Get up to speed on what a digital document architecture looks like and how it works to fuel innovation
What are digital documents?
An intelligent digital document is a semi-autonomous structured data file that contains document content data in addition to design markup and business logic data rules. An example of an intelligent digital document is the canvas document file format from Encanvas (CDF).
Demand for digital document solutions for the enterprise come from demands to serve up better ways of delivering personalised customer experiences, automate back-office processes, and to equip information workers with the data insights they need to make informed decisions. Indeed, with so many demands placed on IT for app development, digital documents equip organizations with the means the push information solutions to the edge of the enterprise.
Leveraging digital innovations
Artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, virtual reality, the Internet of Things…. there are so many digital innovations available for companies to use, one of the hefty challenges IT teams face is how to embed these innovations into their business processes.
Thankfully, digital documents offer smart ways of painlessly integrating third-party apps and data sources (check-out HyperDrive), making them an ideal delivery vehicle to embed fine-grained solutions to the parts of the enterprise applications developments struggle to reach.
What makes digital documents special?
Digital documents differ from apps because they not only offer a high level of autonomy in the way they are designed, published and used, but are also managed using codeless tools, so Information Workers can produce them—at least in their most basic forms.
That said, there is no real upper limit to the possibilities of using digital documents to augment sophisticated data processing and analytical systems. In truth, when digital documents work together as composite solutions, there’s not much difference between digital documents and apps.
Indeed, digital document solutions have been used to manage roadwork plans across Greater London and operate traffic information systems across one of the largest regional conurbations of the UK!
The architecture of modern enterprise digital document platforms
There are three layers to the digital document architecture cake and these are explained below.
Tier 1 – Digital Document Canvas (CDF)
Documents have become much smarter than they used to be. Whilst new digital document formats perform roles similar to their analog counterparts, they are equipped with logic that makes them more useful for digital data communications, data processing and analysis.
One of the newer roles that digital documents perform is what Gartner calls Hyperautomation, a business-driven approach to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. Digital documents are used to rapidly cascade innovation at lower cost, with improved targeting.
Digital documents are a form of what Gartner calls a composable application. (Interestingly, composable applications comes #5 in Gartner’s top 2022 priorities.)
They are built from business-centric modular components, and make it easier to use and reuse data and code, accelerating the time to market for new information solutions and releasing enterprise value.
One thing that defines documents in many respects is their ability to be used in an autonomous way and this is a quality that CDF files offer. You can design and publish a CDF file as a simple URL, or join files together to create websites and complex data processing and analysis solutions.
That said, digital documents exist within a technology framework managed by IT. The first layer of this is our next subject.
Learn the differences between digitized and digital documents
Tier 2 – Digital Data Fabric
According to Gartner, a data fabric is the No.1 enterprise tech trend for 2022. They argue—‘a data fabric provides a flexible, resilient integration of data sources across platforms and business users, making data available everywhere it’s needed regardless where the data lives.’
Read Gartner’s full report on data fabrics
Providers like Encanvas offer a Digital Data Fabric for its digital documents to operate within. This digital layer is governed by IT, and serves up data from repositories and apps across and beyond the enterprise in a consumable format. Another useful feature of digital fabrics is they improve data re-use by imposing Master Data Management (MDM) rules on the use of common data tables and resources (like user identity tables). It also monitors the data source pipelines as a passive observer at first and starts suggesting alternatives that are far more productive, or that offer better quality results thanks to embedded AI technology.
Read article on the role of Digital Data Fabrics to support composability
Tier 3 – Digital Cloud Spaces
Another aspect of digital documents that differs them from their analog predecessors is the fact the are built on cloud native technology. This means the underpinning technology exists wholly on the cloud.
The Digital Data Fabric data governance layer of the enterprise cake (see above) operates within digital cloud spaces (sometimes described by IT professionals as ‘cloud container technology’). The role of the cloud spaces is to simplify governance, cybersecurity, scaling, replication and administration of the deployed digital data fabrics that serve digital documents.
This means thousands of digital documents can reside within a single digital data fabric, and ten or more fabrics can coexist within a cloud space. Even the cloud spaces themselves can multiply into large numbers on the same cloud native platform.
This three-tier architecture offers unparalleled opportunities to cascade digital solutions to the far flung reaches of the enterprise while allowing IT to stay in control of the information architecture.