With Christopher Lien
The risks to cloud-based computing, however, are something the mailing industry needs to seriously consider before jumping too quickly into this technology transformation. The first and perhaps most obvious is access to the Internet. While becoming pretty ubiquitous throughout the industry, access to the Internet is essential for cloud-based computing. If the connection goes down or is having bandwidth issues, you will not have access to mission critical systems. Another risk to consider with cloud-based computing is data security. Financial, healthcare and insurance companies may have serious concerns with allowing their data to be processed offsite and through the Internet. Secure file transfer protocols are continually improving, but so are the efforts of nefarious individuals who are actively seeking new ways to steal sensitive consumer data.
Many postal software applications continue to explore a transformational bridge between both cloud-based concepts and onsite solutions through strategic partnerships. A common and well established example of this is NCOALink processing whereby data is processed remotely via a licensed service provider through the postal software application. This approach not only opens up the opportunity for change-of-address processing, but also expanding access to data quality on-demand services. List suppression, data enrichment, and advanced address correction are just some of the expanding services available for mailers who are considering transforming their mailing operations into marketing services. a Christopher Lien is President, BCC Software, Inc., a BELL + HOWELL company.
www.MailingSystemsTechnology.com a SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2011
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