Here's a link to the New Yorker back issue demo site. Maybe the best use of DjVu technology we've seen so far.
RG
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
World of PDF
Two interesting posts on our Web site over the past two days regarding what has been heretofore known as the World of PDF. First, the PDF/A standard was finalized by ISO.Second, as foreshadowed in a recent edition of DIR, ScanSoft has announced support of XPS - Microsoft's alternative for PDF. From what we understand there are currently about 1,000 developers that have software that can create PDF - Microsoft, of course being the notable exception. We wonder how long it will take XPS to reach that same level - if it ever does?
Also, as far as imaging goes, we've had quite a bit of dicussion recently on highly compressed PDF documents - employing segmentation and JBIG-2 technologies. We're not even sure XPS supports JBIG2 - but nonetheless, it is a Microsoft driven stnadard.
Cheers.
RG
Also, as far as imaging goes, we've had quite a bit of dicussion recently on highly compressed PDF documents - employing segmentation and JBIG-2 technologies. We're not even sure XPS supports JBIG2 - but nonetheless, it is a Microsoft driven stnadard.
Cheers.
RG
Friday, September 09, 2005
HSA Capture Follow-up
Just returning from Harvey Spencer's capture conference held up in Glen Cove on Long Island. Had a really nice time. There were about 40 attendees - with the likes of Adobe, Kodak, Fujitsu, Ricoh, AnyDoc, Datacap, Captaris, Cranel, PDI (the people that bought VisionShape), ISIS Papyrus, ABBYY, A2iA, IBM, Kofax, Captiva and a few others all attending. The conference covered several topics, including Java programming, check image quality (with a great presention from Frank Jaffe. Probably the most interesting session to me, perhaps because I was moderating it, was a racous panel discussion on when to use a digital copier for scanning and when to use a dedcated scanner. It seems most people in the traditional imaging industry still look down on the abilities of digital copier dealers to effectively sell document imaging technology - not to mention the capabilities of the hardware itself. Well, there were certainly a lot of opinions in the room. About the best conclusion I came to is that digital copiers seem to be posiioned for ad hoc scanning of a few pages at a time and no more - but with the trend toward distributed capture vs. centralized - this ad hoc stuff is making up a growing percentage of the market.
Speaking of ad hoc, Oracle had some fairly interesting collaboration and records management stuff they just came out with. They are positioned it as "content mangement for the masses" and have some starting price at like $60 per seat. Going after SharePoint it appears. And then Adobe's John Hoye was there marketing the companies' scanning toolkit for PDF creation. Just thought those are a couple more signs that this ad hoc market is going to start growing - and may and maybe already is taking business away from traditional imaging vendors. I'll leave it at that as I think I am starting to have a flashback to some of the shouting I heard at yesterday's panel.
Speaking of ad hoc, Oracle had some fairly interesting collaboration and records management stuff they just came out with. They are positioned it as "content mangement for the masses" and have some starting price at like $60 per seat. Going after SharePoint it appears. And then Adobe's John Hoye was there marketing the companies' scanning toolkit for PDF creation. Just thought those are a couple more signs that this ad hoc market is going to start growing - and may and maybe already is taking business away from traditional imaging vendors. I'll leave it at that as I think I am starting to have a flashback to some of the shouting I heard at yesterday's panel.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Hurricane Can't stop ReadSoft
ReadSoft's U.S. headquarters are in Metairie, Louisiana, just outside of New Orleans, but it turns out the company seems to have a better hurricane plan in place than the government, as it has continued operaitons without missing a beat, accoridng to Bob Fresneda, president of the Swedish forms processing vendors' U.S. operations. Fresneda, who was behind the transition of the company's North American headquarters from San Diego to Metairie a few years back, said the company set up a specific plan for evacuation in case of a hurricane like the one that hit last week. That has included relocating several of its 25 U.S. employees to its Chicago office. ReadSoft also moved it's e-mail server software to Sweden and has maintained its 800 support line without much a break. Fresneda said that all of ReadSoft employees are safe and that the damage to the Meatrie area was not nearly as bad as some of the other stuff in the area.
