Storing Content Under Enterprise Content Management Systems
Enterprise content is stored in repositories that can take many forms. Traditionally, content was stored on a central server hard disk and local system hard disks. Backups were made to magnetic tapes that were stored offline.
These days, content can be stored even on the Web, either at one’s own Web portal servers or with third party Web storage services.
Hard disks can be deployed as RAID - Redundant Array of Independent Disks - systems for higher performance and fault tolerance.
While hard disks are devices that are typically permanently fixed to the computers, storage media like Compact Disks (CD), DVDs and Flash Drives are removable, either for transporting data or for offline storage.
Offline storage is still done using magnetic tapes that have been conventionally used for backing up data. Tapes are not random access devices and provide slow access to specific pieces of data.
Findability of Stored Content
Data is stored for subsequent retrieval as needed for business operations. If the retrieval speed is slow, operations can suffer. Hence it is important to store business critical data on fast access devices, such as online hard disks.
Additionally, where huge volumes of content are stored, as in the case of large enterprises, it is also necessary to provide search facilities based on intuitive/meaningful categorization of each item of content, and indexing of all content.
Metadata such as tags and executive summaries are attached to each document, so that its relevance can be detected quickly when the content repository is queried. Different users might use queries with different objectives and content relevant to the objectives must be retrieved in each case Tagging the content using many relevant words can help in such situations.
Another related issue is readability of file formats. Enterprise content can take many different formats - text documents (doc, txt), images (jpg, gif, tif), audio and video (wav, avi), emails (eml), proprietary formats like PDF, and so on. Each application labels its documents using its own unique file extension.
This can mean that the relevant application must be available to the user, wherever that person is located, to open and read a document. This can be a problem where the document was created elsewhere with a rarely used application.
Additionally, some filename extensions like dat are used by different applications and a document created using one application’s standards might not be readable by another application using a different standard (but the same file extension).
The emerging solution is to use XML-based standards that can work with different formats and enable a user to open and view documents created by varied applications.
Security
Security measures seek to protect enterprise content from unauthorized access. If sensitive information like business plans and marketing strategy fall into competitors’ hands, it could prove highly damaging to the business.
Security is implemented by restricting access to the content using passwords, access rights and read/write permissions. Audit trails are also maintained to identify who worked with what content, what the person did with it and when, etc.
Security must also cover dangers like virus attacks, hacking and unauthorized printouts. Anti-virus software, firewalls, and use of network printers under the supervision of specific persons are some of the security measures widely used by organizations.
In addition to selection of storage devices to meet desired access speed requirements, Enterprise Content Management has to attend to findability and security issues also while developing a content storage strategy.