DocuWare first expanded its product portfolio from on-premise to cloud-based solutions in 2012. This month, the company celebrates 10 years of offering secure, stable and scalable cloud-based services to over 6,000 cloud customers across the globe.

"Technology accelerates growth and cloud solutions open more growth opportunities, and while on-premise installations still have their value, we knew that businesses needed a more scalable and flexible platform — so we introduced DocuWare Cloud," said Dr. Michael Berger, president, DocuWare.

In 2012, DocuWare was a pioneer among document management providers when it introduced what it then called DocuWare Online. This early model offered secure document management and cloud storage solutions. It immediately gained popularity in the SMB market, but it was clear that companies of any size had a lot to gain and DocuWare had many new cloud customers signing on within the first few months. In 2015 when DocuWare renamed this online solution DocuWare Cloud, it had already experienced significant cloud customer growth. The business agility and resilience of the cloud platform meant that customers everywhere were signing up.

As the global marketplace expands, businesses and IT leaders continue to see the benefits of replacing or combining legacy on-premise installations with powerful and secure cloud services. While digital transformation is well underway in most countries, businesses still struggle with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Those not set up to support a remote workforce have a lot of catching up to do. The pandemic sped up the need for automation and spurred the demand for cloud-based solutions. DocuWare's solutions can be deployed immediately and, once in place, relieve the customer from the burden of managing security, updates, patches, etc., as this is part of the unique service DocuWare provides. Businesses who adopt cloud solutions can immediately address the departments most in need of a fast, secure solution, such as accounting and HR. Once the pain points related to remote workers managing invoice processing and employee onboarding are fixed, business continuity is ensured and leaders can shift their attention to business automation at large. This fast time to value is critical to the customer experience. By delivering value quickly, customers are happy, trust is established and long-term relationships can be built.

"With the onset of remote working, DocuWare has seen growth in our cloud customer base in countries and industries that prior to 2020, were slow to adopt," Berger said. "We started with nine customers and are now at more than 6,000 and counting. As we move into our 10th year of providing DocuWare Cloud, we have the experience and know-how to meet the growing demand for enterprise content management. We have spent years perfecting our solutions and the services we provide to our customers. We facilitate change throughout their organization with simple and fast deployments that require minimal planning and IT resources from our customers."

Today, DocuWare continues to offer on-premise and cloud solutions, along with hybrid models to fit the requirements of customers across any industry. When DocuWare first introduced the cloud 10 years ago, most new customers immediately showed a preference for cloud services, setting a trend that is stronger than ever today.