"From a personal standpoint, this has been a large distraction to say the least," Fresneda told DIR. "But from a business standpoint, thankfully we had a good backup and insurance plan that has allowed us to keep running smoothly. Our U.S. operations have grown 60% in the first half of the year, and our pipeline for the rest of the year looks good."
This week's issue features a story on ReadSoft and the success it's had in the ERP image-enablement market.
"From a personal standpoint, this has been a large distraction to say the least," Fresneda told DIR. "But from a business standpoint, thankfully we had a good backup and insurance plan that has allowed us to keep running smoothly. Our U.S. operations have grown 60% in the first half of the year, and our pipeline for the rest of the year looks good."
This week's issue features a story on ReadSoft and the success it's had in the ERP image-enablement market.
HP Kodak
This is an interesting analysis of the rumored HP/Kodak acquisition/merger. It pretty much dismisses it for a variety of reasons-incluidng the fact that Kodak's legacy film business is pretty much akin to Compaq's PC business- and of course, we all know how well that turned out for HP. (On a side note, has there ever been an investigation into that merger? In many ways it reminds me of the current disaster situation in New Orleans. Every seemed to see what was coming - but didn't do anything about it. In fact, in HP's situation, Walter Hewlett I believe seemed to call the whole thing on the nose - but was ignored. Why? If you have an explantion please post!)
Anyhow, the interesting thing about the HP/Kodak story is the discussion - although it is not named as such, of HP's Graphics Communications business, of which is Document Imaging business is now a part. It really just throws some more kudos on that part of the company. If you remember, Kodak Document Imaging really helped lead Kodak's charge - albeit when something as large as Kodak moves, it's not always at light brigade speed - into the digital age.
What would be kind of neat would be taking Kodak's Graphics Communications business and pairing it with HP's imaging stuff. In fact, here's a fairly intriguing archiving and imaigng announcement out of HP today. HP/Kodak would truly make a digital imaging powerhouse - of course, dealing with the dead weight between the two companies may make the merger impossible.
Cheers.
Traveling to Harvey's Capture Conference in Long Island this week. Will try and post from there.
RG
Anyhow, the interesting thing about the HP/Kodak story is the discussion - although it is not named as such, of HP's Graphics Communications business, of which is Document Imaging business is now a part. It really just throws some more kudos on that part of the company. If you remember, Kodak Document Imaging really helped lead Kodak's charge - albeit when something as large as Kodak moves, it's not always at light brigade speed - into the digital age.
What would be kind of neat would be taking Kodak's Graphics Communications business and pairing it with HP's imaging stuff. In fact, here's a fairly intriguing archiving and imaigng announcement out of HP today. HP/Kodak would truly make a digital imaging powerhouse - of course, dealing with the dead weight between the two companies may make the merger impossible.
Cheers.
Traveling to Harvey's Capture Conference in Long Island this week. Will try and post from there.
RG
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Corporate Weblogs
There is a comapany out there called Traction Software that has added WebDAV controls to its corporate blogging tools and it marketing them as "ECM lite" or an ECM solution for the mid-market company. The company was founded by some SGML experts and the software - which I received a demo of, is pretty neat. Kind of a next-generation collaboration tool, dare I say. It's also of course got all the linking capabilities so popular in Blogs. Depsite Traction's efforts, however, this article proposes that Blogs are still bascially entertainment vehicles. This may hold true for now, but if you look at the history of search, that also started as primarily an entertainment thing. The great thing about consumer-driven technology that gets adopted commerically, is there is very little training needed to ramp up use.
Cheers.
RG
Cheers.
