Understanding Office Automation: Document Management System (DMS), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), And Cloud Services

Document Management System (DMS) vs. Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Billons of document all over the world are created and accessed by organizations for various purpose and needs. It is not difficult to realize that if there are no organized way to create and access those files and document there will be a complete chaos in terms of functionality and accessibility. In order to enable smooth workflow and streamlined service to access the documents office automation plays a vital role (Yang & Chen, 2015). It helps to access files and documents from anywhere ,anytime thus bringing more affordability in work process. Two of the most popular approach to support office automations are document management system (DMS) and Enterprise Content Management or ECM.

DCM is only capable of dealing with structured document and it is not effective for alternative document management like image ,graphics and web content.DCM is less secured and advanced compared to the ECM , another popular office automation tool (Laudon & Laudon , 2015).

There is several benefits of using ECM for office automation (Pearlson,, Saunders & Galletta , 2016):

ECM can handle any kind of data apart from simple structured document like email and word document. It is capable to store and deal with any kind of data like audio, video , rich multimedia content and more. 

ECM not only stores the document,It is capable of managing unstructured data by their own, thus making it a kind of office manger or a staff member who can work independently. Thus, ECM is more than simple productivity tool

In order to implement ECM , organization needs support of advanced system architecture. Additionally it requires advanced technical support. It is more suitable  for large scale organization and for medium and small organization the approach is not practical at all

It is true that DMS is not as much advanced as the ECM system. ECM provides  more options and flexibility in organizing and managing file digitally ECM is ideal for organizations that are large in size and have proper infrastructure in place to deals with the complexity of ECM system. However, if the main purpose of designing the automation is to enable the employees to store and access data from anywhere ,then DCM is more than enough to serve the purpose. In fact DCM is used all over the world by a majority of enterprises for its affordability and relatively simple infrastructure (Peng et al. , 2014).

IaaS makes use of virtual machines to host data and it reduces the requirement of power hungry physical data servers . VMS are data servers that belongs to other or the service provider chosen for the service. User has to pay to acquire the server or the VMs. The service providers provide the networking and operating system and storage facilities to run the servers (Dillon & Vossen , 2015). Based on the service package companies can opt for public cloud or private cloud. public cloud are shared between the companies subscribed to the service , while the private  cloud provides more secure access to the cloud by restricting the number of users that have the access to the cloud space.  

Benefits of ECM for Office Automation

PaaS means  platform as services.It provides the platform can be used to deploy the software. It basically provides the complete environment that includes operating system and required hardware to execute the software. It is based on the virtualization technology.  PaaS facilitates the in communicating with the servers and data base storage by creating the appropriate coding  required for the communication. PaaS can be of two types in terms of platform provided .platforms is of two types (Rittinghouse & James , 2016). One kind of platform supports developing software independently while there is another type of platform which support integration of new platform over the existing one.   Google App Engine, and OpenShift by  Red Hat are some well known PaaS based applications.

Even though PaaS provides cost effective cloud service it has some issues in terms of secuirity. While IaaS provides the flexibility to create custom security application on top of the infrastructure that is given by the service provider, PaaS does not support such integration. The IaaS is specially designed for the organization that operates in highly regulated field like government, finance , medical or legal sectors where security plays an vital role and needs to be dealt with  highest priority (Sridhar , 2016).  

In contrast to the PaaS, IaaS makes database flexible to make customizations as per the requirements of the company. Additionally , it allows the organizations to chose own database to store valuable codes and sensitive data. Organizations are  not bound to use the data base or storage facilities provided by the third party service provider.

However it is not a wise decision to choose the IaaS without considering the requirements of the organizations. IaaS is only helpful whenever there is a need for modification and customizations of the existing hardware or the software involved in making nay software or any particular app. Otherwise there is hardly any need for IaaS. PaaS is a smart choice , when the organization has all the resouces to built software but does not have the required servers and networks and resources to manage database. However , PaaS provides ease of services with a compromise with the security of database and data storage facilities.   

Saas refers to software as services. The concept is similar to the traditional software provision. It is the most common form of cloud services. SaaS manages the instalment and deployment of software for the client. It reduces the cost of software services as organizations no longer needs  to spend for the technical experts who manages software instalment and upgradation as the service is maintained by the  service provider (Dillion & Vossen , 2015). It also makes the software licensing affordable. Popular SaaS applications include Google Apps and storage applications like dropbox are based on this model.

Choosing Between DMS and ECM

PaaS refers to platform as services. It provides the platform can be used to deploy the software. It basically provides the complete environment that includes operating system and required hardware to execute the software (Sefraoui , Aissaoui & Eleuldj , 2014). It  is based on the virtualization technology. Google App Engine, and OpenShift by  Red Hat are some well known PaaS based applications.

IaaS refers to Infrastructure as a Service. In IaaS, cloud server and associated resources are provided either by the means of dashboard or by API or by both. It is the most flexible model of cloud services as compared to other services model (Peng et al. , 2014). It automatically deploy the server and power needed for processing. The storage and networking is also automatically deployed in this service.

In order to identify the appropriate model for SharePoint migration it is important to understand what the model provides in term of benefits and ease of use for the service.

To migrate the share point over cloud PaaS will be an appropriate model to choose.

In order to identify users and keep control over the access of resources, SharePoint needs Active Directory. The model helps in synchronizing the active directory with the software to make the access more secure and with the PaaS model, it becomes easy to maintain the security. The model also helps to deploy an on premises active Directory (Gesvindr & Buhnova , 2016).

There is absolutely no need for technical experts to administrate and maintain the local server. All the necessary technical support is provided with the service itself.

The cloud service eliminates the need for local infrastructure by integrating the processing power along with the necessary hardware with the service itself. This reduces the cost of infrastructure.

The patches and software updates are provided automatically to make improvement in the software in terms of performance and security improvement. There is no need for manual improvement (Kavis , 2014).

It cost a huge amount for the organization to buy a software license. With the cloud service software licensing is not a major concern for the organizations. PaaS cloud model provides the most affordable software-licensing package compared to other cloud service models (Kavis , 2014).  

Despite various benefits provided by the service, there are certain drawbacks that need to be considered before adopting the cloud service provided by the PaaS model.

Although the PaaS provides affordable cloud services, the data security is not top notch as the servers and storage are being managed by third parties, which may put the data at risk (Moura & Hutchison , 2016).

Cloud Services for Office Automation

In order to ensure security for the services it is important to choose a top quality service provider to maintain the standard of security. It is important to choose a service provider who will be available to support every time the company needs them.  It is important to ensure that company has the right security measures in practice before moving to the cloud service and in case any data breaches occurs the company has the tools and techniques like data backup solutions , available to deal with that.

The PaaS cloud model has limitation in terms of flexibility. It is not capable of creating and modifying various virtual machines with ease (Hussein & Khalid , 2016).

Before choosing the service, the organization needs to put the right effort  in designing ,creating and testing programs before they are considered to deploy for the end users. 

References:

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