1. The Newest Movement in Information
Management: No More File Share
Close your eyes, and take a moment to visualize this: 'No more file shares'. What do you see?
How does it feel? For me, first of all I feel this is the core of my being as an enterprise content
management professional. Second, it makes so much sense, that I really can't grasp that there are
such a large amount of them still out there. I envision a world without file shares, instead using
the right tools for collaboration, content sharing, management and archiving. These tools have
been around for quite some time and have proven their existence.
We all know human beings are creatures of habit. Well, the greatest proof of that is that all
organizations which I encountered during my time as a consultant, still have a large, if not
Transfer file largest part of their content stored on the good old file shares. People working
together on these shares have not changed since the first time they started using them. On the
other hand, everything we store on file shares has changed. The variety, volume and velocity of
content has taken a giant leap forward in the last decade. But in many organizations, all of those
different and new file types are still stored on the file share for collaboration.
Of course, everybody wants to create a somewhat manageable situation for themselves. Adding
metadata through twenty-something deep folder structures, defining naming conventions for
files, adding version numbers in titles, etc. Still, we are all making a mess, still, we are creating
duplicate upon duplicate upon duplicate. Still, we violate laws and regulations because we store
sensitive content. Well, I think it is time for a change. I want to initiate the following movement
here and now:
No more file shares!
Every day, there's something going wrong with documents. Especially on file shares. This results
in frustration, lost time and therefore costs. In addition to the risks to your business, there are
also legal risks and the risks of violations of the laws and regulations.
