Michael Taylor Sees Big Opportunities for SMA Solutions to Expand Support for Enterprise Automation

HOUSTON - Sept. 25, 2014 - PRLog -- Charles Skamser, Senior Analyst for eDiscovery Solutions Group (eDSG), has expanded the eDSG Executive Interview Series from Information Governance, eDiscovery, Big Data Analytics and Cloud Computing to also include executives and thought leaders from the IT Automation market.

The eDSG Executive Interview Series, which is published on the company's blog, most recently added Michael Taylor, CEO of SMA Solutions ( http://www.smasolutions.it ). Founded in 1980 in Houston, Texas by experts from NASA, SMA Solutions is a pioneer in the scheduling and workload automation market.

An Extract from the eDSG Executive Interview of Michael Taylor:

Charles Skamser: Give me some examples of your favorite automation projects.

Michael Taylor: After being in this business for so many years, I do in fact have some amazing examples. Unfortunately, due to the restraints of non-disclosure agreements, I am not at liberty to disclose the names and associated automation projects of many of our top clients. However, a project I am very proud of is the development of a managed services operation. OpCon ( http://smasolutions.it/solutions/opcon/ ) enabled a financial institution to transform its IT department into a managed services provider for other smaller financial institution that could not afford a multi-shift IT staff. The team from this financial institution used our innovative technology to develop the templates and processes to automate and manage over 60 + smaller financial institutions and help them grow without the financial burden of having to hire additional people.

Charles Skamser: Can you give me an example of how you outperform your larger competition?

Michael Taylor: As the global information technology world becomes more complicated – with most organizations having to manage distributed computing infrastructures that include legacy mainframes, open systems division level computing assets and cloud based storage and computing assets – our solution will prove to be the only IT Automation Platform that can truly enable a stable and clean single point of control.

To be more specific, our key competitive advantage over our larger competitors is that we have strategically designed and developed OpCon as the only IT Automation platform on the market that enables clients to control all of its computing and application assets from a single point of control with a single user interface, with no contrived proxies or “funky” technical hoops for users to jump through.

Charles Skamser: What’s on your technology road map?

Michael Taylor: We are in the process of launching a business analytics platform into our credit union vertical market. This new application, called “SMA Insights” enables credit union business professionals to monitor all of the business transactions on a real time basis and report on trends and exceptions that may require attention. As an example, SMA Insights can track the volume and dollar amount of withdrawals from an ATM network and alert the appropriate business professional via text if a withdrawal falls outside of the norm. Or, it can monitor, automatically generate and deliver reports on the productivity of tellers over a week or month in pursuit of HR objectives.

Over time, we plan to integrate SMA Insights with our automated workflow products to enable the rectification of issues such as an ATM going down with an automatic reboot. This is SMA Solutions’ next step into the world of “lights out” operations that enable our systems to monitor and automatically correct themselves.

Charles Skamser: Can you give me more specific examples of where you see SMA Solutions going with its technology?

Michael Taylor: In addition to our plans for SMA Insights and expanding our support for Backup and Recovery, we are investigating supporting additional ERP systems as well as automating the workflows to support Information Governance and various related markets such as Document Management and eDiscovery.

I would also like to point out that we are confident that can expand SMA Insights into other vertical markets that require real time monitoring of transactions and associated automated responses. One of the markets that we are currently investigating in the emerging corporate requirements for fraud monitoring and prevention. We firmly believe that our technology has the capabilities to enable SMA Solutions to become a big player in this market.

Charles Skamser: Can you give me some examples of how SMA Solutions would support Information Governance?

Michael Taylor: First of all, any “job” on a computer can be monitored and automated. In addition, any human interaction with a computer can also be monitored and automated. When you combine those two functions into automated workflows that encompass real time monitoring and associated automated actions, you can automate almost anything.

In the context of what I just mentioned, corporations worldwide of all sizes are now required to develop written policies for internal governance, risk and associated compliance. And, there are a variety of software platforms that support the requirements of Information Governance generally and eDiscovery more specifically. However, most of these platforms require a high level of human monitoring and associated intervention. Therefore, our initial research and discussions with some of the providers in this industry indicate that we could provide dramatic increases in productivity, efficiencies and cost savings by providing real time transaction monitoring with SMA Insights and workflow automation with OpCon. As indicated early, we have no plans to “go it alone” in these vertical markets and therefore we have already reached out to partners to work with to introduce our solutions. I am trying to temper my enthusiasm about the impact that we can have on Information Governance. However, it’s hard not to get excited.

The full text of the eDSG Executive Interview of Michael Taylor is available at http://ediscoverytimes.com/michael-taylor-sees-big-opport...