An extraordinary year is behind us and hardly anyone expects us to return to “business as usual” in January 2021. Our archiving experts have analyzed market movements and combined them with technical options to identify trends for 2021. The result: Companies should innovate, implement significant savings and take responsibility for the environment.

Trend 1: Innovation is headless and open

The hidden champions of this world show it off: They are almost invisible, impress with their performance and make no claim to their own appearance. Similarly, you can speak of “headless systems” in the software industry. For example, a leading ERP system does not require document management with its own front end. It is more innovative to invest in a document solution that ensures reliable archiving invisible in the background.

The openness of systems and powerful interfaces are important prerequisites for sustainable business processes. The example from the SAP world “ArchiveLink versus CMIS” illustrates the upcoming changes and shows the innovations that should be incorporated. Compared to ArchiveLink, CMIS offers an SAP-independent and cloud-optimized standard that provides full content management (metadata, versioning, rights and role concepts, etc.) can represent functions.

Trend 2: Saving — archiving instead of DMS and SaaS instead of on-premises

The extraordinary year 2020 put words such as savings on hold and stopped investment almost gave wings — this will continue in 2021. However, saving should not be seen as a brake on innovation. Those who focus on the essentials and can free up budgets for new fields with changed processes will benefit.

For example, expensive and feature-rich DMS or ECM systems can be replaced by intelligent archiving solutions that pay off after just a short period of time.

In addition, the software-as-a-service trend is expected to intensify in 2021. Even for the sensitive area of archiving, it is expected that SaaS will become the leading operating model in the next few years. In addition to all the general technical, organizational and tax advantages that SaaS solutions can bring, the changed distribution of costs is always significant. Reducing or stopping Capex in IT therefore does not preclude a system change. Rather, new operating models, such as so-called AAAs (archiving as a service), will bring the necessary change to the system landscape and still be able to meet budget plans.

Trend 3: Assume responsibility — deleting is “green”

Gigantic data centers are being built all over the world, and billions of servers must be supplied with electricity and cooled. The reason: The more data, the more energy is required for operation. So if you don't duplicate your data infinitely and, above all, delete it regularly, you're doing something for the environment. In 2021, the concepts and techniques that ensure that archiving and deletion of data are as autonomous and intelligent as possible in accordance with the guidelines, will significantly develop. They form the basis for future document management initiatives.

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