With cloud now prevalent in the business landscape, the challenge of keeping data safe has become a top priority, especially in highly regulated markets. Most cloud service providers have a usage-based pricing model, often leaving businesses unable to effectively forecast revenue due to the high variability of billing throughout their organisation’s ups and downs. This price-driven hurdle is quickly becoming a substantial barrier to cloud computing services’ adoption, migration and operation.

It’s vital to help businesses gain the scalability, flexibility and security benefits of the cloud without the inefficiencies of estimating the cost of computing services. “A good partner provides an enhanced view of the total cost of cloud ownership, in addition to mitigating net cost, by providing the appropriate steps to boost the impact of existing data security measures,” says Mike Bills, Micro Focus director of product management. This insight into the total cost of cloud ownership is accomplished by helping companies in regulated sectors, international organisations and governmental agencies to manage their business content from production to disposal.

Critical to success is comprehensive security, including encryption in transit and at rest, external vulnerability research, threat modelling, automated vulnerability scanning, and frequent independent security audits to deliver robust protection of sensitive data. “Look for a partner that enables you to efficiently manage content while fulfilling data protection regulations and achieving information governance goals,” says Bills.

Micro Focus’s solution

Currently, Micro Focus’s Content Manager Cloud platform, for example, has 50 000 daily users with multiple security certifications offered out of the box, which drives Content Manager Cloud’s use in managing the valuable IP and research data.

In South Africa, private customers tend to make the timing for Content Manager dependent on their cloud strategies. Customers are also still in the process of understanding how to manage the costs of being in the cloud and several have encountered unexpected budgetary constraints which have delayed the progress of cloud roll outs. Content Manager is, however, easy to budget for as most of the costs can be determined upfront.

The local market is embracing cloud content management. Because cloud content management is generally not a high transactional system it tends to be positioned towards the end of customers’ cloud road maps. However, Content Manager plays the role of the single source of truth in many companies, so this is not an ideal approach. Companies need to prioritise content management early on in their cloud journeys.

The platform’s scalable design enables it to be the ideal cloud computing platform for large enterprises or businesses undergoing expansion

Another critical facet of the platform is its continuous updates, which are driven by Micro Focus’s emphasis on responding to customer feedback. Recently, Micro Focus pivoted towards supporting Microsoft 365 and incorporated dedicated Microsoft 365 support into the latest iterations of Content Manager Cloud. The platform can now handle SharePoint connections, Teams integration and mobile app integrations. Moreover, the platform’s scalable design enables it to be the ideal cloud computing platform for large enterprises or businesses undergoing expansion. Micro Focus accomplishes this by leveraging its extensive experience working with large enterprises that have thousands of users working on millions of documents and records.

The Content Manager Cloud is part of a suite of information management solutions. The cloud management solution can be combined with other offerings to deliver enhanced cyber protection. For example, Content Manager Cloud can be coupled with Micro Focus’s File Analysis Suite (FAS) to quickly find sensitive data, classify high-risk information and secure it to minimise data loss. The firm also offers Idol, an unstructured data analytics and advanced search platform specifically designed to extract actionable insights deeply buried in unstructured datasets.

Micro Focus continues to build cybersecurity solutions from the ground up, incorporating emerging technologies to equip its clients against ever-evolving threats. Its vision focuses on improving cloud security, guaranteeing the efficient protection of confidential client information and pinpointing the exact cost of cloud services. Moving forward, the firm plans to maintain its operational expansion and capitalise on the growing demand for cloud solutions.

About Micro Focus
Micro Focus is one of the world’s largest enterprise software providers. We deliver mission-critical technology and supporting services that help thousands of customers worldwide manage core IT elements of their business so they can run and transform — at the same time. Find out more at www.microfocus.com.