SharePointRecordsManagement.com

[This is the second installment of an occasional series of posts on this subject.]

In the initial installment of this series I explained what cloud computing was and why it is likely to have a profound effect on how Records Managers do their jobs.  In this post, I will describe some of the risks and concerns you are likely to encounter as you and your organization begin to consider leveraging a cloud-based solution infrastructure for your organization’s SharePoint Enterprise Content and Records Management solution. 

Regulatory Compliance – This should be the primary cloud computing concern for Records Managers.  The legal and regulatory requirements applicable to your records repository located at your headquarters may be very different from the requirements that apply to your records repository hosted in another state.  And things can get even more complicated if your hosting service is in a completely different country.  

Security – Ask any information technology solution architect to give you their top five concerns about cloud computing and ‘Security’ is likely to be their first three.   The thought of maintaining your records repository offsite and accessing it over the Internet can be frightening to anyone.  And it should be.  Issues like user authentication, data encryption and privacy are just three examples of the many security concerns that you should be aware of if you are considering a move to cloud computing.

Backup and Disaster Recovery – No operations center is completely safe from potential disaster, despite what the hosting service may tell you.   A proven backup and recovery plan is a critical component of any cloud computing solution. 

Performance – As any experienced Records Manager knows, if your end users are not able to access their records quickly, easily and reliably, they will find a way to circumvent your system completely – such as storing records locally or copying them to external storage devices.  This loss of control could quickly make efficient records management next to impossible.  Any move to a cloud computing environment must not have a negative effect on the performance of your SharePoint repository. 

Data Ownership – This is an issue that probably doesn’t get as much attention as it should.  Records Managers must safeguard the integrity of their data.  This includes ensuring that there is a clear understanding of who owns the records maintained by the hosting service, as well as guaranteeing that your organization will be able to easily migrate its records to another hosting service given unsatisfactory performance by the current provider.

This isn’t a complete list of everything you should be concerned with when considering a move to a cloud computing environment, but it is a good start.  Mention these risks to a potential hosting service and they should have good answers for each of them.  If they don’t, you probably find another vendor. 

In the next installment of this series, I will discuss the benefits of hosting your SharePoint records repository in the cloud and why it may be the right solution for your organization.

[This is the first installment of an occasional series of posts on this subject.]

From the start, one of the primary goals of this blog has been to provide Records Managers with a better understanding of some of the critical technical issues they are likely to encounter while managing their records in a SharePoint environment.  And while I don’t expect readers to fully understand everything about any technical issues I write about (frankly, I don’t fully understand some of them myself), I do hope that I’ve provided enough information on some issues to give you fundamental understanding of how things work and how it applies to SharePoint-based records management. 

Which brings us to cloud computing.  The notion of cloud computing is certainly not specific to SharePoint nor is it specific to records management.  But it is relevant to SharePoint records management because it is an absolute paradigm shift in how information is managed and your organization will almost certainly consider moving some or even all, of their Information Technology services to a cloud-based solution.  And this includes your records repository and the solution you use to manage it.

So just what, exactly, is Cloud Computing, then?  Good question.  If you asked a hundred IT guys to define cloud computing, you are very likely to get a hundred different answers.  (And worse, I once asked a sales guy from a cloud hosting service what it is and he told me, ‘It’s whatever you want it to be’.  Thanks for the help, bud.)  I like to stick to a fairly simple definition.  To me, cloud computing is nothing more than Internet-based computing where an organization shares resources (hardware, software, technical support, etc.) delivered through data centers physically separate from the organization. 

Normally, customers don’t own the cloud computing infrastructure they use.  Instead, they essentially rent it.  There are two basic pricing models for cloud computing: a subscription based model and a utility based model.  The subscription based model requires a set payment for using the hosting service’s infrastructure and typically minimizes the restrictions it applies to the customer’s usage.  The utility based model packages the hosting company’s resources into a metered service whereby the customer pays only for the resources they use, just like they pay for their gas or electricity. 

To be clear, cloud computing offers tremendous benefits for managing your SharePoint deployment, but it also poses some potentially disastrous risks.  In the next installment of this series, I’ll explain what they are.