"ecm-watch" via bnegelmann

Photo Credit: aufziehvogel2006 (Kai) at Flickr

There are some who are asking if cloud will have an impact the growth of Open Source. For instance, my fellow AIIM board member Lubor Ptacek from OpenText suggests in his predictions for 2012 that "the Great Open Source Movement will hit the trough of disillusionment in 2012 - courtesy of the cloud." Presumably Lubor means Content Management in the cloud, because the cloud runs on Open Source. Operating System? Open Source (Linux as in LAMP)! Database? Open Source! Web Server? Open Source! Big Data? Open Source! App Development? Open Source! The cloud runs on Open Source and not Open Text -- or Oracle or IBM or Microsoft. I am assuming that he means the Open Source that has been a threat to his business of ECM (OpenText) or WCM (Vignette) and therefore he means Alfresco for ECM and Drupal and Joomla for WCM.

At Alfresco, Open Source offers no hype cycle "trough of disillusion"; we only seem to be seeing the "Slope of Enlightenment". Our Open Source Community platform continues to grow apace driven by new releases, such as the new Alfresco 4. There are now over 3.5 million downloads of Alfresco and the number of Community installations is in six figures. As a business, bookings grew 60% year over year in our last fiscal quarter ending in November. This growth is based upon significant revenue figures, not small numbers, and we are now the second largest Open Source company by revenue after Red Hat. We have a real business with over 2000 significant customers using Alfresco for mission critical information in many important industries. If that is disillusionment Lubor, I would hate to think on which slope OpenText is right now!

There is nothing to suggest that cloud and Open Source are mutually exclusive. The cloud is built from open source and if open source is architected to run in the cloud, it will. At Alfresco we have spent the last several years building multi-tenancy and scalability features into the Alfresco system to ensure that it can run in the cloud. This January we launched our cloud offering into beta and expect it to go into production later this Spring. The cloud will become yet another means of using Alfresco as well as trying the product before you buy. I have already articulated the use cases that we think will be important for running in the cloud. In addition, since Alfresco is capable of running an entire system on a single virtual machine or Amazon AWS instance, Alfresco is already used in many private and on-demand deployments. Rather than a threat, the cloud becomes a really big opportunity!

So rather than the cloud being a threat to Open Source, I presume that Lubor means cloud-based file sharing services such as Dropbox, Box, Huddle and others are a threat. Some of these are on the sharp edge of the Hype cycle and are gaining a lot of marketing oxygen as a result. There is no doubt of the popularity of Dropbox compared to anything in ECM, there are reportedly in excess of 50 million users. However, Dropbox is very complementary with Alfresco, which is why we will be providing an integration to/from Dropbox in the near future. Box is a company with more enterprise aspirations, comparing themselves to SharePoint, and although we rarely see them in the market today, we may in the future. However, Box is nothing like a SharePoint, or Alfresco or any other real content management system, as it lacks important features for content and document management such as metadata, workflow, rules and more than rudimentary policies. We shall see how cloud-based file management services and content management in the cloud evolve over the coming couple of years based upon the use cases I mentioned earlier.

As with on-premise proprietary systems, Open Source offerings in the cloud can provide advantages over closed cloud-based offerings. Rather than being the domain of tinkerers, Open Source is mandated as preferred first choice by many governments and organizations. Open Source is transparent and you know exactly how it works. Unlike running software on-premise, you have no idea how software works in the cloud, how it is encrypted or how your data is being stored. In addition, Open Source means that you are not locked into the software that you are running, whether it is running in the cloud or not. You have the choice to deploy it elsewhere and there is not cost to doing so. Open Source as a development model means that the Community is creating new solutions and news extensions, many of which will be very useful for cloud-based solutions. I look forward to sharing some of these with you in the coming months. Far from being at a disadvantage, I see Open Source as being a distinct advantage in the Cloud.

I think a more interesting question is how both cloud-based file management services and open source content management affect the existing ECM sector, which is already stuck in neutral. Having the flexibility to move into the cloud, even a private one, offers new opportunities to explore new applications, deployment scenarios, and business models. As far as I am aware, OpenText, Documentum and FileNet (correct me if I'm wrong) are incapable of running in the cloud. They all require multiple servers running different complex configurations just to get a single instance up. Last I heard, OpenText has a fragile url configuration that couldn't possibly work in a virtualized, cloud environment. And last I heard EMC Documentum was not even certified to run on VMware. I doubt we will see a public service of these systems in my lifetime. What use cases and business opportunities could this preclude?

Seems to me that ECM's "Plateau of Productivity" is tailing off and that represents threats for the large guys and opportunities for the new. I am actually very excited about the cloud and what it can bring and I have never had more faith in Open Source as a way to address those opportunities.

Symbiosis: One is free to move, the other is not. But they both need each other. 

Eventually we will see computing as a utility like electricity that will be consumed on demand. I also believe that cloud infrastructure providers will ultimately be able to undercut the cost advantages and carbon footprint of the data centers of even the largest companies. Just not yet.

As Gartner’s 2012 Predicts, Cloud Computing dated December 8, 2011:

"The perceived (and real) risks to the technical reliability, integrity and security of applications and data that are entrusted to cloud providers hold back organizations' initiatives."

For many CIOs, we as an industry still need to overcome security issues, build trust from the IT organization, ensure open exchange of information, and even negotiate treaties on the rights of information domicile and ownership.