RG
Monday, August 08, 2005
SOX Ramifications
This guy might be a nutjob, but he is one of my favorite columnists. Check out what he has to say about the potential impact of SOX and other content management-based regulations. If any shard of this turns about to be true -- and Cringely did (in a very unpopular move) accurately predict the limited effect of Y2K on the nation's IT infrastructure -- it could further turn the ECM industry on it's ear. Under this scenario, ECM/records management suddenly becomes a company-saving application, and the stakes suddenly get a lot higher.
What do you think?
RG
What do you think?
RG
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
BroadVision acquired
How nuts were people during the Web boom? Well, I found a Wired Magazine article from June 2000 that listed BroadVision with a market cap of $6.7 billion. And I'm not even sure that was the height of the Web boom. You probably saw the company was recently sold for $45 million. What happened?
Monday, July 18, 2005
"Like a Rocket"
This article is kind of fun to read. It's from the Spet. 17, 1997 issue of DIR, about six months before I took it over. I looked it up after I heard that Captiva was closing its Waltham, MA, offices - which represented the headquarters of recognition specialist Symbus. I believe this was Reynolds' Bish first forms processing-related M&A activity.
This article discusses the FormWare/Symbus merger. Recognition industry guru Arthur Gingrande actually co-founded Symbus but doesn't receive any credit in this particular piece. We do get great stuff however, like Jim Woodruff of Wheb Systems estimating the potential of the forms processing market to be $5 billion. And Reynolds with the great "The market is going to take off like a rocket." There's also something in here from Dan Elam about saying everyone is going to sell out or go public in two years.
Anyhow, it's some pretty fun reading - just please nobody go pulling out any of my old columns...
Cheers.
RG
FROM DIR - Spect. 17, 1997
CONSOLIDA TION BOOSTS FORM PROCESSING GROWTH Recent Deals Only A Start, Analysts Predict
The desire to pool resources and wrest greater market share has led to a spate of mergers and acquisitions in the document capture market. The business dealings of the past month such as the one that created FormWare Corp. through the merger of Park City, Utah-based TextWare Corp. and Symbus Technology Inc. of Waltham, Mass. - are only a start.
"We're on the threshold of the industry starting to congeal," says Herb Schantz, president of Sterling, Va.-based HLS Consulting. "Good little guys are going to bond together to form good big guys."
Analysts and vendors believe there is huge market potential for software that collects data from scanned forms and delivers it to another application.
Creating user-friendly applications is the key, vendors say. Consolidation will give smaller vendors the financial muscle to develop easy-to-use products. "Virtually all the independent market either have plans to be bought or go public within 24 months," says Dan Richmond, Va.-based analyst with IMERGE Consulting."
Small Players, Big Market
Jim Woodruff, vice president of marketing at Wheb Systems, estimates the potential market for forms processing software is $10 billion, even though systems being sold today equal about 5 percent of that - or $500 million.
Such predictions cause TextWare President Reynolds Bish to declare, "The market is about to take off like a rocket."
But Schantz advises the market won't grow without continued consolidation. Merging allows companies to assign engineers to more diverse projects, which results in greater product offerings and the ability to purse more vertical markets.
Look for continued consolidation among companies selling products such as scanners, optical character recognition engines, preprocessing or postprocessing software. Even small system integrators will be active, Schantz says.
For instance, in addition to the TextWare/Symbus merger, the Sterling, Va.-based Star Technologies last month bought the assets and products of the Potomac, Md.-based postprocessing software developer Intrafed (DIR, August 6, p. 8). Last week, Xionics Document Technologies [XION] of Burlington, Mass., bought Seaport Imaging of San Jose, Calif.
"It is a huge market with dozens of players competing in regional markets, Schantz says. "If nothing is happening in a region in a year, [the regional companies] almost dry up."
Matching Strengths
"The combined company has greater resources - people, products and capital - to better execute its business plan and respond to the needs of the marketplace," Bish says. "Historically, forms processing is a lot of little companies and no one has been able to get large enough to get 'critical mass.'"
For example, by expanding its number of executives, a company's officers can focus on areas of expertise. Similarly, the company has doubled its software development arm.
