The Gartner research group (www.gartner.com) reports that half of all enterprise content will be machine authored, as well as managed on hybrid cloud systems by 2018.

File synchronization and sharing also are expected be a standard embedded Enterprise Content Management (ECM) business function, while over one-fifth of all businesses will be managing content from multiple organizations. These realities emphasize the urgent need for businesses to update and future-proof processes by investing in systems that allow content to be smoothly integrated and easily accessed online, in order to remain competitive, says Gartner.

Across financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, legal and retail industries, the demand for ECM and Business Process Management (BPM) systems ) to be personalized and hyper-connected is rapidly increasing - magnified by the continuous rise in e-commerce and an increasingly agile workplace and consumer. Millennials are expected to make up 50% of the global workforce in less than three years making seamless, hassle-free accessibility a key requirement forcing companies to reconsider current strategies and tools, says Gartner.

Legacy ECM systems, on which many businesses still operate, are unable to integrate structured content and unstructured data, creating significant issues for companies across sectors, including loss of data and inefficient processes. In addition, businesses are facing the pressing challenges of rising data center costs and increased security demand, as regulated companies want to maintain steadfast control of critical files while also avoiding the stress of massive data centers.