Enterprise architecture professionals and records management professionals must be open to collaboration, cross-functional business and technical roadmap development and be willing to identify, explore and embrace new sources of corporate records. Technology has evolved since the first wave of records management (RM) tools entered the market more than 20 years ago. Regulations now cover the broader spectrum of electronically stored information, e.g., voicemails, not just what have traditionally been called "records." Information governance better describes and supports a holistic, life-cycle view of the creation, use and protection of digital information.
1. RM shifts to information governance.
Enterprise architects and analysts continue to focus on business architecture, information architecture, more agile technology roadmaps and the adoption of standards. However, many businesses continue to lack confidence in the progress of their electronic RM programs, compliance initiatives and e-discovery preparedness. The traditional practices and tools used to manage electronic records are changing. New vendors are taking fresh approaches to addressing compliance, categorization and retention requirements. The shift to a more comprehensive and proactive management of information across its entire business life cycle—rather than just at the end—has begun.
3. Digital preservation forces itself onto the governance agenda.
Digital records that have a long-term retention schedule are at risk when hardware devices, software applications and file formats decay or become obsolete. Research performed by archival institutions shows wide swings in the lifespan of common archive and long-term storage media. Software file-format obsolescence is also a significant area of research for archival and academic institutions, now that many first-generation business and personal productivity tools are retired and the inability to retrieve or view older digital records is becoming a reality. As organizations continue to evolve, the following issues have begun to arise: Organizations are slowly waking up to digital preservation concerns; decisions to retire older enterprise applications raise content-preservation concerns; and institutional memory risks relegation to the digital Dark Ages sooner rather than later.
4. Open standards and open source change the sourcing landscape.
The public sector, in particular, has begun to drive significant change in the software acquisition landscape by calling for deliberate adoption of open standards and open source. Governments are hedging against the potential loss of electronic information, software obsolescence and increased costs, as well as demanding more portable data. In 2011 through 2012, several national governments published directives to help their IT, records and procurement managers to understand, investigate and select more open technology platforms.
5. Autocategorization becomes viable and approachable.
Transactional, regulated and semi-structured content are ripe areas for automated capture, categorization and application of retention policies. Opportunities to use auto-classification technologies for routine, high-volume, predictable electronic content are increasing as technology matures, more vendors provide integrated offerings and use cases are identified. Electronic information that uses a consistent structure, uses embedded metadata or includes predictable patterns of numbers or text lends itself to content analytics, entity extraction and categorization tools for ingestion and application of retention, disposition and security or privacy access controls. Archiving vendors, such as Symantec and CommVault, are enhancing their product stack to enhance search, analytics and discovery capabilities, enhancing the usefulness of content already held in an archive repository.
1. RM shifts to information governance.
Enterprise architects and analysts continue to focus on business architecture, information architecture, more agile technology roadmaps and the adoption of standards. However, many businesses continue to lack confidence in the progress of their electronic RM programs, compliance initiatives and e-discovery preparedness. The traditional practices and tools used to manage electronic records are changing. New vendors are taking fresh approaches to addressing compliance, categorization and retention requirements. The shift to a more comprehensive and proactive management of information across its entire business life cycle—rather than just at the end—has begun.
2. Cloud and social platforms render "file and declare" ineffective.
The cloud market represented $41 billion in 2011 and is projected to reach $240 billion by 2020. Business productivity tools available as software-as-a-service (SaaS) represented more than half of that market ($21.2 billion) in 2011. These include document-sharing sites, social platforms for internal and external collaboration, marketing platforms, customer relationship management systems and accounting and expense management tools. Established enterprise application providers are aggressively "building their SaaS portfolios through acquisition and evolution of their existing products," and few new solution providers are developing exclusively on-premises offerings. To adapt to this new world, enterprise and information architects must be aware of the following: Traditional RM tools are slow to make the leap to the cloud; records and compliance managers remain wary of cloud and social platforms; and current RM systems are already missing many forms of electronically stored information.
3. Digital preservation forces itself onto the governance agenda.
Digital records that have a long-term retention schedule are at risk when hardware devices, software applications and file formats decay or become obsolete. Research performed by archival institutions shows wide swings in the lifespan of common archive and long-term storage media. Software file-format obsolescence is also a significant area of research for archival and academic institutions, now that many first-generation business and personal productivity tools are retired and the inability to retrieve or view older digital records is becoming a reality. As organizations continue to evolve, the following issues have begun to arise: Organizations are slowly waking up to digital preservation concerns; decisions to retire older enterprise applications raise content-preservation concerns; and institutional memory risks relegation to the digital Dark Ages sooner rather than later.
4. Open standards and open source change the sourcing landscape.
The public sector, in particular, has begun to drive significant change in the software acquisition landscape by calling for deliberate adoption of open standards and open source. Governments are hedging against the potential loss of electronic information, software obsolescence and increased costs, as well as demanding more portable data. In 2011 through 2012, several national governments published directives to help their IT, records and procurement managers to understand, investigate and select more open technology platforms.
5. Autocategorization becomes viable and approachable.
Transactional, regulated and semi-structured content are ripe areas for automated capture, categorization and application of retention policies. Opportunities to use auto-classification technologies for routine, high-volume, predictable electronic content are increasing as technology matures, more vendors provide integrated offerings and use cases are identified. Electronic information that uses a consistent structure, uses embedded metadata or includes predictable patterns of numbers or text lends itself to content analytics, entity extraction and categorization tools for ingestion and application of retention, disposition and security or privacy access controls. Archiving vendors, such as Symantec and CommVault, are enhancing their product stack to enhance search, analytics and discovery capabilities, enhancing the usefulness of content already held in an archive repository.
