Electronic postmark

This electronic postmark stuff is pretty cool. It's like certified e-mail. I did a briefing with Authentidate on it a few years ago. They also own a document imaging company, as well as some technology for timestamping document images. Unforunately, I've also read that their stuff with the USPS, for whatever reason, hasn't taken off. Maybe it has to do with the USPS marketing program for it, as I haven't really seen too much advertisting for it. Apparently the USPS is looking at alternative providers and Authentidate is applauding the decision.

ARMA

Back stateside after a week in Prague for Kofax Transform '06 - the European version. Well attended event. I think there were close to 400 resellers (individuals, not companies, but still a lot of companies) represented. Interesting thing about the European market - it's still doesn't seem to be one market. Although the Euro seems pretty well accepted, language barriers, at least, still exist. Even though everyone does speak some kind of common language, it's still cumbersome to converse in other than a native tongue (for many people). Dicom CEO Rob Klatell explained that this type of environment mean it's advantageous for Dicom to maintain its distribution infrastructure in Europe.

Unfortunately, I'm not attending ARMA this week, although that's typically a fairly small show. There was a lot of talk a month ago about AIIM and ARMA getting together, but apparently it all fell through, and now ARMA has recently announced an alliance with SNIA - a storage newtorking organization. Sorry, but I think AIIM would have made more sense.

Oh, yes, wanted to link you to an interesting Iron Mountain announcement from ARMA. Obviously, Iron Mountain holds quite a bit of sway in that world. I like their direction because they aren't afraid to invest in electronic infrastructure, while at the same time, they aren't quick to dismiss their paper roots as archaic. They seem to understand the balance that exists between paper and electronic documents - something we try very hard to be concious of here at DIR.

Finally, I apologize for the lack of recent posts on the Web site. We were really getting on a roll there, but have run into some technical difficulties - this is the reason for the ugly code line that may be displaying across the top of your browser. I've been trying to get this fixed and promise to get us back up to speed there shortly.

thanks.

Ralph

Questex InfoTrends

It appears that Questex and InfoTrends are merging. Questex is the Advanstar spin-off that runs AIIM/On Demand as well as some other IT-centric trade shows. InfoTrends, we best know as the compilers of information on document scanner trends and sales. InfoTrends actually was acquired by an organization called CAPVentures a couple years ago and CAPVentures founder Charlie Pesko started the On Demand show - so there is some definite synergy...

E-mail mismanagement- again

Now, we recognize there is a major problem with mismanagment of e-mail, and even IM, messages as records, but is it really appropriate to cite the Mark Foley case as evidence of this, as AIIM does in this release? I mean, after all, if you are trying to promote better e-mail management, aren't you kind of saying that ECM could have helped Foley hide is tracks? And do we really want our technology associated with that. Imagine the commerical you could do with John Mark Karr or someone. "If it wasn't for ECM technology, I'd be doing time with Jack Abranoff...

That all said, AIIM does provide some telling statistics even in its preview of the study results.

AIIM ARMA talks

It seems AIIM/ARMA had some merger talks that didn't bear any fruit and now AIIM is letting it's members know this a couple weeks before the ARMA show. Here's Alan Pelz-Sharpe's view on it. He's a pretty good ECM analyst.

Arobat 8 review

Here's a link to a pretty useful review of Adobe Acrobat 8. We wrote about the recently announced product in our Sept. 22 issue. Like us, this reviewer is impressed with the ability to combine multiple document types in a single PDF wrapper, while maintaining the original file format. That is a very useful document management feature. And of course, she also cites the upgraded collaboration funcationality. It's this kind of stuff that's going to keep Microsoft's XPS on the backburner for awhile, in terms of adoption.

Ralph

HP MFP Announcement

A couple days ago, HP came out with what one of its pre-sales support guys told me was its biggest MFP announcement ever. Now, there is quite a bit there, including four new MFP devices with very low prices. HP is an intriguing combatent in the digital copier market. While, the other top players are all married to dealer channels, HP goes through VARs or direct sales. As a result, HP's established relationships are with IT people, rather than the purchasing agents, that dealers often work with.

HP is trying to sell its MFPs like it sells its successful printer line - not lease it, like dealers do. And as copiers become more the realm of IT, HP would seem to be in prime position to make some real noise. Only problem is, I'm not sure how great their MFP hardware is. That said, HP has definitely upgraded its stand-alone scanners in the past year, and they've always had fairly good printers, so why shouldn't they have good MFPs? You might say it's because the UI's suck (maybe they don't, I'm just postulating here...) Still, HP has a partnership wtih eCopy, the king of UI, and they also partner with other software vendors like NSi, Omtool, and, and now even Kofax. This should also be able to help steer them in the right direction, at least. Take note, HP is moving rapidly into the digital copier market, and expect their traction to accelerate in the next couple years.

Ralph