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Monday, May 23, 2005

e-mail management and Morgan Stanley

John Mancini gave an interesting keynote speech at the recent AIIM On Demand Expo. His talk was entitled the State of the ECM Industry and covered a broad range of topics including the state of ECM adoption in various parts of the world. One of the topics he addressed was e-mail management, which we at DIR have made known is one of our favorite topics. We are very much against the save everything policy and think users must have some sort of selective policy or severly curtail their use of e-mail. As digital phone conversations replace analog ones, however, safe havens for private conversations are becoming few and far between. Anyhow, here a link to an article that pretty much says the "save everything" technique is going to be prevelent in all public companies.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

AIIM Awards

Heard a funny story from former Imaging Magazine Editor Mark Young at the AIIM show this week in Phildelphia. The esteemed Mr. Young, who is now with a group called Buyers Lab, was sipping on an ice water outside the ballroom of the Ritz Carlton where Canon was holding its annual press reception. The reception is always a gala affair, (to borrow the tone of Vanity Fair diarist Dominick Dunne, and the atmosphere brought to mind tales I had heard about the Imaging Magazine parties of years gone by. Unfortunately, at the time the last of these were taking place, I was a cub reporter cutting my teeth with Imaging rival Business Solutions (then Business Systems) and not on the invite list.

The official reason for these parties were Imaging Magazine “Product of the Year or Best of AIIM” or whatever they were called awards, which Young indicated were only half-serious. “One year, we named a pen the best analog input device,” Young recalled. The real reason for the parties and the awards was to service Imaging Magazine’s customers, aka. its advertisers. Eventually, under the guidance of Doug Henschen and Miller-Freeman and eventually CMP, the Best of AIIM awards took on a more serious tone – but we’re not sure if that was so good for the industry or for Imaging, for that matter…

So, without further adieu (and about an hour of time to kill as I sit on a runway in Philadelphia) in the spirit of the old Imaging Magazine Product of the Year awards—in other words don’t take these too seriously—here are the first even DIR AIIM Awards. I only wish I had a drink to offer you before you read on:

1. Man of the Year: This one goes to Captiva President and CEO Reynolds Bish because he be da’ man. After completing the acquisition of SWT this month, he will be on target for more than $100 million in profitable revenue next year. Bish even boasted he plans to surpass more than $200 million in revenue in three years. You go Reynolds! As I sat with him at AIIM, we recalled AIIM 2002 in S.F., just three years earlier when his company merged with InputAccel (aka ActionPoint) in what looked like a marriage of floundering companies. Who knew all Reynolds needed was a little cash in the bank and a listing on the Nasdaq to become a true ECM heavyweight? During the first six months following the merger, we saw Captiva’s stock drop all the way below a dollar a share. How many companies have ever recovered successfully from that type of devaluation? Well, check the boards, Captiva certainly has and how. And as we wrote in the last issue of DIR, the SWT merger really makes sense.

2. Product of the Year: Indicius 5.0. Did you see this thing? Great stuff. Kofax has finally figured out how to leverage the Mohomine technology they bought a couple of years ago. They’ve taken SWT what SWT does for Captiva and have gone a step further. Their killer app is currently automatic document separation without separator sheets. Really cool stuff -- to paraphrase Kofax PR guru Michael Troncale.

3. Newcomer of the Year: Peladon Software – Yes, the Mitek renegades were out in force. Got to love their technology for eliminating high-confidence character mistakes.

4. Robot of the Year: You all saw it. I know you were talking about it. That 4DigitalBooks thing from Sweden sure made some interesting entertainment. They should have been charging people to see it. (Wouldn’t that be an interesting marketing ploy? Do you think it would drive up booth traffic if you charged like a quarter or something just to give people the feeling that they were going to a show?)

5. Company of the Year: Hyland Software. What can you say? They show up every year with that huge stadium booth – give away cool gifts like real baseballs and staff their area what seems like 200 people. Always a good buzz around that booth. Hats off to A.J. for setting the tone for the whole spirit of the company.

That’s about it for now. Once again, I’m sorry for not having a party to throw with my awards. Something we’ll have to work on for the future.

