Content Management Software

As evident from Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget, the president advocates governmental adoption of cloud computing. Much of the $79.4 billion that’s going into government IT spending will go to the deployment of cloud computing across federal government offices. The government has already created an app store at Apps.gov.

Pres. Obama at Google

The benefits that cloud computing can bring to the government are substantial. IT costs will drop and go far in covering the initial investment. The Brookings Institution found that U.S. agencies can reduce 25 to 50 percent of their IT costs with cloud computing.

Over the past decade, government data centers have increased from 430 to 1,100. Cloud computing would be a good way for reducing that burgeoning figure before government IT infrastructure becomes really unmanageable. Beyond saving costs, cloud computing can allow for better services through efficiency and not simply tacking on more data centers.

However, officials are still calling the security of cloud computing into question. The Government Accountability Office released a report listing several security concerns, including vendors using ineffective security practices, agencies not being able to scrutinize the security controls of cloud providers, agencies losing access to data if a provider-client relationship ends, and criminals targeting clouds. Several agencies have already shifted over to the cloud before the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) could develop a government-wide security plan.

On the contrary, Mike Bradshaw, director of Google Federal, believes that the cloud would actually improve government security, as the cloud stores data on multiple servers in different locations. The redundancy also protects against data loss.

“The cloud enhances security by enabling data to be stored centrally with continuous and automated network analysis and protection,” Bradshaw continues. “When vulnerabilities are detected they can be managed more rapidly and uniformly. Cloud security is able to respond to attacks more rapidly by reducing the time it takes to install patches on thousands of individual desktops or hundreds of uniquely configured on-premise servers.”

So many industries, public sector and private, are still feeling insecure with cloud data. Yet, the government is not prepared to halt altogether until industry-wide security standards are created. Among Apps.gov and other investments, the government has created a new network, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Pilot Program (FedRAMP) to develop security and certification standards. Pressed by advocates such as Vivek Kundra, CIO in the Obama administration, the government will move forward.

Vivek Kundra speaking in favor of cloud computing

More than anything, the novelty of cloud computing is what’s most frightening. Strong, if not stronger than existing security measures are very possible. The end result of a unified government information system, qualified with the proper security, is well worth the initial investment.

Box.net, aka Microsoft Sharepoint’s nemesis, has launched Box Sync for Business today. The Palo Alto-based cloud content management vendor designed Box Sync to centralize crucial business content by connecting users’ desktops to Box.net’s cloud content management system (CMS) and collaboration solution.  Box Sync gives Box.net users an easier way to share content with collaborators and to partnering business applications and mobile devices.

Box Sync helps companies configure and manage information silos to extract more value from content that was locked in the desktop before.

“Businesses today face a major information challenge-they need to centralize and manage massive amounts of crucial content, while also reducing their reliance on costly, high maintenance infrastructure,” said CEO of Box.net, Aaron Levie. “Traditional enterprise content management systems like SharePoint are now looking to the cloud to address this issue, but take a disjointed approach with separate on-premise and cloud-based products; at Box, we’re providing a compelling alternative by building a seamless bridge from the desktop to cloud content management, with Box Sync as an extension of our core platform. We think this approach will prove disruptive, with immense cost savings and productivity benefits for businesses.”

Box.net seeks to make content easy to manage, share and collaborate over. Box Sync helps users work offline and use desktop applications away from the desktop. Box Sync also helps users keep colleagues and partners up to date with latest content versions through the cloud. Box Sync can be downloaded as a desktop client, and will give Box.net users the ability to single-click to sync Box.net folders to extend active content to the desktop. Box Sync also features real-time updates in activity feeds.

“The collaborative sync goes far beyond simple storage,” Said Mark Brennan, Executive at Xactly and Box Sync user. “We’ve said ‘Sayonara’ to old versions, colliding edits, email attachments and out-of-sync updates.”

Box Sync also gives Box.net CMS users the ability to access content created on desktops from devices like the iPad, iPhone, and Blackberry. In short, Box.net is pulling out all the stops to beat out its competition *cough, SharePoint, cough*. The company also plans to leverage their $15m Series C funding to continue to bring forward-looking technologies.

It seems like we’re moving towards a world where big players like Google, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft will host all of the world’s enterprise data centers and companies will simply rent capacity from these big infrastructure providers. But EMC CEO Joe Tucci has a different vision.

While he doesn’t believe enterprises are going to give up their existing investment in custom applications and configurations for things like ERP and line-of-business apps, he also acknowledged that the current data center content management situation isn’t sustainable. IT departments are managing an ever-growing and ever-more-valuable collection of corporate data on a stagnant IT budget. They watch as the IT infrastructure has gotten more complex, more inefficient and too inflexible and costly.

Benefits of today’s data centers include: trust, control, reliability and security; while cloud computing offers: dynamic interaction, cost-efficiency, on-demand and flexibility. EMC plans to combine the benefits of both with is “private cloud” strategy for content management with no compromises.

Rather than following the data center verticalization strategy for content management that Hewlett-Packard and Cisco are taking, EMC’s private cloud strategy swaps out verticalization with virtualization and allows all data center solution providers – including competitors – to plug in.

EMC’s V-Plex product for virtualizing entire data centers at the data level is clearly the foundation of their private cloud strategy. Their cloud play is really aimed entirely at established enterprises with lots of legacy applications, legacy code and legacy technologies. Old-line enterprises are their main focus because there’s a lot more money in it (and they’ve got more content to be managed). It involves solving complex problems on a large scale and companies that need that kind of help have much larger IT budgets (and profitability).

Amazon and Google, EMC wants you to know they’ve got your back.

In an earlier post, we discussed Box.net’s funding acquisition and their emergence as a serious threat to Microsoft SharePoint. The cloud content management (CM) solutions provider announced even more exciting news today; Box is integrating its CM application with cloud computing vendor NetSuite.

NetSuite already has an impressive collection of cloud computing products, but is hoping to beef up its CM platform with Box.net’s technology. Box.net integrated with NetSuite using NetSuite’s SuiteCloud application. SuiteCloud gives users the power to create, manage and collaborate on documents stored on Box.net.

Users can create Box.net folders when viewing a customer’s record in NetSuite that will be assigned to that customer’s record. Users can also upload files to Box and invite other users to collaborate on documents to ensure that they are properly managed. Box and NetSuites collaborative tools not only promote CM accuracy, but workflow efficiency as well.

Box also has third-party integration features like fax, email and documents within NetSuite as well.

NetSuite offers the Box.net integrated CM solution on their SuiteApps website. You can also test drive the Box-NetSuite integration, if you’re unsure. Blog CM is really excited to see what other integrations Box.net and NetSuite have in their development pipeline.