Moving your document management to a cloud-based solution is not a straight-forward decision, there are benefits and disadvantages. We look at the current state of document management software and how to think through the process of moving to the cloud.

1. Moving your document management to a cloud-based solution is not a straight-forward decision,
there are benefits and disadvantages. We look at the current state of document management
software and how to think through the process of moving to the cloud.
To The Cloud or Not To The Cloud
That is the question, for document management systems

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Salesforce.com Redux
Companies are at a key time in the evolution of document/contents
management for their companies, a time similar to the early 2000’s
when Salesforce.com came on the scene. (For the sake of this
paper, we will refer to all file types as documents, so for expediency
sake this includes digital files from CAD programs, MS Office
programs, web-based content, emails, video, audio, etc.). Around
the beginning of this century, many senior executives and IT
professionals were questioning the prudence of placing some or all
of their client relationship information on a system not residing in
the company’s managed data center, outside their firewall. All sorts
of predications were made of the possible bad consequences that
could transpire.
Of course, more than 10 years later we now know using a cloud
provider (SaaS or not) not only makes sense but provides
considerably more value to companies than implementing an on-
premise solution for their CRM application. Similarly, companies
are looking at moving some or all of their document management
solution to the cloud. And yet again, senior executives and IT
professionals are questioning the correctness of taking this route.
What Exactly Is The Cloud
The definition of a cloud solution has become very muddy over the
years as various implementations and services have used the term.
For our purposes, the cloud shall mean any application that is being
run outside the corporate data center and requires access through
the Internet. (There are, of course, some cloud oriented systems
being run by corporations in their own data centers, but these are
the same old systems using a different conduit.) So the cloud-based
application can be hosted by a third party, by the application
provider, or even the corporation in a data center outside the
normal four walls of the organization. The key is the software is
accessed using the Internet and is being executed outside of the
corporate firewall.
Salesforce.com was one of the
first true watershed applications
that proved utilizing an Internet-
based SaaS (Software-as-a-
Service) application for mission
critical functions was not only
possible but highly efficient and
effective. The evolution of
Salesforce.com has mimicked
the level of comfort large
corporations have with this new
technology.
Large companies, like Merrill
Lynch, initially were reluctant to
use SaaS technology without the
ability to control and customize
their applications.
Salesforce.com responded by
providing a PaaS solution
(Platform-as-a-Service) whereby
Merrill could leverage
Salesforce.com’s platform yet
maintain control over the
application and custom
requirements they believed to
be unique to their organization.
Platform flexibility gives cloud
providers the agility to meet
various corporate needs with
cost effective operations that are
highly scalable.
Salesforce.com was not the only
cloud provider of the day, others
like Amazon, Workday, and Intuit
also contributed to the
momentum of cloud based
applications, typically as a SaaS.
The decision to move the corporation’s document
management application to the cloud is not a straight-forward
decision for many organizations due to a number of factors.

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Benefits and Disadvantages of
The Cloud
As in most decisions, there are often pros and
cons to making a change. Though, in general,
we know the world is moving towards more
“cloud-based” solutions, it still may not be the
right move for every company, especially for
overall document management.
The biggest benefit is also the biggest
disadvantage; the cloud-based document
management solution is managed outside the
routine IT infrastructure. Benefits of being
outside the corporate IT four walls:
 Improved document and database
security
 Reduced involvement needed of
corporate IT departments
 Enhanced access to documents from
non-traditional locations
 Greater scalability
 Lower total operating costs (usually).
Improved document and database security:
This is often not intuitive for many users. The
expectation is the corporate environment is
locked down and highly protected. The reality
is internal IT infrastructure is frequently way
behind in industry standard system protection,
is often managed by understaffed IT
departments, and involves legacy systems and
networks built years before the sophisticated
security intrusions we see today.
By their very nature, cloud-based providers
must be highly secure, using focused
operations groups with nothing but security on
their minds. Think about your business, and
the critical elements you manage, and the
issues that would arise with customers if you
weren’t fully focused.
Reduced involvement needed of corporate IT
departments: As much as IT departments
would like to think they have everything in
control, the actuality is technology is just
moving too fast and staffing has not kept up.
Supporting users and user applications, though
very high on the list, is just one of a long list of
mission items. All too often the IT group is
slowing down user access and installation of
new and highly beneficial applications. Cloud-
based solutions, while not totally excluding IT,
certainly reduce their management and
operating burdens.
Enhanced access to documents from non-
traditional locations: With today’s mobility and
access to websites anywhere, it is curious that
corporate America is still living with walled-off
legacy systems that can only be accessed and
utilized while in the office. So much additional
functionality can be derived from employing
operational and support systems from outside
the office, at other office locations, and through
mobile devices. Documents in the cloud allow
for access and collaboration from almost
anywhere, using almost any device.
THE BIGGEST BENEFIT IS ALSO THE
BIGGEST DISADVANTAGE; THE SOLUTION
IS MANAGED OUTSIDE THE ROUTINE IT
INFRASTRUCTURE

