Realizing that there is no other way forward but with a Migration or in my case, an entire refinishing project.
Several months ago, my husband and I entered into a rather long and complicated home project to have the wood floors across our entire house sanded and treated. First there was the preparation process, which included “sorting out the junk” and packing and carting stuff to the garage and basement. Then there was the fun of camping rustically in the basement for 10 days and the “climbing up a ladder and through the window to the bathroom” process. Finally, when it was all done, there was the cleanup and “unpacking and restoring of furniture and order” process. Throughout this entire project, all I could think was “I do not ever want to do this again!” and “These floors better look wicked!”
That combination of anxiety and hopefulness is exactly what many organizations face when it’s time to consolidate and migrate their enterprise report, output, and content repositories to a new strategic, future-forward solution. It can be an overwhelming process involving many people and many decisions. But just like I had my reasons for suffering through the pain of the floor project, organizations have their reasons for moving content from one or more enterprise report management (ERM) systems to another. These reasons can include cost considerations, new business acquisitions or requirements, challenges with or lack of confidence in the existing vendor, mainframe modernization, and positioning for future growth. Let’s take a closer look at some of them:
- Mainframe “modernization:” Businesses often look to reduce the cost of mainframe computing infrastructure by migrating to distributed or cloud-based solutions. This can provide an opportunity to consolidate existing output and report management solutions.
- Mergers and Acquisitions: Research shows that many large organizations have between 6 and 25 disparate ECM document archives or repositories due to mergers and acquisitions or process-specific implementations. This results in duplicate or overlapping systems, and therefore increased total cost of ownership.
- Positioning for Future Growth: A growing client base will create increased volume, demand for enhanced functionality, and stress on existing enterprise report management systems.
- ERM Marketplace Consolidation: The ERM vendor market has consolidated and as a result, vendor choices are more limited than they used to be. Many older ERM solutions are now unsupported, and mandatory upgrades to new versions or replacement solutions are becoming commonplace.
- Cost Reduction: Businesses are challenged to reduce the total cost of ownership of their ERM systems for a number of reasons including high annual maintenance charges, replicated user licensing charges for multiple systems, and the need to retain staff with specific skill sets to manage proprietary systems. There is also the risk that a lack of integration between silo applications will incur regulatory non-compliance penalties.
Today there are only a few enterprise-level solutions that can address all of the above concerns with a future-forward focus that ensures companies can continue to grow and achieve even the most demanding organizational goals. With IBM’s recent updates to the IBM Content Manager OnDemand (CMOD) portfolio, CMOD is an excellent example of a smart, strategic market-leading solution that, like my flooring project, significantly reduces the risk of ever having to perform the ‘dreaded task’ again. The IBM Content Manager OnDemand solution provides a very long list of benefits with their leading position in the market ensuring them as a long term strategic solution. So this means, that not only are you able to leverage the mobile/web capabilities, the storage compression, and the flexible distribution capabilities, moving to IBM CMOD means that you won’t have to ‘ever do this again, and man, your final solution will look wicked!’
Be on the lookout for part 2 of this ERM migration series where I’ll talk about how to build the business case to justify the selection of and migration to IBM CMOD.
In the meantime, if you attended the IBM Insight2015 Conference held recently in Las Vegas, , you can download the session DCP-3731, highlighting how ANICO is migrating five different repositories to CMOD.
You can learn more about CMOD and CMOD migrations on our website.