"At TextWare we always focused on providing usable applications as opposed to providing tool kits or technology that requires integration services. Symbus focused on technology," Bish says. "Their technology with our usability focus - you end up with powerful and competitive products in the marketplace."
Of the TextWare/Symbus teaming, Elam notes, "Textware has only recently emerged as a strong enough player to challenge for significant market share, so Symbus will help bolster them ... for more complex systems."
"In a year or so, [TextWare] is probably the only company that has a
realistic chance of going public and doing well," he adds.
The heads of the small companies also are anxious to see a return on their
years of effort, Elam says.
With the exception of a few larger vendors that sell shrink-wrapped, prepackaged systems, most companies bring in less than $10 million a year in revenues, he says.
"Most of these are entrepreneurial companies with guys ready to get their money out," Elam says. Also, larger companies can draw more attention to a brand name - which in turn can give vendors more leverage with system integrators, he says.
Simple Solutions
To grow, companies must focus on creating systems that are easy to install and use.
There are few differences in the performance of recognition
technologies, Bish says. The competitive advantage now lies in added value a firm packages with the recognition technology.
"Forms processing still requires a great deal of customization on an installationto-installation basis," Bish says.
"Over time, we need to not only make the technology more affordable, but focus on making it easier to use, reducing the need for customization. [The market] is not to that point yet."
Focusing On Benefits
Woodruff suggests growing the forms processing market is largely a matter
of promoting the practical benefits of the technology.
"The imaging market is way too technology-centric," he says. Vendors need to go from talking about how many characters a minute their products handle to describing how much money customers can save by using the software. "I expect packaged products to prevail over component approaches," he adds.
A consolidation trend would be good for the forms processing market, Woodruff says. Although he considers San Diego-based Wheb Systems a large business, he agrees many of the players are small. While, bigger companies would attract big clients, a Citibank-sized company would have a hard time doing business with a small, regional operation, he says. Major players will focus on different types of users by creating industry-specific products for markets.
(Reynolds Bish, TextWare, 801/645-9600, http://www.textware.com; Dan Elam, IMERGE Consulting, 804/342-7400; Mary Beth Poggi, Unterberg Harris, 212/5728078; Herb Schantz, HLS Consulting, 703/444-7037; Jim Woodruff, Wheb Systems, 619/586-7885, http://whebsys.com.) 8
.
This article discusses the FormWare/Symbus merger. Recognition industry guru Arthur Gingrande actually co-founded Symbus but doesn't receive any credit in this particular piece. We do get great stuff however, like Jim Woodruff of Wheb Systems estimating the potential of the forms processing market to be $5 billion. And Reynolds with the great "The market is going to take off like a rocket." There's also something in here from Dan Elam about saying everyone is going to sell out or go public in two years.
Anyhow, it's some pretty fun reading - just please nobody go pulling out any of my old columns...
Cheers.
RG
FROM DIR - Spect. 17, 1997
CONSOLIDA TION BOOSTS FORM PROCESSING GROWTH Recent Deals Only A Start, Analysts Predict
The desire to pool resources and wrest greater market share has led to a spate of mergers and acquisitions in the document capture market. The business dealings of the past month such as the one that created FormWare Corp. through the merger of Park City, Utah-based TextWare Corp. and Symbus Technology Inc. of Waltham, Mass. - are only a start.
"We're on the threshold of the industry starting to congeal," says Herb Schantz, president of Sterling, Va.-based HLS Consulting. "Good little guys are going to bond together to form good big guys."
Analysts and vendors believe there is huge market potential for software that collects data from scanned forms and delivers it to another application.
Creating user-friendly applications is the key, vendors say. Consolidation will give smaller vendors the financial muscle to develop easy-to-use products. "Virtually all the independent market either have plans to be bought or go public within 24 months," says Dan Richmond, Va.-based analyst with IMERGE Consulting."
