IDM asked Micro Focus Regional Director Brandon Voigt to expand on the new cloud File Analysis Suite (FAS) offering in the region and what it means for the evolution of Enterprise Content Management.

IDM: Is the relationship with WyldLynx exclusive or are other local Micro Focus partners also able to offer FAS to their clients? Is Micro Focus also selling FAS direct or only via WyldLynx?
BV: Our File Analysis Suite (FAS) offering is not unique to Wyldlynx, it can be purchased directly from Micro Focus, or from any of our partners, but Wyldlynx have a proud history of pioneering software solutions in our market. For example, they are well known for their many successful SharePoint integrations with Content Manager over the years, and also for their many successful ControlPoint implementations. In many ways, their recent success with FAS is just a continuation of their commitment to understanding and deploying new and emerging technologies for the benefit of their customers.

IDM: Many organisations are looking at solutions to manage records in place rather than rely on users categorising and manually filing email or documents in an EDRMS. Does FAS offer the ability to analyse and apply remediation actions to files in realtime without the need for moving or copying the data from its source?
BV: We already provide realtime in place management for Office 365 and SharePoint using our Content Manager SharePoint integration. With this approach, records managed by the SharePoint integration already have the option of being left in SharePoint. Our File Analysis Suite (FAS) identifies records based on business rules and auto-classification, this considers content analysis – using such details as key words, metadata, and security classifications, such as those relating to personally identifiable information (PII).

If the content is identified as a record it will be moved into Content Manager where it will be managed as a record, with a retention schedule, and all the other compliance and governance features users would expect from the leading electronic document and records management system (EDRMS) for government users.

We are expanding the existing integration with O365, I mentioned earlier, by developing the capability in FAS to extend in place management to a much larger number of repositories, thus being a market differentiator. It will also allow users to choose to manage in place after discovery. With this approach, rather than moving the record, only a record stub will be moved into Content Manager.
 
IDM: How does the new File Analysis Suite (FAS) differ from the existing Micro Focus ControlPoint product?

BV: There are some similarities with the Control Point product from Micro Focus but this is a SaaS solution built for scale, that removes the challenge of managing storage and computing power. With many organisations now crossing over into managing Petabytes of unstructured data this has become a major consideration.

FAS was initially developed as a file analysis and data discovery tool that could not only remove ROT (Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial Data) but was integrated with SharePoint and O365. Now FAS is able to access a much broader range of enterprise systems, and connect to multiple repositories on-premise or in the cloud.

IDM: How is Micros Focus responding to the evolving market for Enterprise Content Management?

BV: Content Manager/ TRIM was initially developed to manage paper records in the pre-Internet era. The introduction of AI/ML capabilities with FAS is another example of how we continue to develop the product to stay relevant and why we have maintained our strong customer base.

We recognise that many of our customers are working in a ‘poly-repository’ environment and want the ability to manage records in place. They want enterprise-wide data discovery that can automatically take action when it discovers information that should be in the EDRMS, or encrypted or deleted. Customers also want to discover and analyse the mountain of data they hold in a dashboard that allows them to drill down into it. For example, what data is not being managed in a way that is compliant with their data privacy rules?

FAS currently can discover records based on classifications and automatically capture them into Content Manager. One of the great features of FAS, is that from a data discovery standpoint, we don’t need to collect data from any source to analyse and interrogate it – whether that is for privacy, compliance or data clean up. From there we can take protective actions against that depending on the use case including declaration as a record, apply file-level encryption, preserve data with legal hold or defensibly delete the data from the source.