Open Text Heads Into the Windows Azure Cloud Enterprise content management provider Open Text has announced a "first-of-its-kind" records management and archiving capability for Microsoft’s new cloud-based operating system Windows Azure. Azure is Microsoft's new cloud-based operating system. Open Text will incorporate these cloud-based capabilities into its Enterprise Library Services offering early next year.As you may recall, last year, Open Text released its Enterprise Library Services as apart of their Open Text Content Services -- a "next generation" attempt at streamlining workflow and managing compliance. Enterprise Library Services lets customers integrate and extend ECM technology across their organizations. However, by adding capabilities that extend across Azure, customers will be able to manage Microsoft SharePoint content, Microsoft Outlook e-mail and other business information they want to store on Windows Azure, allowing them to apply records rules, archive content and address compliance mandates. In addition, customers will be able to integrate records management and archiving capabilities they need to better leverage cloud-based services, at a lower cost. Open Text is keenly aware of the economic situation facing many, if not most companies, so they are confident that offering a cost-saving and compliance-minded approach will be popular. Administrators have the option of saving content on Azure or to other on-premise storage devices -- a distinction that will be invisible to end users, who will only benefit from a "faster, less capital intensive route to building a long-term solution for managing and archiving content." By seizing the moment so quickly, it's not hard to sense Open Text's eagerness in its development of an archiving and records management solution built on Windows Azure. Already, Open Text's Enterprise Library Services offers vast functionality, as a repository able to deliver integrated records management, metadata management, archive and search capabilities for all business content in an organization. Adding Azure to the already long list of other stored content centers, which include Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, SAP applications, file systems, e-mail and Open Text content repositories, only serves to evolve its efforts to serve the "next generation."