Over the past several years, fueled by the global wave of digital transformation, businesses have been migrating from legacy enterprise content management (ECM) software to take advantage of modern, cloud-native content services platforms to increase business agility and innovation. Organizations that have failed to migrate from old, outdated legacy systems implemented over a decade ago are now bearing the brunt of a limiting infrastructure that incidentally costs money to maintain.
While undertaking a migration project is daunting under any circumstance, the risky, expensive, and complex manual migration projects that were once an IT nightmare no longer need to be today’s reality.
This blog looks at the benefits of legacy migration and, in particular, the benefits of migrating from a legacy ECM system to Alfresco cloud.
What is Legacy Migration?
Legacy migration refers to moving outdated software, platforms, or applications from an on-premises server to the cloud. Cloud-powered services tend to provide more seamless management of IT assets and enable remote access to content and data while mitigating security risks and high costs associated with maintaining on-premise hardware.
Yet despite the advancements in content services toward more agile, cloud-based offerings, many businesses remain reluctant to upgrade their legacy systems for one reason or another. After all, they paid a lot of money for them, and the systems still work, so why bother going through that extra expenditure and effort?
What organizations don’t consider is that the long-term cost benefits of migrating today outweigh the temporary inconvenience and effort. In fact, 80% of companies see operation improvements indicating ROI within the first few months of migrating to the cloud, and 82% of small and medium businesses report reduced costs after adopting cloud technology.
One such option for organizations looking to migrate their ECM systems to the cloud is Alfresco Cloud. Alfresco’s cloud-based ECM platform provides a modern environment for developing and deploying content-centric solutions – without the cost and complexity of on-premises legacy applications.
Let’s look at six benefits of migrating to Alfresco Cloud.
Better Value
Businesses are always looking to save money, and Alfresco Cloud offers long-term value against outdated legacy ECM. Aside from the incredible time-saving from switching to an always-on solution (and time is money), organizations will see significant cost cuts by eliminating excessive hosting fees, physical hardware, licensing, and added IT maintenance costs. After all, you don’t need to buy huge data storage or manage costly servers. There’s no expensive up-front fee, as cloud systems are subscription-based, letting you spread the cost annually or stop altogether if you find a better deal. Alfresco Cloud leverages Amazon Web Services, making it an even more cost-effective solution.
Immediate Access to New Solutions
How many thousands of man-hours have been wasted on dreaded updates? Sitting around waiting for software to slowly upgrade to the latest version and waiting for the barrage of questions from confused users when everything has changed? With Alfresco Cloud, users will automatically be moved to the most recent version of the platform, so feature upgrades can be enjoyed without impacting business.
Better Collaboration & Productivity
Whether team members are in the same building or hundreds of miles apart, cloud-based ECM provides online access from any location, allowing for seamless, real-time collaboration and communication, boosting organizational efficiency.
Alfresco Cloud simplifies company data management by centralizing information online – allowing users to access content and applications from any device, anywhere. Adopting a cloud-first ECM solution can corporate operations across the board, from remote access and real-time collaboration to integrated data backup and restore choices.
Work From Anywhere
If the last several years have taught us anything, it’s that businesses need agile work methods that can adapt to new constraints and enable remote work as needed. Organizations that haven’t future-proofed their operations will likely fall behind their competitors in today’s digital landscape. Migrating to cloud-first ECM like Alfresco Cloud guarantees that you’ll never be hamstrung when physical offices close and that users can have fast access to information remotely, as and when they need it.
Hybrid work is here to stay, and with 75% of employees preferring to work from home at least some of the time, businesses that don’t offer that option risk losing out on top talent and seeing a higher churn rate.
Better Support
Gone are the days of keeping costly IT support. Instead, Alfresco Cloud has technical specialists working around the clock to ensure everything runs smoothly, day and night. No matter the problem, dedicated support teams are available with worldwide support locations. This not only gets you back to work faster in the unlikely occurrence of an error, but you’ll also save on hiring staff.
Better Use of Resources
IT systems can be complex, expensive, and time-consuming to manage. Thinking about out-of-date hardware, constant software updates, and lengthy backups is enough to give anyone a headache. And what happens when you’re suddenly forced to scale up, employ more IT support and buy more hardware?
That’s all a thing of the past with Alfresco Cloud, meaning you get to spend more time on the tasks that actually matter, like growing your business.
Time to Migrate!
Aging on-premise solutions lack the agility and breadth of services that modern enterprises require in the evolving digital landscape. Cloud-based ECM provides a modern environment for developing and deploying content-centric solutions—without the cost and complexity of on-premises legacy applications.
Whether you’re looking to move away from an expensive, difficult-to-maintain legacy system or looking for a simple way to move on-premises solutions to the cloud, Fast2 can help streamline the entire migration process from a range of different systems with a simplified, comprehensive mechanism to ensure the success of your legacy modernization project at speed.
So, if you’re interested in getting your legacy migration process started the right way, feel free to reach out to Fast2 today!