Small Players, Big Market
Jim Woodruff, vice president of marketing at Wheb Systems, estimates the potential market for forms processing software is $10 billion, even though systems being sold today equal about 5 percent of that - or $500 million.
Such predictions cause TextWare President Reynolds Bish to declare, "The market is about to take off like a rocket."
But Schantz advises the market won't grow without continued consolidation. Merging allows companies to assign engineers to more diverse projects, which results in greater product offerings and the ability to purse more vertical markets.
Look for continued consolidation among companies selling products such as scanners, optical character recognition engines, preprocessing or postprocessing software. Even small system integrators will be active, Schantz says.
For instance, in addition to the TextWare/Symbus merger, the Sterling, Va.-based Star Technologies last month bought the assets and products of the Potomac, Md.-based postprocessing software developer Intrafed (DIR, August 6, p. 8). Last week, Xionics Document Technologies [XION] of Burlington, Mass., bought Seaport Imaging of San Jose, Calif.
"It is a huge market with dozens of players competing in regional markets, Schantz says. "If nothing is happening in a region in a year, [the regional companies] almost dry up."
Matching Strengths
"The combined company has greater resources - people, products and capital - to better execute its business plan and respond to the needs of the marketplace," Bish says. "Historically, forms processing is a lot of little companies and no one has been able to get large enough to get 'critical mass.'"
For example, by expanding its number of executives, a company's officers can focus on areas of expertise. Similarly, the company has doubled its software development arm.
"At TextWare we always focused on providing usable applications as opposed to providing tool kits or technology that requires integration services. Symbus focused on technology," Bish says. "Their technology with our usability focus - you end up with powerful and competitive products in the marketplace."
Of the TextWare/Symbus teaming, Elam notes, "Textware has only recently emerged as a strong enough player to challenge for significant market share, so Symbus will help bolster them ... for more complex systems."
"In a year or so, [TextWare] is probably the only company that has a
realistic chance of going public and doing well," he adds.
The heads of the small companies also are anxious to see a return on their
years of effort, Elam says.
With the exception of a few larger vendors that sell shrink-wrapped, prepackaged systems, most companies bring in less than $10 million a year in revenues, he says.
"Most of these are entrepreneurial companies with guys ready to get their money out," Elam says. Also, larger companies can draw more attention to a brand name - which in turn can give vendors more leverage with system integrators, he says.
Simple Solutions
To grow, companies must focus on creating systems that are easy to install and use.
There are few differences in the performance of recognition
technologies, Bish says. The competitive advantage now lies in added value a firm packages with the recognition technology.
"Forms processing still requires a great deal of customization on an installationto-installation basis," Bish says.
"Over time, we need to not only make the technology more affordable, but focus on making it easier to use, reducing the need for customization. [The market] is not to that point yet."
Focusing On Benefits
Woodruff suggests growing the forms processing market is largely a matter
of promoting the practical benefits of the technology.
"The imaging market is way too technology-centric," he says. Vendors need to go from talking about how many characters a minute their products handle to describing how much money customers can save by using the software. "I expect packaged products to prevail over component approaches," he adds.
A consolidation trend would be good for the forms processing market, Woodruff says. Although he considers San Diego-based Wheb Systems a large business, he agrees many of the players are small. While, bigger companies would attract big clients, a Citibank-sized company would have a hard time doing business with a small, regional operation, he says. Major players will focus on different types of users by creating industry-specific products for markets.
(Reynolds Bish, TextWare, 801/645-9600, http://www.textware.com; Dan Elam, IMERGE Consulting, 804/342-7400; Mary Beth Poggi, Unterberg Harris, 212/5728078; Herb Schantz, HLS Consulting, 703/444-7037; Jim Woodruff, Wheb Systems, 619/586-7885, http://whebsys.com.) 8
.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Enterprise Input Management
Captiva’s Digital Mailroom application was probably the first example of the company’s future direction. At the company’s recent Capture ’05 conference, the maturing and growing input management vendor further detailed its efforts at becoming an enterprise aplication players. More on this in our next issue, which should be out early next week.
