Meet Lisa Marcus, Vice President - Government at Nuxeo. She has an extensive knowledge of the US Federal IT modernization space and is here to expand the Nuxeo business in this space.
Here’s her story.
Q: Could you tell us about your industry experience prior to Nuxeo and why you decided to join the team?
I’m passionate about having certain elements in my work including:
- Engaging with high caliber, high performing, and fun teams Enabling game changing or disruptive technology that has unique value to customer missions Delivering great outcomes for customers and the company
I strive to be in environments where I do what I love, so it never feels like ‘work’ and hope to create that type of atmosphere for our team too.
When I was introduced to Nuxeo, I found it delivered in these areas and then some. The energy from clients, the technical team, the leadership, and the board is wonderfully infectious. You should have seen the excitement at our booth during the recent MongoDB World event. All the presentations and demos were mobbed.
I’ve worked in Big Data for over 10 years. Content - of all types (text, documents, video, tweets, voice, pictures) - are critical assets. Nuxeo helps customers unlock the value of these assets in a way that is transformational. Our modern architectural approach reduces risk and helps organizations move from legacy environments to future ones without rip and replace and all based on Open Source and Standards. What a marvelous value proposition!
My dad was an architect, so I’ve also always loved to build things. In my role, I get to expand and build-out our US Federal and North American Government business. We are expanding our team and building a strong eco-system comprised of key partnerships to best enable our clients’ success. The combination of the unicorn-in-the-making company and my role were too great of an opportunity for me to pass up!
My journey prior to Nuxeo includes over 20 years of Software Sales and Management roles. I began my software career as one of the early Microsoft Federal sales people. Next, I spent several years at Oracle, and, most recently, I led IBM’s National Security and Justice Federal Software team. In between those first companies and prior to IBM, I had the privilege to help start the Government practices of three other technology companies:
- Groove Networks, which offered a security collaboration capability and was founded by Ray Ozzie (inventor of Lotus Notes). The company was acquired by Microsoft. Netezza – One of the first data warehouse appliances (acquired by IBM) MarkLogic – An early entrant into NoSQL Databases and Nuxeo partner. I was lucky to be there when Dave Kellogg was the CEO.
Q: Please describe your role at Nuxeo.
I lead Nuxeo’s North American Government business, which includes the US Government, Canada, State and Local Government and related solution partners. I’m chartered to grow and develop our efforts in these areas. We are very busy shoring up our practices to ensure we meet and exceed the standards and requirements unique to the Federal sector. So far, we have cemented our partnerships with Amazon and Microsoft. Nuxeo is now available on both the Amazon (aka GovCloud) and Microsoft Azure Public sector clouds. We have also tightened our partnerships with some of our technology counterparts such as Red Hat, MongoDB and MarkLogic. We are rapidly training, certifying, and partnering with key FSIs to deliver our full capabilities to our customers. Additionally, we are excited to have joined with Government reselling partners Carahsoft and FedData. We have been added to some of their key Federal buying vehicles.
Additionally, we are also rapidly growing the team and on the lookout for more top talent. Everyone seems to love our new Government headquarters location and environment. Located in Tysons, VA, our open and vibrant space is near the new metro station, close to our partners, customers, and near a great selection of restaurants and bars. We’ll soon be launching and participating in events and activities focused on how we can best serve the Government community.
Q: You are very familiar with the US Federal space and the scope of Enterprise Content Management initiatives. What are the major trends/initiatives/challenges in the industry and how does Nuxeo help solve these challenges?
Beyond striving to provide increased efficiencies at reduced costs to better serve constituents, there are several initiatives where Nuxeo is ideally suited.
One is the Federal Records Management Directive M-12-18 which states “…to ensure transparency, efficiency, and accountability, …and to promote openness and accountability and reduce costs in the long term, the Federal Government should commit immediately to the transition to a digital government. Agencies must meet the targets by 2019; Federal agencies will manage all permanent electronic records in an electronic format.” Federal records are no longer restricted to documents. The directive now stipulates _ all electronic records_ — in other words, rich media, social media, photos, voice, and video — are now required as part of this mandate. Since most legacy systems only managed documents, this mandate is driving modernization efforts.
Nuxeo’s modern content management system architecture permits the Government to streamline their approach and meet the new requirements with less complexity. Thus, Nuxeo helps the Government reduce the costs and deliver better outcomes for managing these key historic Federal assets.
Nuxeo is a leader commercially in the Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems area. The Government uses DAM systems but normally might use other terms for this capability. We are beginning to see this change and Government users are seeing the value of creating an enterprise-level source to manage diverse and reusable assets. In fact, at least one agency is exploring using a DAM as an integral part of their situational awareness approach both in the field and in their operations center. This is opening up more areas for Nuxeo to help drive key mission outcomes.
Additionally, the Government is introducing a wide variety of Digital Innovation to include mobility and reduction of paper. The Government collects, manages, consumes, reports and distributes vast amounts of data, which is growing at a tremendous rate. Nuxeo offers a solution that is inherently more flexible, more scalable, and fundamentally better suited to meet these unique needs of the Government.
Another huge trend we’ve noticed is the move to Cloud environments. Since Nuxeo is cloud native, it is uniquely positioned to excel in these environments. Also, our services-based architecture and Universal Data Model provide ready connectivity to legacy data and content sources, enabling the Government to take a more intelligent and lower risk approach to replacing ECM legacy systems over time, while still providing access to critical content.
Learn more about ways to solve legacy modernization challenges in our whitepaper.
Q: Can you briefly talk about some of the use cases here?
Currently, in the Federal space we are primarily focused on:
- Case Management - Beyond being centered on content and versioning, we have strong workflow and rules capabilities that help enable case management applications with one holistic scalable environment. We are working on a wide variety of use cases, especially in the Civilian accounts. These include health care applications, fraud, and tracking services between agencies and their core constituents.
Learn more about our Case Management Platform here.
- Modernization (also known as Digital Transformation or Innovation) is another focus. Recently, the White House held Technology Week on this very topic. There is a tremendous focus to modernize the Government’s technology infrastructure as well as make an effort to bring business sensibility. The number of antiquated systems is staggering. This administration is driving agencies to move from these costly older platforms and siloed applications toward modern agile approaches, cloud, and managed services. We see lots of opportunity to assist in this area along with our technology and implementation partners.
Learn more about our information management systems modernization here.
Get a tip sheet from AIIM on what does information management modernization mean here.
Q: When you’re not working, how do you like to spend your time?
To kick back, I mostly spend time with my family and friends. To unwind after a long day, I like playing games on my tablet too. My husband and my two adulting children are all tall and witty. They like to see who can be the funniest or best at making fun of me. We also have a high energy lab puppy, Rosie.
We are an active family that enjoys sports, sports events, as well as, music, theater, movies, and adventures. My family teases me about lots of things, including being a fair-weather fan. No surprise, I like winners. I follow teams from my hometown of Chicago, as well as from DC, or ones from the universities my kids or I attended (e.g. Ducks, Trojans, and Hurricanes). After the Cubs won the series last year, I’m back rooting for them big time. I can’t wait to don my championship gear when we see the Cubs this summer!
We like to take active vacations. One of our favorites was a several week Glamping-type of safari in Tanzania and Kenya where we got up close and personal with lions, giraffes, elephants, monkeys, etc. My son even ended up in the scary situation of being face-to-face with a water buffalo as we walked to dinner. The next adventure on our list is a trip to Peru to Machu Picchu where we plan to hike part of the Inca trail and maybe get to the Amazon. My current adventure is training Rosie to paddleboard with me. Wish me luck!