Globally, Web 2.0 tools and information search engines will start to play a vital role in content management; however, this is expected to be fraught with information governance issues.
This is according to expert panellists speaking at the EMC Momentum 2009 conference in Athens, Greece, this week.
According to Whitney Tidmarsh, chief marketing officer of EMC's content management and archiving division, Web 2.0 technologies are facilitating an open dialogue and are built on sharing as much information, as quickly as possible.
“The problem comes in when information sharing doesn't always conform to the grain of corporate policy and governance,” she noted.
Dimitris Mavroyiannis, group CIO of Eurobank EFG group, stated: “The future of information access is not yet defined and tools like search engines will play a major role. What part will be structured and unstructured and how to access the information on the fly? If we don't answer that over five years then the booming of information will be a mess.”
Endless volume
Mike Davis, senior analyst for Ovum, pointed out that information has increased 10-fold over the past few years. He noted that content management platforms enable information to be properly managed and stored, and better information accessibility leads to improved decision-making.
“Information governance is all about making sure you make the best decisions based on accessing the most comprehensive information easily. From a volume perspective, the content management problem is over. This is because storage has increased, while the cost of storage has gone down.”
Davis said ease-of-use of a content management platform is becoming more important to businesses, because an intuitive and easy-to-use content management solution means an organisation does not have to invest in costly in-house training on a new system.
Proving compliance
According to the speakers, there's a one in four chance a company will be penalised by the law for not having enough governance and compliance models in place. In addition, it's not merely enough for companies just to have a governance solution; they must also be able to prove governance and compliance.
Gareth Meatyard, product specialist, content management and archiving division at EMC EMEA, said: “Compliance is easy; the difficulty is demonstrating compliance, and companies need the systems to comply with that base.”
He added that, in coming months, particularly in Europe, there is going to be more of an onus on companies to comply with tighter regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley.
“This will have an effect on companies and banks being forced to comply with the new regulations. When they don't comply, they might have competitive advantage for a while, but it will hit them in the end, and it becomes very costly for businesses.”
According to global research firm Gartner, 24% of European companies claim compliance is driving information governance, while 33% of European companies say the need for business efficiency is driving it.
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