For subscription info, please contact me at ralphg@documentimagingreport.com
Thx,
RG
For subscription info, please contact me at ralphg@documentimagingreport.com
Thx,
RG
Thursday, July 07, 2005
SourceCorp
Hope your Independance day celebrations went well. Just saw this piece of news regarding SourceCorp. A bit disturbing as SourceCorp is one of the few pure-imaging service bureau roll-ups from the late 1990s that has had some success. Granted, there have been a few bumps, but nothing like those encountered by competitors ImageMax and Lason. And right now a lot of people are trying to get into the business that SourceCorp is in. Of course, this might mean that somebody big wants to buy them, which may be the reason why all this posturing is going on. Anyways, here's hoping they can pull through this without too much of a mess.
Cheers.
RG
Cheers.
RG
Friday, June 24, 2005
Importance of text-based documents
I’m reading this book called Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, which provides a detailed explanation on why peoples of Euroasian descent came to dominate the earth and wipe out most of the people indigenous to other lands. A lot of it has to do with more advanced technology.
I got to thinking about this evolution in terms of my own newsletter and skill set and whether or not video communication will kill out text-based communication. I guess, since text is the reason most paper document exists, this conundrum could possibly be applied to the entire document imaging industry at large.
One of the reasons, I always give to people for paper sticking around as long as it has, is inertia. And I guess text-based communication has built up quite a bit of inertia in its thousands of years of use. Diamond points out that literacy has historically been very important to dominant societies. The ability to communicate experiences and provide written analysis is important for repeating successful processes, as well as learning about your enemies. (Which I hope you all consider when it comes time to re-up your subs to DIR.)
Theoretically, video can also be used for this type of important communication and is in some corners. However, it seems to me, in its early incarnations at least, video has been mainly hijacked for entertainment purposes. I still don’t see a lot of thought going into how to make video a more valuable means of important communication—although I guess the 8 million cable channels available today, and even more when Internet video technology ramps up—create some potential. But it still seems the majority of all that broadcasting will focus on entertainment.
And that is why text-based communication continues to live on and is very relevant. It is the basis of most serious communication. And related to this, Google should be applauded for its efforts to put all the text-based information buried in books online, because the majority of World Wide Web content is also developed for entertainment purposes.
Anyways, those are my thoughts for today. As always, feel more than free to comment.
Cheers.
RG
I got to thinking about this evolution in terms of my own newsletter and skill set and whether or not video communication will kill out text-based communication. I guess, since text is the reason most paper document exists, this conundrum could possibly be applied to the entire document imaging industry at large.
One of the reasons, I always give to people for paper sticking around as long as it has, is inertia. And I guess text-based communication has built up quite a bit of inertia in its thousands of years of use. Diamond points out that literacy has historically been very important to dominant societies. The ability to communicate experiences and provide written analysis is important for repeating successful processes, as well as learning about your enemies. (Which I hope you all consider when it comes time to re-up your subs to DIR.)
Theoretically, video can also be used for this type of important communication and is in some corners. However, it seems to me, in its early incarnations at least, video has been mainly hijacked for entertainment purposes. I still don’t see a lot of thought going into how to make video a more valuable means of important communication—although I guess the 8 million cable channels available today, and even more when Internet video technology ramps up—create some potential. But it still seems the majority of all that broadcasting will focus on entertainment.
And that is why text-based communication continues to live on and is very relevant. It is the basis of most serious communication. And related to this, Google should be applauded for its efforts to put all the text-based information buried in books online, because the majority of World Wide Web content is also developed for entertainment purposes.
Anyways, those are my thoughts for today. As always, feel more than free to comment.
Cheers.
