuite’s support for Azure Active Directory for single sign-on, cloud-to-cloud integration and increasing our collaboration across mobile and cloud solutions. Our joint vision is all about giving people the freedom to get more done through the broadening set of devices they interact with that in turn helps businesses innovate and grow.”

Association for Information and Image Management, Content & Applications, ECM, Enterprise content management, John Mancini, News & Analysis

Cloud, mobile hugely disrupting enterprise content management – survey

Cloud services and mobile phone proliferation is distrupting enterprise content management

Cloud services and mobile phone proliferation is distrupting enterprise content management

The proliferation of cloud services and mobile devices in enterprises is making it more difficult for IT and IM administrators to keep track of and manage content according to a recently published survey.

The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) surveyed 434 organisations globally to gain a better understanding of the factors influencing enterprise content management deployment.

The results suggest ECM as is commonly known to or practiced in enterprises is quickly disappearing, in part because data is now more decentralised than ever before, and because applications used to manage content in a multi-cloud, multi-device landscape aren’t being adopted.

While 39 per cent have some degree of mobile access for content in ECM platforms, only 5 per cent have widespread access for staff and project partners and less than 20 per cent have comment, edit and process interaction capability.

“There is no doubt that organisations still require their content to be managed properly, but the term ‘ECM’ is past its prime as a description of the revolution that is being driven by mobile, analytics, cloud and collaborative technologies,” said AIIM president John Mancini. “Organisations are desperate for best practices to deal with the technology disruption that is occurring.”

ECM has evolved in the past few years, particularly in terms of the breadth of capabilities enterprises now require to manage their content. The massive proliferation of mobile devices and (sanctioned and unsanctioned) cloud services – and more pressingly how those cloud services link up with one another – is starting to force enterprises to adopt different strategies and technologies to help manage content, and has if anything accelerated demand for e-discovery tools and cloud-based repositories like Box.

“All of this data points to an industry in transition. There are still many organisations that can benefit from more traditional ECM solutions that automate document-intensive processes. But there is also an explosion of content outside the realm of these kinds of structured processes, along with a revolution occurring in how, where, and when knowledge workers do their jobs. Even among the current users of ECM technologies, 52 per cent believe that within five years, ECM systems will be an undifferentiated part of the IT infrastructure.”