In the interview with Andreas Zipser, Chairman of the Board of EASY SOFTWARE AG
A large number of German and international companies of all sizes continue to rely on on-premises solutions. However, cloud technologies have steadily evolved over the past few years and now offer many advantages. Many existing customers of EASY SOFTWARE AG also benefit from these cloud advantages. With over 30 years of experience, EASY SOFTWARE is one of the market-leading providers of ECM, DMS and P2P solutions in the DACH region. Several thousand clients and an innovative mindset contribute to this success. We will learn more about how this works in our conversation with Andreas Zipser, who will also explain how software manufacturers can support companies on their digital transformation journey and move them to the cloud.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Although numerous customers use EASY’s on-premises solutions, you now want to natively enter the cloud with a new part of your product portfolio. What needs to be considered during this transition?
Andreas Zipser: The cloud is the ultimate driver of digital transformation. Our customers are also aware of this – however, the pace and degree of digitalisation vary from company to company. For us, it is therefore a central task to support the companies we work with where they need us and to meet them at the right point on their cloud journey. A “one-size-fits-all” approach on the part of the provider therefore makes little sense.
In reality, there are different paths to the cloud. If software providers, for example, develop their cloud solutions entirely in-house, they can freely determine to what extent the new cloud application should differ from the on-premises solution in terms of its functions and what the product roadmap will look like in the future. On-premises solutions can easily replicate many core features of today’s cloud solutions. New functionalities developed specifically for the cloud can usually also be integrated into existing on-premises solutions. With such options in the portfolio, providers give their long-standing customers a step ahead and signal reliability even in times of digital upheaval. And this in turn strengthens trust in the long term.
Even though the path to the cloud is a challenge for many companies if they want to remain competitive, there is ultimately no alternative. The advantage lies primarily in the cloud infrastructure and the way in which the solutions are provided. The initial digitalisation hurdle is significantly lower for cloud products – not least because there are no long implementation times. The entire delivered system becomes leaner and system resources are used more efficiently.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: What specific advantages arise from continuing to maintain on-premises solutions just as meticulously?
Andreas Zipser: By enabling providers to seamlessly transition between on-premises and cloud solutions, they not only retain existing customers but also incentivize migration to the cloud. Continuous customer dialogue on new technologies can only emerge if providers guide their long-standing on-premises customers toward current cloud software with appreciation.
At EASY, it is very important to us that existing customers still using on-premises solutions have access to the same or very similar features as those who have already switched to the cloud. For many companies, the question arises: Why switch to the cloud if the existing solution is sufficient? Here, it is the provider’s task to create awareness, demonstrate the benefits of the cloud, and highlight the urgency of digital transformation. This makes us a digitalization partner whose expertise customers can rely on. Ultimately, this trust and the promise to meet their individual needs are far more convincing than forcing customers into the cloud with pressure, especially when their only alternative would be an outdated on-premises solution.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: If feature parity is achievable to such an extent, what are some examples of benefits that only a cloud solution can offer today?
Andreas Zipser: Cloud solutions have the enormous advantage that features can be added or removed quickly and easily. This is partly due to the modular structure of most cloud solutions. But it is also simply because service employees no longer need to visit customers to install or uninstall new plug-ins or add-ons. On-premises solutions have long struggled with significant software overheads. In other words, customers increasingly demand more features that are deeply integrated into the existing solution. And yet, classic on-premises solutions tend to include several additional features in their standard packages—often more than the customer actually needs.
The result is a solution that becomes increasingly feature-rich over time but also increasingly bloated. It becomes more cumbersome to use and, not least, slower. Rarely do customers take the effort to remove previously implemented special functions once they are no longer needed. With local installations, the effort is simply too high. With cloud solutions, however, a few clicks are all it takes to reduce the subscribed package. The barrier to removing unused features no longer exists, and as a result, excessive software overheads disappear. Since modern cloud solutions are fundamentally designed and marketed in a modular way, these streamlined structures are further enhanced. Customers can precisely select the features they actually need and only pay for what they use. Lower complexity with unrestricted performance means: easier, faster usage as well as simpler and more cost-effective maintenance.
Such immense benefits can be much easier to convey to long-standing customers when we explain them using modern solutions they already use anyway. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with making new on-premises solutions as lean as possible in their basic framework from the start. The leaner the solutions, the higher the performance and the faster the updates. With new cloud solution versions, clients barely notice when updates are performed. The result is no downtime during updates while working. Users don’t have to wait long for download or installation bars to reach the 100% mark. Another advantage of lean solutions is that specialist applications and integrations can be connected much more simply. Providers can use simple plug-ins to give their customers new functions that they can use later—without having to update the entire archive server beforehand, as would be required with an on-premises system.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: So the status quo is that on-premises solutions can, at least for now, largely keep up with the essential functions of their cloud equivalents. But what does the future look like?
Andreas Zipser: What will be particularly exciting in our market is seeing how we can use the greater flexibility of the cloud not only to manage content and documents but also to evaluate data for customers. As an established provider, EASY can deliver a central content and data service platform to its customers. Solutions like the archive already serve as the hub of their corporate document and data worlds—and this is also true globally. The cloud makes it possible to evaluate such systems even more efficiently and centrally, using AI. This allows the companies we support to gain new insights from their existing data. The effective use of data and the resulting insights will increasingly differentiate major players in the future. Our mission is to guide our customers on this path and help them succeed through data-driven intelligence. This is an unbeatable argument for switching from established on-premises solutions to modern cloud technology.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: That really does sound promising! Thank you for this exciting contribution!