However, there are benefits to using the cloud and even the public cloud starting today that can transcend these issues. There are several use cases that require a cloud platform, particularly in the context of content and collaboration, that would not be possible or at least very difficult today. The first is when sharing information between companies, such as those that are currently described as an extranet, only easier to set up. The second is when information is public anyway and the efficiencies of cloud make distributing this information more efficient as well. The third is where the risk or cost of hacking or intrusion is low compared to a relatively high cost of operating computing resources internally. The fourth is when the need to provide information externally, particularly for the purposes of accessing in mobile environments, outweighs the relative risk of exposure of that information.

Business to Business Collaboration

Credit: Confederation of Indian Industry, Jan 2011

Business-to-Business Collaboration through IT systems has always been difficult when any one side of the collaboration is responsible for the infrastructure. Trying to get the IT organization in a large corporation, even a technology vendor, to set up an external system that is accessible from outside the firewall is nearly impossible—not from a technology perspective, but from an administrative perspective. And there is no way that the IT organization is providing a VPN.

This often leads to the default means for collaboration, which is email. I have been involved in enough standards and board meetings to recognize this is a real problem for even the big IT vendors. Perhaps this can be done with Private Cloud instances outside the firewall, but that again would require thinly stretched IT resources. Yet this needs to be done when two or more companies cooperate on development of products, joint bid offerings to customers or coordinated marketing campaigns. At the end of the collaboration, the results need to be owned by everyone, not just the one who set up the collaboration.

Public Information

Information that is public by default provides another opportunity to share in the cloud. When I first started broaching the subject of Cloud Computing with CIOs and IT departments, I was met with a bit of incredulity about why anyone would want to do this. However, the idea of putting information that was already or should be public in the Cloud didn't really meet much resistance. After all, this is what everyone is doing with web content, either in a DMZ or CDN and Cloud provides an excellent vehicle to manage that content. Marketing departments want to provide marketing material to potential customers and see that material as wasted as long as it is behind the firewall. Also some government agencies must provide certain information to the public by law. If it is going to be public anyway, putting it behind the firewall is only hiding that information.

Small, Medium and Underserved Organizations

Medium and small size organizations are likely to have an IT department that is swamped, if they have one at all. This is the situation we have for internal systems here at Alfresco, like HR and expenses. However, this situation is not limited to smaller companies as even large companies have their underserved departments with strained resources likely focused on core business processes. Many collaboration and content needs may not get met and it may be impossible to know what the impact will be.

Smaller companies are more likely take the risk of putting content in the cloud or with a SaaS vendor, but increasingly, it is becoming more acceptable for non-mission critical departments to also store information in the cloud or with a service. That is if that service can be shown to guarantee security.

Sometimes speed of execution outweighs the risk of exposure. Many on-demand projects or customer interactions require IT resources "Right Now!" or business will be lost. Limiting the time of exposure in the wild or public sphere may help, but if business demands immediate access and IT cannot provide that, then organizations will seek ways to make it happen.

The Mobile Worker

Finally, there is that nether world outside of the office, but still in the domain of the enterprise. Increasingly, we are doing more and more work outside of an office. Right at this moment, I am writing this in my home office, away from any distractions. I am often on the road working - in the air, in a hotel, in a convention center - on presentations, plans or reports, much of which I would just keep in the enterprise. A similar situation exists where workers are out in the field or at a customer site, where working outside the office is essential. Increasingly, this work is being done on tablets and mobile devices.

These are situations where you would want to have the mobile device or laptop be seen as an extension of the firewall. However, using VPN connections is not always practical and can create their own security concerns. If you could put and store the content and materials you need to get the job done in the cloud, you would not only make yourself more productive, you could raise the productivity of the entire organization. This of course assumes that the content is secure and perhaps available only for the duration of the task at hand. The value of the work should exceed the risk of exposing the content.

Content Symbiosis

There are many more situations where you wouldn't want to put content into the cloud. Any corporation that is regulated should consider documents and content under regulation and be stored on premise. Highly sensitive information such as board documents or legal documents should be maintained behind firewalls. I know of two very large corporations with very popular cloud services that are using Alfresco to store their documents behind the firewall for this reason. Records whose final disposition is managed and destruction guaranteed should be stored in a controlled environment. Mission-critical documents that must be absolutely accurate and must not be tampered with should also be considered behind the firewall.

However, these new use cases are so much easier in the cloud. They become the reason to start to move to the cloud and actually add value to the enterprise systems to which they are connected. As Gartner puts it:

"Users should plan for a gradual shift from on-premises IT architectures toward a hybrid model in which these architectures coexist and interoperate with public-cloud-based architectures. For most midsize to large user organizations, a shift to a totally public-cloud-based strategy will not happen during the next five years."

I have heard the term "Hybrid" used for this combination of In-the-Cloud and On-Premise enterprise structure. I prefer to use the term "Symbiosis" since these environments are very complementary and help maintain the health of each. The more symbiotic these systems are, the more effectively they will work. Just like symbiosis, the cloud and on-premise may be very different, but have evolved to derive mutual benefit. If you remember your high school biology, this is called Mutualism. From a content perspective, we can see how these use cases of on-demand content services, enabling mobile working and facilitating B2B collaboration can help the enterprise thrive. Likewise, the enterprise is the protector of information and the producer of content from internal processes.

Like any symbiotic relationship, these systems will reach a balance. As I said previously, I think it will be a long time before the cloud becomes a dominant component. However, equilibrium of 80/20 where 80 percent is in the enterprise and 20 percent is in the cloud could be something we see in the next few years. We are far from that equilibrium at the moment, but the signs are there. If we look at this as a symbiotic integration of systems, it's easier to see how we get there.

Our next lesson on Content Biology will be about “Content Osmosis”.