Paper Filing Systems, Legacy It Going Extinct

The rate of companies leveraging paper-based filing systems has certainly gone down in the past few years. However, many firms are still relying upon legacy IT for certain aspects of document management, and this might be just as bad. Because digital technologies have represented some of the more promising options for companies to use and progress, a failure to migrate mission-critical systems and information into more advanced environments can quickly lead to a competitive disadvantage.

Infrastructure is a critical piece of this equation. All other moving parts in IT and general operations rely on networks and servers to function properly, and more modern tools will not fly with antiquated back-end systems. At the end of the day, a migration away from traditional paper and legacy document management systems and toward cloud services will boost enterprise performance.

The next step

As many business leaders have likely already seen for themselves, technologies change quickly today, and the cloud has been a commonly recurring factor in these changes. Gartner recently affirmed that software-defined data centers, which are some of the more advanced cloud-related infrastructure assets being developed today, will likely be in use among the vast majority of large enterprises around the world by the end of the decade.

Smaller firms will likely be experimenting with these technologies, but the firm believes the biggest 2,000 businesses will be especially aggressive in their engagement with SDDC. Gartner then asserted that leaders must take an active stance in the relevant modernization efforts.

“Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders need to understand the business case, best use cases, and risks of an SDDC,” Gartner Vice President Dave Russell explained. “Due to its current immaturity, the SDDC is most appropriate for visionary organizations with advanced expertise in I&O engineering and architecture.”

The analyst noted that out-of-the-box options would not likely be viable.

“I&O leaders can’t just buy a ready-made SDDC from a vendor,” Russell added. “First, they need to understand why they need it for the business. Second, they need to deploy, orchestrate and integrate numerous parts, probably from different vendors.”

Current implications

Business leaders who have not begun to modernize their infrastructure and document management systems will need to do so as soon as possible to ensure that major changes to data center frameworks are not disruptive. One of the key attributes of organizations that not only survive fluctuations in market conditions but continue to thrive despite challenges is agility, and cloud-based software and infrastructure can bolster a company’s flexibility from an IT standpoint.

The first steps involved will often be related to replacing paper-filing systems with digital options, as data must be in these environments to be used by modern devices and apps. Furthermore, working with a managed service provider to complete these tasks can work to the advantage of small businesses, given the speed, accuracy, and efficiency delivered by specialists.