Enterprise imaging software packages are running on more platforms than ever. Whether you're an MVS/ESA, Unix or NT organization, there's enterprise imaging software for you and your thousands of users.
Enterprise means different things to different people. Some see it as a spaceship that explores new galaxies and fights Klingons. Others think it's a company where thousands of users in different locations share one computer system off and on during the day. Still others see it as high-volume, heavy-duty transaction processing for a particular function like accounting where other departments can occasionally access those records.
We consider enterprise document imaging systems to be software that scans, processes, indexes, stores, retrieves and manages images for hundreds or thousands of people within a company and/or its customers. The same software can run at multiple sites at high speeds and nimbly mix production scanning and retrieval with casual use.
Enterprise systems let every qualified employee access inventory records or an accounts payable system. They let a large car manufacturer's dealerships around the country access lease papers. They let tellers in a bank's 300 branches access millions of centrally stored signature cards. Enterprise imaging software is equally at home in a call center handling hundreds of retrievals a minute and in remote offices where people occasionally look up a document.
The biggest event in enterprise computing in general -- the migration to NT -- is happening in imaging. While users continue to buy and use mainframes, AS/400s and Unix computers, almost all enterprise imaging vendors (including IBM) have come out with NT versions of their software. Microsoft promises the next version of NT will be more robust and fault-tolerant than 4.0.
Another trend is Web-enabling of enterprise imaging applications. This doesn't do anything for the back-office processing or storage of images. But it makes the front-end ubiquitous. Customers and employees can access your storehouse of images from anywhere in the world.
Mainframe Solutions
Some companies believe the only way to provide mission-critical, robust, 24-hour, fault-tolerant processing to thousands of users is to use a mainframe.
IBM (White Plains, NY 914-431-7676) is still building the EDMSuite (EDM stands for Electronic Document Management) it announced in February. So far there's ImagePlus software for production imaging, FlowMark for workflow, OnDemand for COLD and Domino.doc for document management. IBM is creating a connection product that would let someone using a Web browser or Lotus Notes client issue a query to one or more of the back-end repositories -- of images, electronic documents or COLD reports -- and receive a hit list. This gateway will go into beta at the end of the year.
You buy these components as you need them. The server software packages run on AS/400, AIX, OS/390, Windows NT, OS/2, Sun Solaris and HP-UX platforms. Each component is powered by DB2, IBM's relational data management system. IBM has 5,000 installations of the EDMSuite products.
ImagePlus comes in three flavors. ImagePlus for AS/400 ($15,000+) has 2,500 installations. A typical customer has 30-40 users. Some have as many as 2,000. Scans range from 2,000 to 3,000 per day. This product has been modernized and is now called ImagePlus VisualInfo for AS/400. It now uses the more graphical VisualInfo client.
ImagePlus for MVS/ESA (starting at $3,000/month) is installed on 170 customers' mainframes. Every year a handful of companies buy it.
The older ImagePlus versions for MVS and AS/400 machines use 3270 terminal emulation and a "green screen" interface. While this interface isn't pleasing to the eye, it provides faster retrieval than the graphical version.
ImagePlus VisualInfo ($35,000+) is the client/server version. It has 600 installations. It started out as an OS/2 or MVS product. IBM has added server support for all Windows platforms -- 3.1, 95 and NT -- as well as AIX and Unix.
In IBM's EDMSuite architecture, one central library server holds index information. The library server could start on NT and migrate to MVS if volumes get huge. The images are stored in distributed object servers. The VisualInfo (graphical) versions of ImagePlus let the desktop client talk only to the library server. The library server talks to the object server containing the requested image. The object server sends the image to the desktop.
"It's a very tight, rigid architecture so the desktop client can't get into where the objects are stored and mess them up," says Bob Schwartz, marketing manager for EDMSuite. "We call that data integrity -- the fact that you can only talk to the library server protects the objects."
Mobius Management Systems (New Rochelle, NY 914-637-7200) also has a mainframe offering. "We don't think a fully scalable enterprise-wide system is a system where you keep attaching servers. We think it's a system that runs on any server, from an MVS mainframe to a single PC with identical software and archiving," says president Mitch Gross.
"To say it's enterprise-wide because you can add a server here and there and attach these together and through the miracles of modern medicine make it work, doesn't float.
"It doesn't matter if your Web server is an NT, Sun Solaris or Silicon Graphics server, it still has limited capacity," he says. "Something has to store the documents to give the Web server access to the documents. If you have 10,000 people trying to access your documents at the same time in a truly enterprise-wide large application, the server controlling the documents has to support that capacity. 5,000 NTs strapped together ain't gonna do it.
"You can always tie a team of horses to a tractor to pull the tractor through the mud, but you're better off getting a tractor big enough to get through the mud."
Gross says some users of Mobius's Electronic Document Warehouse (he refused to say how much it costs) process three million documents a day. This product has a universal archive format independent of processing platforms, storage media and document types. No matter how you change your storage mechanisms or processing platforms the system should still work with your files. Non-Mobius files are wrapped in this universal format umbrella before they're stored. They can be AFP, Xerox's Metacode, character data or images in any compression format.