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Employee Consumerization
Use of tablets and smartphones has
exploded, and employees expect to
be able to use these devices to
connect and work with their daily
applications, just as they would at
their desk. Unfortunately, legacy
systems are not prepared to
interface to many of these devices,
either because they don’t recognize
the web browser or have screens
designed for much larger viewing
areas. Moving to the cloud often
addresses this as cloud-based
systems are typically built with
mobile access in mind.
Greater scalability: Cloud providers are all
about versatility and effective use of server
assets, so they are acutely ready to scale up and
down quickly, as needed by the client and
application. This means adding data, new
databases, high resource delivery methods
(e.g., required for HD video and gigabit files), or
just plain processing power, it is more likely that
you’ll get quicker response at less expense in
the cloud.
Lower total operating costs: The costs to
provision and manage infrastructure are
frequently lower in cloud applications. Some of
this is due to scale (many cloud providers are
very large), some due to application of fixed
assets over many clients, and some due to
better management of IT resources. For third
party managed solutions, these savings are
weighed against the margins the organizations
must get, but are usually more than sufficient to
provide lower costs to the users.
The Disadvantages
The disadvantages of moving to the cloud for
document management include:
 Need to migrate large datasets
 Important intellectual property residing
outside the corporation
 Additional time required to download
large documents.
Need to migrate large datasets: Corporate
documents have grown substantially in the last
few years and continue to increase at a mind
boggling rate, partly generating the need for
formal document management systems.
Ironically, it is the sheer number of these files
that presents the largest obstacle to moving to
the cloud. These large datasets
take significant time to copy and migrate to
cloud-based applications. One way to mitigate
this obstacle is to employ a hybrid system
(discussed further below).
Important intellectual property residing
outside the corporation: All of a company’s
intellectual property (IP) is represented within
its documents. Some of this IP is considered
highly confidential and mission critical. For
years, the notion that any of this IP could reside
outside the corporate firewall was heresy.
Much of this culture lingers and senior
executives and IT departments still feel
uncomfortable allowing any of these
documents outside the corporate network.
Given the security improvement in the cloud,
much of this is unwarranted perception. But as
it is said, perception is often reality.

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Additional time required to download large
documents: As technology speeds ahead there
will be increasing bandwidth for file movement
and cloud connectivity. Unfortunately, many
companies are still stuck with existing provider
relationships, some even in DSL arrangements.
Moving 30 or 50 Megabyte files from the cloud
to the desktop or mobile device can still take
some time, upwards of 3 to 5 minutes,
depending on the corporate connection to the
Internet. High speed, even Gigabit networks,
will significantly reduce this negative in the
coming few years.
So How to Decide if The Cloud is
the Right Way to Go?
The first premise one must accept is that at
some time in the not so distant future, all
documents and IP will reside in the cloud. We
can’t predict how soon, but like the
replacement of landlines with cell phones, the
impending cost savings and viability of cloud-
based storage will make the use of local storage
antiquated.
The second premise one must accept is the
world of mobile access is here to stay and is
clearly better supported by organizations
focused on providing content to these devices,
not by corporations producing widgets or
providing professional services.
So the train is coming and if you’re not already
on it you need to be prepared to jump on.
There are, however, some transitional steps
companies can take, including:
 Employing a hybrid solution of in-
network and cloud document
management
 Use of multiple servers on a WAN
providing file transfers, as needed, to
users
 Co-locating servers in hosting facilities
supplying high-speed Internet
connections.
Employing a hybrid solution of in-network and
cloud document management: Much of what
is kept on corporate servers is not highly
valuable IP and some documents really do need
to be distributed to third parties, including
vendors, contractors, and customers. A hybrid
cloud approach maintains important, valuable
files on internal corporate servers and permits
other files to be stored and accessible in the
cloud. This hybrid solution gains the basic
advantages of cloud document management
while helping to address some of the concerns
about cloud storage. A key requirement,
however, of a hybrid arrangement is to ensure
documents and folders are synched, so users
are always accessing the most current versions
of documents; locally or from the cloud.
Use of multiple servers on a WAN providing
file transfers, as needed, to users: A quasi-
cloud environment can be simulated by using
multiple servers on a Wide Area Network
(WAN), whereby one, or several, of the servers
acts as a file server, transferring large files to
users as they need them. So files are still being
maintained entirely by the corporation, on
corporate owned assets, but files are
Can’t we use one of the name cloud storage providers like Dropbox?
These solutions are terrific for personal or non-corporate
documents but they lack the security features and versioning
capabilities corporations need to manage their organization’s
files.

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distributed, allowing access from anywhere in
the company, similar to the situation delivered
by a cloud-based eco-system.
Co-locating servers in hosting facilities
supplying high-speed Internet connections: By
locating corporate managed servers within third
party hosting facilities companies can start to
make the move to the cloud while still
maintaining full control over all IP and other
documents. Users connect to servers over high-
speed networks simulating internal networks.
This configuration allows organizations easier
transition to a cloud environment but still relies
on heavy IT management and does not take full
advantage of what the cloud has to offer.
Summary
The decision to move the corporation’s
document management application to the
cloud is not a straight-forward decision for
many organizations due to a number of
factors, including:
 Continued use of legacy systems
demanding IT oversight and
maintenance
 Hesitancy on behalf of senior
management to allow highly valuable
and mission critical documents outside
the corporate network
 Insufficient Internet bandwidth to
provide adequate access to needed
files, especially large files
 Cost and time needed to relocate files
to the cloud.
As was the case in the early 2000’s with CRM
datasets, the viability, cost savings, and
productivity elevation of cloud-based
applications will eventually be seen to far
exceed the disadvantages. Benefits include:
 Security and access beyond that which
corporate IT infrastructure currently
provides
 Increased collaboration and document
sharing between groups, locations,
vendors, customers, and other entities
that is not currently available
 The ability to scale and accommodate
growing data needs more rapidly and
at less total cost
 Overall improvements in corporate
productivity due to the quicker access
to more and important documents
needed in the decision making process
 Reductions in the staff requirements
for IT departments; allowing focus on
mission critical functions applicable to
the company and output performance.
eQuorum is an engineering document management software provider offering
cloud, on-premise, and hybrid solutions for companies with a large number of
files, files types, or locations. It’s solutions have been utilized over the last 15
years by some of the country’s best known manufacturing, engineering services,
and utilities companies, as well as major universities and government agencies.