Based on our experience from multiple customers, Docuvela is developing a new product that will provide a jump start for customers who are looking to leverage Amazon S3 object stores without the need for expensive and outdated ECM vendor software. 

What makes our approach different and better?

• Lower costs and quicker ROI 
• Architecture is greatly simplified, easier to maintain and support
• Customers own and control their content in a private cloud – it is no longer hidden behind proprietary APIs and repository layers 
• AWS Scalability and Durability
• Easier to integrate and leverage other software and technologies such as AI

Docuvela worked with many of our customers and analyst partners to try to predict the next disruptive technology for Content Services.  For example, check out Dave Giordano’s guest post on our blog.  Based on our discussions and experience, we believe that cloud object stores and related cloud services, such as Amazon S3, will take market share away from many of the existing Content Services vendors.  This is why we are investing in building out a solution that will allow customers to leverage these cloud services without the expensive ECM software middle layer and implement a true content services solution that greatly simplifies integrations and expansion.

Business Benefits of True Content Services

For experienced customers and developers, object stores (or content addressable storage) are probably already somewhere in their Content Services Platform (CSP) architecture, either in the cloud or on-premise with vendors like EMC, Dell or Hitachi. For the CSP vendors, moving their storage from RAID arrays, to a SAN and finally to object stores was a logical migration of storage mediums. To understand more about the benefits of cloud object stores such as Amazon S3, and how object stores compare to traditional file stores, see this article by our Chief Product Officer George Steimer.

Cloud object stores, coupled with additional services and components from cloud vendors, allows us to create a true microservices solution for content management, one that does not require an ECM software middle layer. Some innovative customers are removing the CSP vendor to work directly with the cloud object store for a variety of reasons:

• Control Costs – Software support and subscription models from content services vendors only continue to increase in cost each year. With a mature market  and vendors focused on maintaining their existing subscription/renewal revenue stream, traditional vendors are becoming more and more expensive despite delivering minimally new capabilities or benefits. Removing the ECM vendor and embracing Amazon S3 along with other AWS services reduces the costs for ECM applications.

• Improve Support – Companies and content services vendors are increasingly unable to support current implementations based on older and outdated technologies. Maintaining IT support staff historical knowledge of proprietary legacy technologies is impossible for companies and ECM vendors causing most content services solutions to be poorly maintained. Implementing solutions that are aligned with platforms such as AWS provides companies with a broader pool of IT resources, while making it easier to attract and retain these highly skilled resources. 

• Utilize Modern Technology – Utilizing modern technology, such as Amazon S3 along with other AWS services, provides technical resources with the most powerful tools to deploy, build, integrate and support the application. This is especially important as the Content Services market has matured and ECM has turned into more of a set of services and applications that are utilized by enterprise platforms to store and manage the content that is part of a larger, more focused ecosystem (i.e. Claims Management Application, ERP system, Asset Management). The need for an ECM application that provides generic file management and navigation is diminishing, and the need for content services that can be seamlessly integrated with other applications is increasing. For a more detailed discussion on this topic, see this article from our Chief Product Officer, George Steimer discussing how microservices have greatly benefited Content Services application architecture.

• Control Content – Companies are demanding control of their own content and are comfortable with Amazon or Microsoft Azure as private cloud options but have concerns about handing control to SaaS offerings from CSP vendors. Traditional CSP vendors, even those running SaaS options in the cloud, still “own” their customer’s content. For customers, having control of their own content, outside of a vendor-managed repository, is important to avoid vendor lock-in and provide open access to content and data.

• Improve Scalability – Many of the complex database schemas leveraged by the ECM software products built in the 90s or 2000s do not scale and can perform poorly once critical thresholds regarding the number of objects or attributes are stored. For example, we have seen customers struggle to ingest 100 documents/second (8.5 million documents per day) with Alfresco. Additionally, in March 2023, for the first time Alfresco engineering was able to release that the Alfresco repository could scale to 1 billion objects with Elasticsearch. These are all marks that Amazon S3 and other cloud object stores have been able to easily surpass for years. Leveraging Amazon S3 as well as DynamoDB, TSG was able to ingest 1 billion documents a day during their 11 billion document benchmark back in 2019 with complete linear scaling with no difference in performance.  

• Leverage Other Cloud Services – Taking advantage of cloud services such as Generative AI tools, Translation Services, and Amazon Rekognition are significantly easier when content and data is stored in standard Amazon S3 content rather than concealed under proprietary API and data schemas.

Our initial product will be built with Amazon S3 and other AWS services, and we will look to incorporate other cloud platforms as directed by customer demand. Our offering will be available in the first half of 2024 and we are engaging with existing and prospective customers who are interested in the opportunity to shape the product to meet their needs. If you are interested in becoming an early customer or in providing feedback, please reach out. We would love to collaborate with you.