AvePoint on the TechnologyAdvice Expert Interview Series Podcast
Edmund White, Field Product Manager at AvePoint, was a recent guest on the TechnologyAdvice Expert Interview Series. The series, which is hosted by TechnologyAdvice’s Josh Bland, explores a variety of business and technology landscapes through conversations with industry leaders.
In the episode, Edmund discussed business process management, Microsoft’s CityNext program, and more. You can listen to the entire interview below:
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Below are three of the insights Edmund discussed throughout the conversation.
1. You may think of government as moving at a slower pace, but we’re seeing a lot of interest in technology there.
Government agencies really do want to provide an enhanced level of service to the citizens through technology, which is what is helping drive Microsoft’s CityNext program. As a CityNext partner, one of the solutions we’re delivering to help them achieve this is AvePoint Podium — which provides a live stream presentation and the ability to get live feedback from viewers in real time, allowing governments to have a more transparent interaction with citizens.
Another platform we’re delivering is called AvePoint E311 – Citizen Services. It enables citizens to easily submit requests and cases to service organizations through mobile devices. For example, if the citizen sees a pothole in a road, they can inform the city using an app and submit a picture of the pothole. The information is delivered to the correct city department, and the team can come out to fix it. The citizen can also see updates on the status of the case and is notified when it’s completed.
2. The cloud is so exciting because it’s such an unknown right now.
One of the exciting parts about partnering closely with Microsoft on cloud initiatives is the fact that it’s such a rapidly changing space. With Office 365, Microsoft can make split-second decisions, additions, and pivots much easier, allowing for faster innovation, which ultimately benefits customers in the cloud.
We’ll continue to see the trend of organizations pushing workloads into the cloud and Office 365. We saw that right away with SharePoint functionality such as My Sites and search as well as Exchange. More and more of those workloads will go up as organizations continue to see the value that the Microsoft Cloud can provide for them.
3. The SharePoint customers that I talk to have the most difficulty scaling, and automation is key as deployments continue to grow and evolve.
SharePoint started as kind of a departmental tool that many began to use simply because it was given away as part of organizations’ license agreements with Microsoft. For many organizations, it began to fill specific needs and grow so quickly that a lot of companies still don’t know how to handle the platform as it evolves. At that point, SharePoint becomes the organizations’ most expensive “free” software. That’s why there’s such a rich community around SharePoint right now, with people working together to solve challenges around a platform that is so integral to their businesses.
Scaling is still something that many companies don’t know how to handle – especially as more and more data is being fed into SharePoint. It’s becoming a tier one business application for a lot of companies, which means they get more resources to help manage it. This is great — but many run into struggles around automating processes that can become quite time-consuming for administrators.
When it comes to the enforcement of policies and carrying out administrative tasks in SharePoint, automation can help organizations not only ensure the platform stays within defined policies but also help relieve IT from massive workloads. AvePoint is helping our customers achieve this through solutions like DocAve Governance Automation and AvePoint Compliance Guardian.
This podcast was created and published by TechnologyAdvice. Interview conducted by Josh Bland.
In his former role as Director of Communications, Franklin was responsible for increasing brand awareness across all AvePoint's digital properties.
