Information Archive

OpenText Information Archive is basically used for decommissioning purposes. When organizations would like to have access to all data, particularly during new content platform implementation, they usually migrate the active data that is still live in business. However, there might also be data that is not valid for live processes, but still needs to be kept as archiving. Keeping archived data in current solutions might be costly due to licensing and infrastructure expenses. Additionally, not many people have access to it.

OpenText Information Archive is implemented to let those people access their historical content without keeping the original applications live, because they are not supported and are running on non-supported systems. The content is already static and not part of the live business, so there is no need to migrate it. This solution saves space, reduces cost, and keeps the data accessible.

The best feature found in OpenText Information Archive is the complexity it covers, which means you can use almost any kind of data by integrating it with the original source and easily doing that into a unified content management system. You can define applications per application from the importing perspective while keeping them divided from a logical perspective. Everything is managed in the same concept, so the UI is the same, and you can integrate it if needed, even with content from OpenText if necessary. This flexibility is what is appreciated most.

OpenText is improving dramatically. There is an application that can easily help install and manage all the infrastructure and later apply hotfixes. This is more straightforward than it was before. Additionally, an automated approach is being used where the tool OpenText provides can be accessed via REST API to build up with custom settings the provisioning of a new OpenText installation quite easily and automatically. This makes it easy to work with.

There is still a belief that OpenText, of course improving as every other vendor does, could see a little bit more improvement in AI involvement and scenarios. It is good in small scope, but improvement for large scope as well would be valuable. This is something that is missed a little bit. Otherwise, it is evolving quite well and still on top of the market.

The most critical part regarding OpenText Information Archive is that OpenText is very strong, but the current packaging is already offering very strong capabilities in the smallest package. Of course, the price corresponds to the capabilities. Some customers would prefer to have fewer capabilities for a more affordable price. This is generally true for every single vendor of this kind. For big customers who have big requirements for the largest enterprises, it is reasonable. However, it really cuts out the companies which are at the edge between medium business and enterprises because those are maybe not looking for so advanced solutions from the functionality perspective.

OpenText Information Archive was started recently, as the organization was originally more focused on standard ECM technologies. The implementation timeframe is approximately a year.

The ability to support standard hyperscalers is quite well designed to cover every single peak a customer might have. Performance issues are usually not encountered. The only requirement is to design and scale the hardware properly. Once this is done, whether using fixed or flexible scaling, it runs easily. Complaints from customers regarding stability are usually not received.

The ability to support standard hyperscalers is quite well designed to cover every single peak a customer might have. Performance issues are usually not encountered. The only requirement is to design and scale the hardware properly. Once this is done, whether using fixed or flexible scaling, it runs easily. Complaints from customers regarding scalability are usually not received.

Customers are usually not accessing OpenText support directly but doing it indirectly via customer support. The experience is that support is improving. There is still some room for improvement for the future, but generally, it can be seen that over time, OpenText customer support is improving. They are a little bit faster and a little bit more precise. Still, as mentioned, some room for improvement exists.

OpenText Information Archive can be compared with FileNet. FileNet is quite frequently used by organizations looking for more a platform with no advanced UI. OpenText is great for organizations looking not only for a platform because it has a very strong REST API to be utilized, but it also has very good UI today, called Smart UI, which is attractive for users. It can be set up in the way that is really responding to every request users may have from a color perspective and from a content perspective. The big advantage of OpenText is the ease of how it can be installed and used from the customer perspective because a perfect UI is available. In case of FileNet, it is a little bit different. It is more for people who would like to use it as a backend really via REST API. It has a lot of features and a lot of modules, but OpenText is, at least from the user feeling, a more modern application.

OpenText is improving dramatically. There is an application that can easily help install and manage all the infrastructure and later apply hotfixes. This is more straightforward than it was before. Additionally, an automated approach is being used where the tool OpenText provides can be accessed via REST API to build up with custom settings the provisioning of a new OpenText installation quite easily and automatically. This makes it easy.

The ability to support standard hyperscalers is quite well designed to cover every single peak a customer might have. Performance issues are usually not encountered. The only requirement is to design and scale the hardware properly. Once this is done, whether using fixed or flexible scaling, it runs easily. Complaints from customers regarding implementation team requirements are usually not received.

Customers are asking for ROI and TCO calculations usually for three to five years, regardless of whether it is on-premises or cloud. Even on-premises, they would like to know it. This is from time to time the critical part for the decision because price in many tenders being attended is more than 50% for the decision point, with 60 plus percent being common.

The organization is currently working with OpenText products mainly. In the organization, another team is working with IBM as well, but more focus is on OpenText currently. The organization works with basically any content management solution OpenText has.

OpenText Information Archive is not currently being used with integrated records management that has been set up. If deletion is needed, it is done manually. Overall, retention policy is seen as a very strong capability and customers are really using it in every single installation. Retention policy is one thing and security, such as security clearance applied on top of standard access rights, is the second part used almost in every single solution. From time to time it might be integrated with others such as SAP ILM, but the majority of those are independent and are managed for customers. It works and really complies with all the regulations that need to be met and also legal requirements.

Metadata is crucial as OpenText Information Archive is a strong metadata-driven application. Metadata is used for multiple purposes such as searching, web reports, and visualization. Capabilities have even been implemented to use metadata for access control. If status is changed, access control automatically changes for people who should have access to that and removes it for those who should not. Metadata conceptually is the basis of work with content management. The structure in a tree-like form is just the additional form. Of course, it needs to be stored somehow, but metadata is most frequently used for many visualizations for customers.

Many customers are using cloud. The first solution is installing on-premises solutions on their own cloud infrastructure as IaaS. The majority of customers are usually using Azure for whatever reason. If this is a public cloud, customers are usually not asking for infrastructure from the vendor perspective, just for location because it should be EU-based cloud data center. That is the only preference. For private cloud, customers also do not have usually preferences. However, if they have their own infrastructure, they are usually running on Azure.

A partnership with OpenText exists. The overall review rating for this solution is 9 out of 10.