RG
Monday, June 20, 2005
Fujitsu fingerprint ID for scanner access
The possiblity for this type of thing are endless. It's a device Fujitsu has introduced for fingerprint ID to control document scanner access. If a user only scanned a certain type of document, it could potentially be set up to give a whole new meaning to the term "one touch scanning."
Here's the official European press release. Wonder why this hasn't been marketed over hear yet?
RG
Here's the official European press release. Wonder why this hasn't been marketed over hear yet?
RG
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
More AIIM show
Here's Mike Hurley's (of GreenSquare Consulting) take on the AIIM show. Mike makes some very perceptive comments. My favorite possibly being - "Workflow and BPM continue to defy a coherent trade show demo." A concept I've been arguing for years. EMC in general, in fact, is very hard to demo at a trade show.
As I said previously, on Tuesday, when traffic on the AIIM side seemed dead, the On Demand side looked fairly lively. Both sides, I thought looked good on Wed. But I got to thinking, why was the On Demand side bigger? Big iron, of course. It's a lot more fun to watch something print, scan, and copyu documents at 200 dpi, than it is to here Open Text discuss the advantages of collaboration and records management. I mean, what was the most popular exhibit on the AIIM side? It might have been the 4Digital Books thing that scanned books at an incredible rate using some sort of vacuum page-turning mechanism.
Hyland might have the right idea, by setting up a carnival atmosphere. The fact is trade shows have not adapted well to the Internet age. Somehow we need to merge virtual stuff with these trade shows to get them out of the 1970s mode they are stuck in. I'm not sure how to do it, but we have a lot of bright software people in the industry, can somebody think of someway to make this show more relevant by incoporating technology into the show's presentation?
Let me know. Or let Kerry Gumas of Questex know. Please.
RG
As I said previously, on Tuesday, when traffic on the AIIM side seemed dead, the On Demand side looked fairly lively. Both sides, I thought looked good on Wed. But I got to thinking, why was the On Demand side bigger? Big iron, of course. It's a lot more fun to watch something print, scan, and copyu documents at 200 dpi, than it is to here Open Text discuss the advantages of collaboration and records management. I mean, what was the most popular exhibit on the AIIM side? It might have been the 4Digital Books thing that scanned books at an incredible rate using some sort of vacuum page-turning mechanism.
Hyland might have the right idea, by setting up a carnival atmosphere. The fact is trade shows have not adapted well to the Internet age. Somehow we need to merge virtual stuff with these trade shows to get them out of the 1970s mode they are stuck in. I'm not sure how to do it, but we have a lot of bright software people in the industry, can somebody think of someway to make this show more relevant by incoporating technology into the show's presentation?
Let me know. Or let Kerry Gumas of Questex know. Please.
RG
JSR 170, Linux drivers, and Captiva
I guess you probably saw that the content repository standard JSR 170 passed.We're not exactly sure what this means and how it will be utilized in the real world, but it seems like a great concept. This is the kind of stuff the Workflow Management Coalition, I believe has been trying to do for years, except this adds search and retrieval capablities. And it's all a java-based standard, which could I guess lead us down some interesting Web servies-paved paths.
A random thought that came up in conversation last week and maybe remotely related to JSR 170. But, is anyone familiar with Linux-based document scanner drivers?
Finally, you may have seen the Captiva landed another InputAccel for Invoices deal, this one with Novartis UK - a big drug company. We find the fact the deal was in the U.K. as particularly significant, because that means the company was likely facing competition from BancTec and ReadSoft. As we've said before, Captiva, which entered the invoices game late, is really making some noise now. Also, interesting to note that Daniel Vaniche, who help a high position at SWT - is the spokesperson in the press release. That happened pretty fast. It's also worth noting that Captiva's stock is over $14 per share as I write this. Good work guys.
Cheers.
RG
A random thought that came up in conversation last week and maybe remotely related to JSR 170. But, is anyone familiar with Linux-based document scanner drivers?
