Microsoft Sharepoint is on the rise, with most IT shops now using it onsite or in the cloud for document management. But Sharepoint isn’t the easiest application in the world to set up, use or manage.
These difficulties leave plenty of room in the market for competitors such as DocuLex Inc., which has been in the document game since 1996.
The company has some 1,000 customers using its on-premises document management suite, Archive Studio. But just as Microsoft moved Sharepoint to the Web with Office 365, DocuLex is putting major muscle behind the cloud.
Just recently, DocuLex announced IF&D services, named after Inland Fiber & Data, a sister company that just happens to have a Tier IV data center – considered the highest level data center. To be a Tier IV, you must have strict security including biometrics for physical access and separate security zones.
And key systems such as disk, networking, servers and power, must be redundant to protect against failure.
DocuLex actually offers three usage options for its software. One can opt for the on-premises, browser-based system. Customers can opt for a cloud subscription where the software and documents are hosted on shared systems as a SaaS. Or as the new announcement indicates, customers can also buy dedicated servers and capacity through a fully managed service from IF&D.
These new offerings include virtual servers, hosted dedicated servers and managed colocation services.
The Archive Studio Content Management Software Suite, regardless of which of the three options a customer chooses, includes knowledge management, records retention, e-mail archiving, and the indexing, capture and retrieval of documents.
Archive Studio is already browser-based, making the move to the cloud that much easier, as end users won’t see a dramatic change in their experience.
Why Cloud?
Document management is an ideal application for the cloud. Most document management installations are aimed at sharing documents, rather than pure archiving. The cloud means these documents can be accessed, worked on, and put back no matter where the end user happens to be or what device is in use.
And the cloud provider can be responsible for security, disaster recovery, and for larger companies, taking care of compliance issues.
Data Center Details
DocuLex not only owns the data center equipment; it owns the entire building through its parent company, the 6/10 real estate holding company, giving it total control of the 85,000-square-foot facility that includes carrier and telco areas, as well private data and colocation space.
A white paper on document management in the cloud is available here.
Edited by
Braden Becker