Cheers.

RG

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Tagging

Does anyone think this could be useful in ECM/document imaging applications?

Monday, May 02, 2005

Microsoft's PDF alternative

We've often said Microsoft needs to recognize PDF. It appears they have, but instead of embracing it (and then attempting to extinguish), they have come up with their own version. I don't know. Don't think it will work, but here we go...

Pentagon Redaction screw-up

Check this out. Pretty bad document mis-managment by the Pentagon.

Here's an updated version of that story - This one actually recommends using magic marker and scanning as a replacement for electronic document redaction!

On more opinion on this. This one seems slightly saner and recommends a specific PDF redaction tool. You would think the Pentagon would be aware of such things. You would think...

Cheers.

RG

Friday, April 29, 2005

Doug H. survey piece

In case you're interested in what Doug Henschen's up to.

AIIM Hotel Rooms

So, you're going to see an article in next week's edition about how well the sign-ups for AIIM/On Demand are going. However, don't be completely surprised if the attendance numbers don't come out as expected after this early momentum. Apparently, there are some serious lodging problems afoot. It just so happens the University of Pennsylvania's graduation ceremony is scheduled for Monday, May 16. So, perhaps only Tuesday will be slow - but that could affect the whole show.

We've pinged Kerry Gumas as Advanstar about this... but we really think Brian Randall, who should have known better, dropped the ballhere. From what I understand, lodging was going to be tight in Philly to begin with. Now, of course, Brian is gone - I'm not saying the two things are connected, but it really doesn't look good. In Brian's defense, I know he had a heckuva time finding a place for the show in 2005, but this seems like this could be a major screw-up.

Cheers.
RG

European digital libraries

No details with this story, except that some big names are on board.

Cheers.

RG

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Captiva e-Scan

Did you see Captiva's recent announcement about it's first eScan implemenation?. Interesting thing about it, is that it doesn't even include any paper capture. Here's the explanation that we got from Rob Jensen, Captiva's PR chief:

"CIC is using Kodak Digital Cameras (various models) and Sony Digital Recorders (various models). To clarify, they are not scanning paper claims. These are generated electronically via CIC's central claims management facility; the field agents are adding the supplementary documentation (the photos and recordings) to these via eScan. CIC currently has 800 users of this application. There are some trailing paper documents that are still being mailed, but CIC is looking at scanning these in the future."

Very interesting implemenation. Really speaks volumes about the potential of true content management and even digital asset management. We expect this multi-media capture to continue to become more important in the future.

Cheers.

RG

Monday, April 25, 2005

Longhorn

Here's an interesting article dealign with Microsoft's next generation OS, code-named, or really named, I can't tel which, Longhorn. Couple things worth noting here. First, is that Microsoft still thinks it can knock out PDF. Were people saying the same thing about WordPerfect 15 years ago? If they were, please stop me, but I still don't get why Microsoft doesn't just embrace PDF and attempt to extinguish it that way. I don't know that their "alternative" is going to get the job done. Seoncd, is seems Microsoft is introducing improved search and some sort of thumbnailing, which could be very helpful when working with images perhaps. Let's see. I for one can't wait to get my hands on Longhorn, just to see what it does.

Cheers.

RG

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Analyst on Open Text

This guy doesn't seem to like Open Text very much...

Mitek settles royalty dispute

It seems Mitek has settled its litigation was item processing software developer BSM. Unfortunately, we're not sure of the outcome of this litigation. If you know, please fill us in. Regardless, its settlement has enabled Mitek to receive its final $1 million payment from John Harland for last summer's acquisiton of Mitek's check and document image capture product lines.

Mitek has since refocused itself on developing fraud prevention technology utilizing its character recognition tools. Harland has also made an equity investment in Mitek and is working with them in this area.


Here's a brief summary of the litigation which appeared in Mitek's annual report:
[Mitek] is currently in litigation with BSM regarding a certain license agreement pursuant to which we licensed certain of BSM’s technology. BSM has claimed over $400,000 in unpaid royalties and [Mitek] has counterclaimed for over $1,000,000 with respect to interference with business relations, breach of confidentiality and unfair competition. At this time, the matter is in binding arbitration and we cannot make a reasonable determination regarding the outcome of this matter.

