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Keep your business documents safe, secure, and shared — in the cloud or on premises
Earlier, you would simply lock away your sensitive documents in the office safe. Today, you must protect your vital documents from prying eyes at the same time as you seamlessly share knowledge in e.g. Salesforce. And avoid violating the GDPR doing so. Let’s take look at how organizations manage.
A scary world
Hackers and pundits are trying to gain access to your data and systems around the clock. And if that’s not bad enough, 80% of all information leaks originates from your own staff. Either because they make mistakes, or even worse because they have evil intentions. You don’t want your most business-critical agreements to end up in the hands of the competition. But even more, you don’t want it to make it to the news. Nobody admires companies who cannot protect their secrets. And no one wants the attention from the personal data protection agency.
Opting for cloud or on premises
We have already established that in 2023 locking up your documents in a safe is not the right solution, but what is then? An enterprise archive is. An enterprise archive that takes hand of all your business documents in one place. No more copies of documents laying around on desks, in binders, in Outlook inboxes, on laptops, on fileservers, or network drives. The enterprise archive then protects your documents and allow the users of systems like Salesforce to seamlessly access all the relevant documents, while keeping track of every single access.
Only that way can you protect your documents from prying eyes — external and internal. And at the same time stay in full control when it comes to GDPR.
Should opt for having your enterprise archive on premises or in the cloud? That depends on your specific situation. For some both options make sense. For other only the one.
Cloud - or more precisely SaaS
With an enterprise archive as a service, you leave the heavy lifting to others. You will of course be involved with the design and the setup of your archive, but all the practical work is done by others. No new hardware to buy. No new software to buy. Nothing new to install. Nothing new to manage. And nothing new to run. Nothing to keep secure and up to date. And very little new to learn.
All of this comes at a price. A monetary price in the form of a subscription fee. But also a “loss of control” price, as the provider now dictates where data is stored. And to some degree when your enterprise archive is available and when it’s not. When it gets updated, and when not.
On premises — or more precisely run by you
With an enterprise archive installed in your own data center – or at a hosting partner of your choice, the situation is slightly different. You will then assume a greater responsibility for making things happen. And for keeping things up to date. But you then get more control. And you get to decide where data is stored. You decide when the archive is available. And you decide when it is to be updated.
Definitely not easier. Probably not more secure. And hardly any cheaper if you count in everything. But for sure, you are in more control.
Bauder opted for Next® as a Service
At Bauder, a world leading producer of roofing materials, the central ERP is running on premises. Still, the new solution everyone is rallying around is the CRM from Salesforce — one of the most successful cloud solutions ever. And a solution that is at the very core of Bauder’s international expansion strategy, that until now has brought the Bauder brand to 16 countries.
For Bauder, a Next® Enterprise Archive as a Service, seamlessly integrated with their Salesforce was the right choice. With little own effort Bauder now has a futureproof Enterprise archive. Always available. Always up to date. And with data stored securely inside EU at the Microsoft Azure datacenter in Frankfurt.
The writing on the wall
The writing on the wall is clear. To keep your documents safe in 2023 you need an enterprise archive. Period. One option is our Next® Enterprise archive, but there are of course others.
Whether you should opt for a solution in the cloud or on premises is more open. We see more and more customers moving into cloud. Quite a few into our multitenant SaaS offering, but also into other clouds. Most often they do so to reduce complexity and workload. For those who for some reason prefer to run Next® on premises, or in another cloud than ours, or we have developed a full-service concept – Next® Always Up To Date, that takes all the hassle out of running Next®.
There is unfortunately not one solution that fits all needs. And your needs may very well change over time. With Next® Digital Workplace you have the advantage that you can choose freely between our multitenant Next® as a Service, Next® run by you in any cloud of your choice or running Next® on premises. And best of all, you can change your mind over time.
No matter what solution you end up choosing,
I suggest you keep all your options open.
And psssst... waiting never got anyone anywhere.