Finally, you may have seen the Captiva landed another InputAccel for Invoices deal, this one with Novartis UK - a big drug company. We find the fact the deal was in the U.K. as particularly significant, because that means the company was likely facing competition from BancTec and ReadSoft. As we've said before, Captiva, which entered the invoices game late, is really making some noise now. Also, interesting to note that Daniel Vaniche, who help a high position at SWT - is the spokesperson in the press release. That happened pretty fast. It's also worth noting that Captiva's stock is over $14 per share as I write this. Good work guys.
Cheers.
RG
Monday, June 06, 2005
AIIM On Demand follow-up
So, now that the does has settled, and we've done the majority of our AIIM follow-ups, the question is what did you all think of the show?
Please post on this, as I've heard mixed reactions and definitely have my own viewpoints, which I will share:
I thought from a gross attendance standpoint, it was awful. That is every day except for Wednesday. Wednesday, the floor really appeared to be hopping, like it was for most of two days last year. So, what was the problem? I don't know. Could have been the Monday hotel jam up due to Penn's graduation, slowed down the first day of the show. The last day always stinks, so we'll just discount that. Kerry Gumans, of Questex swore up and down (well, not literally, he just insisted very politely - as he's really a nice guy, so we're rooting for the show to succeed), that in the end, hotels were not an issue and that in the end everyone was accomodated, but just my visuials would seem to indicate differently. I wish I could say next year, we'd have a chance to validate this theory, but the fact is, Penn's graducation is once again schduled for the Monday before the show, Monday, May 15. Well, at least this year, everyone, including Questex, will know what they're getting into ahead of time. Hopefully, this knowledge will help push up Tuesday's attendance.
Then, of course, there is the whole issue of regional traffic. I think New York defintely offers better regional traffic. The question revolves around how valuable that regional traffic is. Does a location like New York present more tire kickers, which are a waste of vendors time? It's my thought that tire kickers eventually turn into buyers, so all traffic is good. But I did receive feedback from some vendors that because Philadelphia was more of a distination site for many of the attendees, that the quality of attendees was up despite the overall drop in numbers. The increase in conference attendees would seem to reinforce this.
And when you take out the tire kickers and factor in that Philly is less expensive in most regards than New York, even cheaper beer, than is it a better payback on your trade show investment?
More on my thoughts on a future format for the AIIM show in particular later.
Out. - RG
Please post on this, as I've heard mixed reactions and definitely have my own viewpoints, which I will share:
I thought from a gross attendance standpoint, it was awful. That is every day except for Wednesday. Wednesday, the floor really appeared to be hopping, like it was for most of two days last year. So, what was the problem? I don't know. Could have been the Monday hotel jam up due to Penn's graduation, slowed down the first day of the show. The last day always stinks, so we'll just discount that. Kerry Gumans, of Questex swore up and down (well, not literally, he just insisted very politely - as he's really a nice guy, so we're rooting for the show to succeed), that in the end, hotels were not an issue and that in the end everyone was accomodated, but just my visuials would seem to indicate differently. I wish I could say next year, we'd have a chance to validate this theory, but the fact is, Penn's graducation is once again schduled for the Monday before the show, Monday, May 15. Well, at least this year, everyone, including Questex, will know what they're getting into ahead of time. Hopefully, this knowledge will help push up Tuesday's attendance.
Then, of course, there is the whole issue of regional traffic. I think New York defintely offers better regional traffic. The question revolves around how valuable that regional traffic is. Does a location like New York present more tire kickers, which are a waste of vendors time? It's my thought that tire kickers eventually turn into buyers, so all traffic is good. But I did receive feedback from some vendors that because Philadelphia was more of a distination site for many of the attendees, that the quality of attendees was up despite the overall drop in numbers. The increase in conference attendees would seem to reinforce this.
And when you take out the tire kickers and factor in that Philly is less expensive in most regards than New York, even cheaper beer, than is it a better payback on your trade show investment?
More on my thoughts on a future format for the AIIM show in particular later.
Out. - RG
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
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
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
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