We were part of a broader webcast series recently where Tom Rieger from OpenText presented with Platform 3 solutions a webinar titled “AI-powered Content Decommissioning the right way – how to clean out the old to bring in the new” <RECORDING HERE>. From that webinar PLUS another one where he broadened the conversation titled “A.I. Powered Content Remediation & Migrations” <RECORDING HERE>, a lot of real time data was captured from the attendees.
With that, we had a conversation with Mr Rieger to get his take on the webinars and resulting data.
Platform 3 Solutions: Tom, can you share what was presented on the webinars?
Tom Rieger: The sessions were meant to be very interactive and engage the attendees with educational and engaging information around where we are today from a technology perspective and what is hindering us in truly ‘transforming’ to where we need to be later this year. Rather it is cleaning out old technologies, this grand pivot to the cloud or simply cleaning out old data in active systems. But it starts with knowing what you have so you can decide what to migrate, archive, retire or just plain delete.
Platform 3 Solutions: That is what we discuss with all our clients. What did you learn from the webinars?
Tom Rieger: As I presented, I took advantage of the ability to poll attendees with questions to get their feedback to an area I mentioned above. One of the first was “Can you think of technologies in your data center that should be retired?” and fully 85% said “YES – Absolutely“. A few slides later I asked “Do you still have any of the following?” and attendees were able to click on any number that applied to them. Below shows the result
Tom Rieger (continues): What really caught me by surprise are the number of respondents with ‘network drive’. Fully 7/8th with ‘random stuff’ on Z-drives. At the same time, the mix of more structured systems like old ERP and HR systems are still at nearly 60% and even old email systems are near 30%. It was an interesting mix!
Platform 3 Solutions: That is interesting and we see this all the time – that mix of structured systems like Peoplesoft and JD Edwards along with platforms like the IBM mainframe and AS400s still out there plugged in. What else did you learn Tom?
Tom Rieger: Now that we know 87% of the attendees think they have technology to retire and now they shared a mix of what they are running, I then asked “Which of these are happening in your organization over the next 12 months?“. Here again, participants can click any number that apply to them.
As I knew there was no one answer to the question, the mix and priorities that bubble to the top was interesting. Almost 3/4th look to ‘retire’ and over 50% are doing a combination of cloud-focused efforts – ‘lifting-and-shifting’ legacy systems to the cloud and/or fully moving to new cloud based solutions and leaving behind the old in the data center. Finally to think that one of the priorities after two companies come together in a merger, how over 40% still need to reconcile systems was a larger-than-expected number.
Platform 3 Solutions: WOW – we had no idea it was this much a problem and consider this great proof of what we see when we talk to people. No one solution is all that needs to be retired and no one motive is driving the ‘cleaning out’.
Tom Rieger: Absolutely! The question is HOW to start and MANAGEMENT support. Everything we are talking about is pivoting into how to bring cost efficiencies in the data center – and what we discussed here is on the list. But from the webinars, another question asked was “What do you think keeps older systems running in your organization?” and the top answer was “Not a priority with senior management” at 87%.
Platform 3 Solutions: Thank you Tom and our merging of the Magellan A.I. capabilities to interrogate unstructured data with our proprietary Archon product, helping clients clean things up – the right way. For instance, there is no reason to move everything into an archive with the average being 50%-60% ROT (redundant, obsolete and redundant)…so for every 10 terabytes of data you really only need to worry about 4 to 5 terabytes.
Appreciate Tom Rieger’s time in this story.
Platform 3 Archon and OpenText Magellan
