6 Frequently Asked Questions on Managing Content in the Cloud

According to a recent AIIM survey, 87% of businesses are interested in moving content management to the cloud to improve accessibility, cost savings, and the security of information. In fact, 44% of cloud users reported additional cost savings after migrating away from their on-premise solutions.

The cloud continues to be a hot topic as more organizations are making the switch to digital document management. Is your business ready? Here are some of the most common questions – and answers – about managing business content in the cloud.

1. What is cloud hosted ECM?
   Cloud hosted Enterprise Content Management (ECM) provides a secure and compliant document repository, designed to capture and control all of your business-critical information. Cloud ECM stores your documents in an electronic format, accessible via a secure internet connection. Cloud computing makes it easier to work with and manage a wide variety of information from PDF files, scanned images, Microsoft Office documents, email messages and more.
   
2. Where is the information stored?
   Your information is stored on your cloud provider’s server. One of the top cloud computing platforms is Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is used by Salesforce.com, SAP and many other SaaS providers to host critical data. Cloud hosted ECM provides a highly scalable and dependable platform that protects the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your data.
3. How are documents backed up?
   With a highly durable infrastructure, cloud ECM synchronously replicates your data across multiple facilities to provide 99.99% durability and availability. To further protect your business content, the top cloud ECM services will provide nightly snapshots of your application database for you to access at any time.
4. Is content in the cloud secure?
   When deciding on a cloud ECM service, there’s no doubt that you’ll want the most secure environment to protect your most sensitive business information. That’s why the best cloud ECM services use multiple levels of security to deliver stress-free protection. This includes in transit encryption through Secure Socket Layer (SSL), at rest encryption of your documents (AES-256) and Microsoft SQL Transparent Data Encryption.
5. How do I get content into the cloud?
   Simply scan documents through your desktop scanner or multi-functional printer to send them directly to your cloud database. You can even incorporate multiple levels of capture automation and document workflow capabilities from the touch panel of your office equipment. There is also the ability to pre-process documents with tools like text-searchable PDF creation, automated separation, data extraction, and more, before safely release content to the cloud.
6. How does cloud hosted ECM help with compliance?
   Adhering to compliance is critical to business and having all records available in an organized and secure location eases the burden of audits. With a cloud hosted ECM solution, records can be archived according to industry standards, ensuring secure, remote access to documents. Cloud ECM reduces the risk of non-compliance with secured document storage adhering to the regulations of HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 9001 and more.

AIIM’s survey concludes that nearly a third of non-cloud users are committed to deploying cloud ECM within the next two years. If you’re looking to implement ECM in the cloud, it’s important that you fully understand how cloud services works. Contact Square 9 today to schedule a demo and learn more about the benefits of cloud based document management!