As companies implement a cloud-first strategy, more information is ending up in Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). In 2023, over 340 trillion objects resided within S3. Most of this content is accessed through front-end business applications, such as SAP, SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics, Slack, etc. 

But what about business records, reports, project files, and other information that doesn’t live in a line-of-business application but still needs to be managed, organized, accessed, and archived?  Too often, this information ends up on a network drive, in a user’s personal drive, or lost in a SharePoint site. To date, most companies have not looked to Amazon S3 to manage this content since AWS tools are IT-focused and do not provide end users the functionality they need to search, locate, and access content easily. While some companies have chosen a custom development approach to close this gap, today, most customers do not have an appetite or a budget to fund such an approach. With the launch of Veladocs, business users now have an interface to store, secure, manage, and access content while taking advantage of all the benefits of AWS S3. Below, we explore how Veladocs leverages S3 and the advantages it offers to organizations.

Centralized Storage Solution and Content Distribution

Amazon S3 provides a centralized storage solution in the cloud, allowing businesses to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere. Cloud vendors have a global infrastructure and a content delivery network that reduces the distance information needs to travel, resulting in faster user access. This aspect is particularly beneficial for companies with remote or distributed teams. Employees can securely access necessary documents and collaborate in real-time, regardless of physical location, enhancing productivity and operational efficiency. By integrating Veladocs with Amazon S3, companies have an interface that can better access, manage, and retrieve content, streamlining operations and reducing local storage requirements.

Cost-Effective Storage

One of the most significant benefits of using Amazon S3 is its cost-effectiveness. Companies pay only for the storage they use, with no upfront costs or additional hardware expenses. As a business grows, its storage and compute levels can scale up or down seamlessly without significant capital investment. If using an on-premises solution, when the application nears the storage limit (i.e., 100 GB), the IT team will need to add space but will likely recommend adding a significant cushion (i.e., 400 GB) to ensure the space exists to support the next few years of growth. Until this space is required, the business is paying for 300GB+ of storage to sit idle.

On the other hand, AWS S3 utilizes a pay-as-you-go pricing model. The business only pays for storage that is actually used. Likewise, if demand decreases, storage costs will decrease. Veladocs provides additional advantages by supporting multiple S3 content tiers; this allows businesses to move content to lower-cost tiers as it ages, adapting to changing business needs without a hefty price tag. For additional details on the benefits cloud object stores, please read our previously published blog here.

Enhanced Data Security and Compliance

Content stored on a local or network drive security is placed in the hands of end users. It is up to them to determine where to put a file and how to secure it. Users typically take the path of least resistance and rarely pay attention to security settings, often storing confidential information in locations that other employees can easily access. 

AWS S3 security and encryption settings are very robust and granular and are typically automated to take the guesswork out.  Veladocs both enforces and simplifies AWS S3 security for end users by automatically applying security to content upon import based on the document’s index data. Automating document-level security ensures that security is applied both consistently and correctly. 

Disaster and Recovery

Maintaining backup copies of network drives and testing backup and recovery policies is costly and time-consuming for an organization.  Amazon S3 natively integrates with AWS Backup, a fully managed, policy-based service that can centrally configure backup policies to protect content stored in Amazon S3. Once backup policies are configured, AWS Backup automatically creates backups of information stored in S3 and securely stores them in an encrypted, designated backup vault.

Scalability

Traditional file stores can scale, but especially for on-premise implementations, scaling the storage capacity involves IT resources physically adding the necessary drives and allocating the memory as needed. AWS S3, on the other hand, offers seamless scalability that easily handles billions of objects and petabytes of storage.  In fact, Amazon S3’s use guide states that there is no limit to the total size or number of objects stored in a bucket.  Single objects are limited to a max of 5GB.

AWS S3: Better With Veladocs

So, if AWS S3 is so great, why do I need Veladocs?

While AWS S3 is an object storage platform focused on providing infrastructure and architectural advantages, it is equally important to understand what S3 is not. S3 is not a file system, nor does it provide a business user-friendly interface to upload and organize content. As an object store, it does not support directory hierarchies (cabinet-folder drill downs) or provide a built-in search function to query the content stored in S3 buckets. 

AWS S3 supports content metadata attributes, both system and user-defined.  Metadata is essential for content indexing as it greatly aids in organizing and finding content.  Examples of system-defined metadata include the file name, last modified date, and content type.  User-defined metadata stores domain-specific business information, such as document category, customer name, region, etc.  However, it is important to understand that user-defined metadata is limited to 2KB of total space, which is simply insufficient storage for most modern business use cases.  Furthermore, S3 does not provide an API for searching on user-defined metadata.

Fortunately, Veladocs provides the interface into S3, allowing the organization and search of S3 content. Veladocs can prompt the end user for metadata index information upon content upload. Document indexing can be automated by APIs and integrated with Amazon Textract. Regardless of approach, this information is vital to support search, lightweight reporting, and document-level security.

The other key feature Veladocs provides to S3 object stores is the ability to search. Searching can be performed against document type and metadata information, the document content (full-text search), or utilizing a natural language search function.  These search options are built to support different user personas, from the casual user, who is more likely to utilize a natural language or full-text search approach, to the experienced user who is familiar with the content and associated metadata information.

Amazon S3’s flexibility, security features, and integration capabilities with other AWS services make it an essential component in the IT infrastructure of many companies. But don’t leave this knowledge hidden behind technical edifices. Let Veladocs put that knowledge to work for your business by providing an interface and lightweight ECM functionality. Contact us to find out more!

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