The inability to find and manage data across diverse systems causes grief for many organizations. Disconnected data stores can fragment and impede business processes, a common problem wherever different systems are used across several business units. This challenge frequently exists within traditional enterprise content management (ECM) environments in which there may be a dozen or more systems that store vital information for everyday operations.
Federated content services offer an approach that is gaining momentum in many industry sectors, particularly in financial services with their voluminous record-keeping requirements. In any organization in which the data typically extends decades into the past and may encompass multiple content formats, a federated content approach can bridge the full range of information in use, combining different file types into an organization-wide content lake.
Content federation services go beyond the federated search techniques that were originally introduced in 1997. With content federation services, end-users gain a single, central location from which they can search and access all content across the organization. Search results can be enhanced by metadata, specialized indexes, and custom data models, improving the relevance and precision of results. In comparison, basic federated searches typically introduce challenges when trying to consolidate all of the search results, often returning inaccurate and irrelevant information retrieved from full-text content or displaying results that are unavailable for user access.
An independent survey conducted in 2019 by Censuswide, commissioned by Nuxeo, indicated that nearly 75% of organizations have information spread across multiple systems, much of it disconnected. The survey also revealed that on average each organization had 9 different systems in use.
Maintaining Content Continuity with a Modern Architecture
Enterprises that recognize the value of progressively moving their business applications and content to the cloud still face the challenge of dealing with proprietary legacy applications and the data files that are still in use. Practically, it’s not always cost-effective to migrate petabytes of data to the cloud and maintain linkages to proprietary on-premises systems.
The solution in many instances is to select a platform based on a modern content services architecture that can operate across on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid environments. In such a complex infrastructure, content federation services can effectively unify collections of data and objects across environments, keeping content searchable and accessible throughout the organization. This approach can help organizations realize the full benefit of digital transformation and extract maximum value from both old and new content types.
Building a Better Bridge
To create a bridge across systems, Nuxeo offers an advanced content services platform (CSP) featuring content federation services that include more than sixty connectors. These connectors create non-disruptive bridges to legacy ECM systems, core business applications, and file sharing apps (such as Box, Microsoft SharePoint, Adobe Creative Suite, Salesforce, and Documentum). AI and metadata capabilities expand the information value and add intelligence to searches and stored digital assets. The following figure illustrates this concept, showing how the Nuxeo CSP mediates, manages, and presents different types of files.
Developed using an open-source architecture and cloud-native framework, this CSP can be quickly deployed in on-premises, cloud, or hybrid environments and scales to meet demanding search, management, and storage requirements. The federated content capabilities encompass all forms of documents, as well as rich media content, including audio, video, 3-D renderings, VR and AR files, animations, geospatial, and more. Customizable user interfaces, versioning, tagging, and metadata let users shape the services to accommodate specialized requirements. Built-in workflow and automation tools streamline the development of business processes using visual, drag-and-drop components.
The enterprise value of the large-scale federated content services available through the Nuxeo Platform is not limited to this one capability. The massive scalability of the platform is complemented by a flexible, extensible open architecture framework. A Forrester Research report, The Forrester Wave: ECM Content Platforms, Q3 2019, noted:
Enterprises that want an open API, open standards, or open-source approach to content management and that require scalability for large volumes should consider Nuxeo.
Visit Nuxeo Content Federation Services to learn more about how to unlock the value of data across all your enterprise systems.