Apparently Harland wanted to make sure the applications were getting were free and clear of royalty concerns.

Cheers.

RG

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

VoteFiler

So, how about these guys? Have you seen this yet. They're a company with document imaging roots out of Manhatten, yes, they are a group of forms Sigma guys. And at FOSE last week they introduced this really cool vote tabulation system that includes a paper trail. It involves bar coded documents and apparently they have patents on the concept of filling data into an e-form, then capturing that data and printing a sheet with a bar code that refers back to that data. I talked with them about they didn't want to dicuss it much, but me thinks a whole lot of people are potentially in violation of this thing.

Anyhow, this VoteFiler appliation won best of FOSE. More on it in next issue of DIR. But I remember suggesting that someone in this industy jump into the vote counting market after the 2000 election. Glad to see someone is trying to tackle it.

Cheers.

Ralph

Monday, April 11, 2005

dakota execs in deep...

You may remember as one of those deals that seemed too good to be true...It seems the Goel brothers of dakota imaging fame are in a bit of hot water with WebMD. I for one, remember being startled at how attractive the sale of dakota to WebMD looked on paper. Yes, Sandeep Goel was a gentleman and a pleasure to interview, but I also remember classifying him as an unreliable source after some revenue projections he gave me turned out to be completely off base and then he later denied ever making such projections.

I don't think there is any quesiton that dakota has some pretty good forms processing software. However, it was pretty much only installed in customized one-off type solutions and dakota's plans for expansion seemed to run into snags. I remember a joint-marketing deal with Top Image Systems early in my career, where after I interviewed both parties, it was apparent the thing was never going to work, as they each saw the deal in completely different ways. Then, there was dakota's big jump into the ASP space, which reportedly cost them a bundle - and well, you all know what happened to first generation ASPs.

This ASP move, however, seemed to actually work out, when Web MD appeared as a white night and bought the company for a pretty attractive price last year... Lo and behold, it may not turn out so nicely after all. The Goels, are of course denying the whole thing..., but I have to wonder why would somebody the size of WebMD be worried about paying a couple millions dollars out them if they indeed got what they thought they were getting.

Cheers.

RG

Thursday, April 07, 2005

EMC ILM

Yes, EMC has been pushing its ILM stragegy ever since it bought Documentum. In fact, Legato (Lou Cole is originally from Erie, PA, you know) starting talking about it even before they did, at least in concept when they bought OTG in 2002 (I think.) Don't have time to fact check, as I'm waiting for my ride to the airport. Just finishing up at eCopy PaperConnection. What a turnout. I think they pulled this thing together in two months. Had the like of Rioch, Toshiba, HP, and Sharp announcing support for them on the hardware sde and there were like 25 ISV vendors. Just a good buzz at the event. Like people have been waiting for this to happen...

Anyhow, getting back to EMC, just had a pretty good briefing with Mike Ball. A few years back I thought I understood the ILM message, but then as the storage people started working with it, I lost it somewhere. Anyhow, Mike (who has a document background) brought it back home nicely. His analogy was that scanning paper eliminated a paper, or line of business problem, but created a new problem on the network. It really moved the problem to IT, which is EMC's domain...

So, that's where ILM comes in. Pretty interesting concept.

Cheers.

RG

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

PaperConnection

Currently at eCopy's "groundbreaking" PaperConnection event listening to Randy Kahn do his compliance spiet. Intereting insight or advice he provides, It's not longer only about better, faster, cheaper. It's also about the allowing the CEO to sleep more soundly at night" by expanding document management systems to include compliance.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Digital Copiers and more...

Sorry about the length between posting, was busy trying to scrap together a newsletter last week. Ended with with some pretty relevent stuff about the forms processng industry, the FAST search engine and some other stuff that may or may not interest you. I did one story about an enterprise software company acquiring a document output management vendor that also does imaging - because archiving is hot. Just more evidence that this technology as really hit its stride. ASG told me they compete with Computer Assocaites and BMC and were "falling down" against them becuase they didn't offer imaging. So they bought this company called Cypress, who I first wrote about like five years ago. I hadn't heard much from them since, but apparently, they've done pretty well as a repository vendor and Kofax reseller. Best wishes to them in the post-acquisition world.

