A recent report on an uncommonly-mentioned hurdle to digital acceleration has brought to light the importance of content governance.

Here is a fresh perspective on digital transformation which may not have been highlighted in the year-long pandemic: While organizations that have not already done so are rushing to hasten DX, others that were already DX leaders may still be using outdated content management principles.

Based on findings from a small survey of 250 professionals that managed content and enterprise IT systems, a recent report has highlighted the importance of a clear path towards modernization that prioritizes content governance, as well as hybrid infrastructures that support ‘digital acceleration’.   

Key findings of the report by ASG Technologies, a provider of information-powered solutions for the information-powered enterprise include:

  • The value of content has remained unrealized: Organizations today know that information is their most valuable asset, but 56% of respondents were struggling to realize the full value of their content. Much of this had to do with the amount of unstructured data organizations own: 75% of respondents stated that at least some of their organization’s data was unstructured, with 44% responding that unstructured data made up half or more of their organization’s information. 
    • 30% of respondents noted that most, if not all, of their data was “dark,” which refers to data that has been collected, processed and stored, but not classified and contextualized for use.   
    • 26% of respondents noted that their content was managed in a repository, while 32% reported that content still existed in paper files. 
  • Modern content governance lacking: Despite the importance of realizing the full value of information, 66% of respondents reported that their organization does not have modern content governance processes. With the move to remote work, modern content governance has become even more important for organizations, but is often a struggle to put into practice, as showcased by the top barriers to implementation, which included employees saving content on shared/personal drives (41%) and migrating to the cloud (38%).
    • The accelerated shift to remote work had exacerbated many of the issues organizations were facing, with 37% struggling with storing content for too long, limiting control and access to the right people (35%) and retaining redundant/unnecessary information (35%).  
    • Three in 10 respondents identified risk of non-compliance with industry regulations and 26% identified risk of non-compliance with privacy regulations as a key concern related to content governance. 
  • Holding on to the mainframe: While many responding organizations were prioritizing Cloud, the mainframe was still the backbone of many industries, with 49% of respondents noting that most, if not all, of their core business functions still ran on the mainframe. As such, modernizing the mainframe was critical, and many have already begun the process.  
    • 58% of respondents said that their organization had already adopted DevOps on the mainframe, and another 30% wanted to.  
    • 35% of respondents believed the biggest challenge with their mainframe performance/optimization was increasing workloads due to increased engagement from distributed and cloud systems, while 27% of respondents said the skills gap was the biggest challenge with their mainframe performance.
  • Going hybrid is a popular compromise: Sincemainframes are still at the core of many respondent organizations’ core business functions, adopting a hybrid infrastructure was their preferred infrastructure for the future, with 67% of respondents noting that they have a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Some 52% of respondents said their organizations have a hybrid cloud ecosystem that includes the mainframe, and another 34% wanted one that does. 
    • Hybrid cloud has allowed more than two-thirds (68%) of organizations to move most, if not all, of their commodity workloads and applications from the mainframe to the cloud, while keeping systems of records that provide a competitive advantage – like customer data and business IP – on the mainframe.
    • Seventy-five percent of respondents replied that capacity flexibility is the reason they are moving workloads to the cloud, while other respondents note that it is because the cloud offers better performance for certain workloads that aren’t as mission-critical (70%) or better access with remote work (43%).

Said Kyle McNabb, Senior Vice President (Product Marketing), ASG: “Organizations have been forced to quickly invest in tools that would allow them to enable and support remote teams, which speeds up investments in solutions like hybrid cloud and team collaboration by years. The unintended consequence is it also introduced new business and technology challenges and risks that cannot be overlooked. Leaders of firms, and CIOs in particular, must accelerate their modernization efforts to embrace new ways of working, complex privacy and regulatory demands, and infrastructures spanning mainframe to cloud.”