The Year of Compliance and Consumerization of Buying Enterprise Software
The Year of the Compliance – I can’t afford not to be compliant but how can I afford to be compliant
With every new year comes a look back at last year. The current monetary crisis will reignite regulation, governance and compliance concerns. What this crisis has taught us is that markets are global and local regulations cannot protect global markets. New global regulations will come into place and need to be enforced globally. From a content management perspective this means:
- Audit everything and everybody in everything they do in every region
- Audit not just documents but also email, instant messages and also social networking when it relates to business
- Audit not just additions or changes but also access
- Enable rapid searching and eDiscovery across not one but all repositories of all types that a person may have accessed
- Make it simple to show the process and rules you have been using and the change control in your systems including your websites
This will require open standards and architectures to support these new requirements and avoid costly highly damaging eDiscovery requests. This “mass” compliance will require systems that are:
- Low cost
- Simple for all users to use
- Simple to rollout on a large scale
- Based on open standards for integration
Then you can address the question in a rational way:
“Can I afford not to be compliant and also how can I afford to be compliant
Prediction for 2009: 2009 will see a resurgence of compliance and an audit everything approach from a content management perspective. This will further drive open standards adoption to enable cross repository access and analysis offering commoditization driving down the cost of content compliance.
The Year of the Consumerization of Buying Enterprise Software – Discover, Try, Buy - with the Wisdom of Crowds
In the 1990’s there was a lack of freely available product information and the only way to access and try an enterprise product was through the sales division of that company. The world has changed and the internet has made:
- Information on a product freely available
- A product download freely available
- Advice on that product freely available
- The opinions of masses of users freely available
The credit crunch is forcing companies to look for value – not just in the cost of software but in the way they evaluate software. Today, to discover a product you go to Google. To get opinion and information you rely on the wisdom of crowds. People are turning away from “the complexity machine” and rewarding simplicity, value and transparency. Tools such as Google trends show in real-time market trends. Masses of blogs offer up-to-date information. Ranking and access allows good information to rise to the top. This is what has driven the success of Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britannica.
Prediction for 2009: Enterprise software acquisition will be consumerized. Companies will “Search” the web, trusted blogs and forums, “Try” the software via download or in the cloud, and ‘Buy” if they like it, typically through a subscription model.
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Tags: audit, compliance, consumerization, Credit Crunch, governance, low cost, open, Open Source, standards, value