I just got done posting several press releases. Go the home page to see them. A few of them involve the eCopy PaperConnection event I'll be attending this week. eCopy of course is one of the great success stories in the document imaaging market, going from minisule revenue to somewhere north of $30 million and claimed end-user total of more than $80 million per year - all within the last 7-8 years. I remember meeting CEO Ed Schmid and marketing manager Noel Colletti in the press room at AIIM in like 1998 when they were known as simplify. I had no idea what they were talking about - trying to do scanning on digital copiers. Sure, Xerox was talking about it then, but nobody was doing it.

Well, it so happened someone at Canon shared Ed and Noel's vision and away they went. The two got together in a partnership that has set the standard for scanning from digital copiers over the years. First, it was scan-to-email, now it's scan for ECM, but eCopy keeps growing and as other vendors enter the space, they keep evolving.

The big news at PaperConnection of course is that their software is being opened up to run on platforms other than Canon. I believe four vendors will be there to announce they have joined eCopy's hardware developer's program. These include Ricoh, Toshiba, HP, and Sharp. Ricoh of course is the big one. Canon's main competitor and we understand Canon is none to happy about it. Canon has gone on the record as saying, however, that it doesn't see any need to work with eCopy copetitors. We'll see.

Why is this market so important. Well, for one, it seems to be growing faster than the overall document capture market. It feeds beautifully in to the trend toward distribtued scanning, and digital copiers, which people already have, can do this stuff anyhow.

Will digital copiers kill dedicated document scanners? They haven't yet, in fact the market for workgroup scanners continues to grow. Scanning from a digital copier is nice because it can be added into the lease of the machine and it enables the end user to work with the same interface their used to, but in the end it might be more expensive than buying a $1,000 dedicated document scanner and a $500 capture program. For now, both markets appear healthy. We'll see where they go?

Hope to log in from Miami.

Cheers.

RG

Friday, March 25, 2005

SourceCorp

Does anyone have any more information on this SourceCorp stuff? You've probably read about this as it has unfolded, but it seems that one of its subsidiaries overstated their earnings for a period of time in 2003 and 2004. What makes this intriguing is that apparently this subsidiary was a company SourceCorp had required and its earnouts were based on its revenue. So, the company inflated the revenue and increased their earnout payments. Needless to say, now that all of this has come to light, SourceCorp execs are a bit upset and they are trying to collect like $10 millino worth of earnout payments they've made to these guys.

My quesiton is who are these guys? Does anyone know. SourceCorp doesn't seem to name names in its SEC filings, but I'm sure somewhat out there knows.

To SoruceCorp's credit, they seem to have handled the whole situation rather well, and here's hoping they get their money back. Of course, that is assuming they are in the right... Anyways, here's a link to the transcript of a recent conference call they did discussing their business model and the revenue restatements. Sounds like their going to do pretty well despite the recent financial restatements.

Of course, looking at the history of SourceCorp competitors like Lason and ImageMax, service bureau financial restatements have proven disastrous for service bureaus in the past, but once again to SourceCorp's credit, it appears they have nipped this thing in the bud early enough, where there won't be any more ramifications. Also, of course, unlike the Lason problems, which started at the top, these problems appear to be more of a rogue happenstance.

Cheers.
RG

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Pixel Answers

Here is Pixel's response to our comments about Mark's Esdon's leaving the company

"Over the years we have created a strong team to support our ISIS and Pixel Translations customers. After many years in this field, Mark Edson has left Captiva to pursue his interests in a completely different field. Despite Mark’s departure, we remain on track with our development plans, and look forward to continuing to provide outstanding support to our customers going forward."

After chatting with a few VARs about it at the recent Kofax reseller conference, ISIS remains a very relevent standard especially in higher-speed applications. We don't think it will be going away any time soon...