Madrid, February 9, 2023 – The cloud. Who would have thought that in the world of technology we would be talking so much about this meteorological phenomenon. The most curious among you will probably know that the term “cloud” refers to the drawings of clouds that were used to represent first the telephone network and later the Internet in technical diagrams of computer networks. It was the abstract representation of the underlying infrastructure and servers that formed the Internet since its inception.
Curiosities aside, the reality is that there is an unstoppable trend to migrate even business critical applications to the cloud or to create cloud-native solutions. CCM platforms (Customer Communications Management) are no stranger to this reality. They are just another inhabitant of this virtual space that is already an inseparable part of our work and personal lives.
In this “journey to the cloud,” companies must address at least two tasks:
- Define and enable cloud-native architectures within the enterprise technology environment.
- Develop the key components of such architectures, such as container-based computing.
Cloud-native architecture
It is a combination of software development patterns that include cloud computing services (SaaS) to facilitate the design and construction of scalable, resilient, efficient, and automated systems. These systems provide business solutions in the form of composable services. That is, these solutions are, by nature, microservice-oriented, container-based and integrate API connectivity, Agile and DevOps.
Much water has flowed under the bridge since Salesforce launched SaaS (Software as a Service) back in 1999. It was the first cloud company. We had to wait until 2006 for Amazon Web Services to create a public cloud infrastructure. And today the cloud is already the standard in the technology sector, where on-premises servers are losing prominence at a dizzying pace. Some companies will continue to prefer servers, but thosewill be in the minority.
We will also see an evolution in the degree of maturity of cloud applications. The most incipient degree are the “monoliths“, legacy applications that were built as a single unit, following a waterfall methodology. In their architecture, the components are tightly coupled and there is a strong dependence between them. In suchplatforms, the business logic is usually integrated into the infrastructure, which is hosted on the mainframe, where there are dedicated hardware dependencies.
At the medium level of maturity are those applications that are ready to migrate to the cloud. These are web and virtualized applications that, with reasonable effort and complexity, can be upgraded and migrated to the cloud. In this case, an Agile methodology is adopted, and the architecture shows loosely coupled components, with well-defined interfaces. Legacy or middleware platforms suitable for the cloud are used. Their infrastructure is highly virtualized.
Finally, we come to the most mature and sophisticated applications, those that have been designed from the ground up for the cloud using an Agile methodology. Apart from the features mentioned above (containers, orientation to microservices and API connectivity), they offer two options: private cloud with converged infrastructure and public cloud, i.e., the famous AWS, GCP and Azure.
Containers&Kubernetes
Legacy solutions will be virtualized through containers, whose popularity is only increasing. There are still companies that go for virtual machines because they are less complex, but developers tend to set up containers in parallel.
It seems that container-based management will be the solution of the future, as open-source projects are working with configurations in which virtual machines act as containers and can be managed from Kubernetes.
Customer Communications Management companies will benefit as much as anyone from containerization technologies. In particular, they will enjoy three clear benefits:
Costs of SaaS CCM
- The scale of large cloud service providers (hyperscalers) allows companies to reduce their operating costs.
- SaaS Customer Communications Management (CCM) in cloudnative environments operates on a pay-as-you-go basis and avoids making large upfront investments. CFOs prefer to pay an annual subscription fee. Many traditional CCM systems require maintenance fees that include backups, upgrades, and security. However, a subscription model accommodates an unlimited number of users and includes maintenance, upgrades, technical support, and services.
Efficiency of SaaS CCM
- Speed: SaaS CCMincreases server efficiency, reduces server and licensing costs, and shortens start-up times.
- Agility: It streamlines application development and improvement.
- Scalability: Computing capacity can be flexibly expanded in the geographies that need it and during peak hours. SaaS CCM platforms incorporate mechanisms to manage large volumes of content, including libraries and test data.
- Integration: By nature,cloud-native SaaS CCM systems incorporate the latest technology and are designed to be used as discrete applications that can be integrated into any digital architecture. This minimizes the technical risks of innovations, upgrades, and new technologies.
- Portability: The operating system is not an obstacle to migration.
- Ease of management: Cloud-native SaaS CCM solutions automate installation, scaling, and management from container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes.
Reliability of SaaS CCM
- Fault isolation: By operating in isolation, the failure of one container does not affect the operation of others.
- Security: Isolation itself prevents the invasion of malicious code. In addition, the redundancy of information in all geographies, the automation of backups and the extensive experience in security of the main cloud service providers are strong arguments in favor. Furthermore,cloud-nativeSaaS CCM systems do not store customer data but connect to other systems to use data and generate communications.
The Customer Communications Management industry must also prepare for the future and set a clear course towards cloud-native CCM platforms. They must offer solutions that allow users to design, configure and manage every phase of the company’s customer communications. And they must provide frequent updates that enable the cloud’s core capabilities: containerization, microservices, continuous integration/continuous delivery model (CICD) and DevOps.
Those CCM companies that want to grow strongly and be able to adapt to the changing requirements of their customers will need more than just cloud-based solutions. They will need the flexibility and scalability of cloud-native solutions that provide them with unlimited, on-demand computing capacity, and give them the opportunity to innovate within the organization and truly focus on customers, as SaaS CCM providers’ subscription models help maintain long-term relationships.
About DocPath
DocPath is a leading enterprise document software company that offers its international customers the technology that allows them to complement their ERP and implement advanced Document Output Management, Customer Communications Management and document software pooling processes.
Founded in 1993, DocPath is based in Europe, USA and Latin America and is present with its Solutions in companies around the world. Among its customers there are prestigious banks and top-tier corporations, facilitating the difficult and complex task of designing, generating and distributing their business-critical documents. DocPath keeps a strong commitment to R+D+i, an area to which it allocates a large part of its revenues, and in which lies one of the keys to its success.
For more information, visit: www.docpath.com.
Legal Notice: DocPath is a registered trademark of DocPath Document Solutions. All rights reserved. Other trademarks mentioned herein might be the property of their respective owners.