In the 80s, when new hires joined a company, they were given a green screen computer, and if they wanted to work on a document, they had to do it from a corporate server. Later, employees started to be able to download documents to their computers, but the problem was that nobody knew what the latest document version was, with the risks this implied. This made a great part of the company’s information and knowledge reside on the employees’ computers, which forced companies to adopt security measures (e.g. data encryption) that sometimes reminded people of the speed of the computers in the 80s. Many firms realized that their employees did not use the server and, besides, it was very expensive to maintain, so they decided to ‘dispense with its services’. Now companies are starting to use powerful solutions recently baptized as ‘the cloud’.
Why have we got back to the past in this field? Let’s remember that retro trends have become very markedly apparent in different industries, such as fashion, decoration and tourism. Thus, it is no surprise that the IT sector has joined this trend. The important thing is to know the reasons.
More space at a lower cost
The price for storing information of any type dropped so much that it was more economical to store data on individual computers. In the past, a megabyte was worth €500 and now 3 terabytes cost less than half. As a result, it was much cheaper to store information, both personal and professional, on computers. We have not developed personal photos for a long time. We save thousands of digital pictures and don’t even take the trouble to delete the faulty ones. What for? We have more than enough space and only print high resolution copies very occasionally. And what has become of the CDs that used to decorate the shelves in every house? They have virtually become collectors’ items. In the past, we used to save music on hard drives. Now we listen to it through Spotify, which only two years after its launch already had 10 million users.
Other forms of leisure, like movies, have not escaped this ‘epidemic’ either. After abandoning movie theaters en masse due to outrageous prices and the downturn (with box office receipts dropping by 20%), we started to save our favorite movies on hard drives, and now we are letting ourselves be won over by solutions like Netflix, which, at a reasonable monthly flat rate, offers us on-demand series and movies without commercials.
From the office to the cloud
Professional information has gone through a similar process. In the past, companies used to save employee and corporate documents, as well as any significant documentation they received, on each individual’s computer. Now they contract different types of clouds. In this sense, there is still no indisputable leader in the segment of information storage for professional environments. As long as no leader emerges, we can use solutions that allow us to be more flexible and faster when adapting to the storage system we decide to buy. A good example of this are document software solutions. Many of these solutions help digitize all documents in the company, with the resulting advantages: the physical space required to store documents decreases, as well as the associated costs, and, above all, the company keeps control over information and guarantees its security. In this way, the client makes sure that all documents are located where they should be, are not ‘mislaid’ on employee computers and do not fall into the hands of external providers.
At this point, it is important to make a significantly different approach when contracting cloud services. For example, there are individuals and companies that use systems like Apple’s iCloud or Microsoft’s OneDrive. The problem is that these solutions are not valid for all companies. There are many firms that handle sensitive and confidential information (e.g. banks, consulting firms, insurance companies, hospitals) and do not trust yet the level of security of these environments mainly focused on end consumers. They want their information to be centralized, but on servers over which they have absolute control, that is to say, on ‘private clouds’. What these companies need is software that helps them classify and maintain information, while meeting their high security standards. In this sense, there is still a long way to go. Technology giants should make more efforts to satisfy the most demanding customers’ security requirements.
While the information storage business is developing, we have to prepare the ground. Those companies with adequate information storage tools and policies will be more agile when adapting to any current or future cloud environment. But it is clear that all companies will have to upload their information into a cloud sooner or later.
Sources and relevant information:
- https://lalegatti.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/analizando-la-industria-musical-2-0-spotify-and-co/
- https://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2015/02/18/actualidad/1424279535_861999.html
- https://onedrive.live.com/about/es-es/plans/
André Klein
Freelance Consultant for DocPath