The universal archive can live on any server ranging from a laptop to a System 390. "Let's say my departmental application scans 1,000 documents a day and my enterprise-wide application scans a million images a day and I need to use both sets of images," Gross says. "I can access them without needing to know where they're coming from. The big applications can be on an MVS mainframe, smaller ones can be on NT."
The system's EnterpriseIndexing feature is very flexible. I can index 1.7 million images a day five ways and keep the index online for 60 days.
A new component, called the DocumentDirect Application Suite, lets you customize the graphical interface of this software with an INI file.
Teaming With Enterprise Powerhouses
Some imaging software becomes enterprise-wide by piggybacking onto the umbrella enterprise software that companies use to run a whole business -- everything from accounting, financials and maintenance through production planning, sales and marketing. The major enterprise software providers are SAP (Walldorf, Germany 011-49-6227-34-1551), PeopleSoft (Pleasanton, CA 510-468-1278), BAAN (Menlo Park, CA 415-462-4949), JDEdwards (Denver, CO 303-488-4000) and Oracle (Redwood Shores, CA 415 506 7000). These companies, led by SAP, sold more than half of the $9.6 billion of enterprise software in 1997.
Data General's (Westboro, MA 508-898-5000) AV Image works with PeopleSoft's HRMS 5 Human Resources Management Software. The two products integrate employee resumes, government payroll documents, letters of reference and performance appraisals with human resources, payroll and benefits application software.
AV Image is also sold independently of the PeopleSoft software. This line of enterprise imaging software for Unix and NT platforms has three major components. AV Image Viewer for viewing images ($1,000/user) uses a compression method called Auto-Focused Image Extraction that's designed to decrease network traffic and increase viewing speed. The ObServer server ($4,000-$10,000) is the back-end to AV Image as well as AV Cold and Staffware Workflow. The Express-Track batch document capture software ($3,000) supports high-speed scanning and OCR and barcode recognition.
Data General usually sells hardware and software as a package. In the case of AV Image, the hardware is their AViiON NT server boxes. The new AV 6600 enterprise NT server ($25,000+) uses six 200 MHz Pentium Pro processors. If you get Data General's AViiON NT Cluster-in-a-Box, which uses Microsoft's Cluster Server, you can get two servers (and up to 12 processors) to work in tandem. The AV 6600 can access up to five terabytes of storage on a CLARiiON RAID system. This server hardware has been certified to run SAP AG's R/3 suite of business applications.
Eastman Software (Billerica, MA 508-967-8000) offers OPEN/image Link for SAP R/3. This integrates R/3 with the Eastman imaging software on a Unix server. Images and R/3 documents can be associated with R/3 objects and retrieved and viewed from within an R/3 application environment.
OPEN/image (which starts at $34,000 for a 10-user system) can also run with Microsoft's BackOffice on an NT or Unix platform. One customer uses it with 3,500 seats and more than 20 jukeboxes. The index to all the images sits on one server. The images themselves can be on one or many storage servers. The accounts payable department can keep documents on a local server. Accounts receivable can also keep their documents local. Each department can retrieve documents from the other's storehouse.
The software handles batch scanning and high-speed scanning from Kodak 900 and 9500 scanners. It supports Kofax's Ascent Capture and Cornerstone's Input Accel.
A fail-soft feature shifts work to another server if one server goes down. A set of 32-bit application programming interfaces let you customize this software for users and integrate it with other desktop applications. On NT it can be used with Imaging for Windows Professional Edition. View, scan, annotate, do optical character recognition on and put hyperlinks on images.
FileNET's (Costa Mesa, CA 714-966-3400) Document Warehouse for SAP provides document imaging, storage and retrieval for SAP R/3.
The company's enterprise imaging software, Image Management Services, runs on NT, HP-UX, IBM RS/6000 and Sun Solaris platforms. It was recently certified for Microsoft's BackOffice NT solution. That means it supports Microsoft's SQL Server database. It can be installed through the Microsoft Systems Management Server. Windows NT system administrators can automatically log on to IMS administration when they log onto Windows NT.
IMS lets jobs be split among servers. One server could handle object entry. Another could just process high-speed scans. Another could handle indexing. If one server dies, another steps in to take its workload.
The FileNET Web Series lets you use a Web browser to run queries on an IMS system. It's designed for Microsoft and Netscape browsers. It supports Secure Sockets Layer protocols for docu-
ment security.
iXOS Software (Belmont, CA 415-294-5800) has a close relationship with SAP. SAP owns 10% of iXOS. iXOS tests hardware to make sure it will run SAP R/3 properly and provides SAP training. iXOS also offers enterprise imaging and archiving software for SAP R/3, iXOS-Archive. This product is only sold to SAP customers. The price is based on number of SAP seats. iXOS says this product communicates directly with the ArchiveLink module in R/3. Under iXOS-Archive, documents are routed by R/3's Business Workflow, viewed with the ArchiveLink viewer and managed by the R/3 Document Management Service.
iXOS-Archive recognizes barcodes on scanned documents and creates a temporary index in R/3. It also recognizes fields of characters such as customer names and numbers and uses this information to link the documents with transactions in R/3. The software provides forms overlay for SAP generated documents. It provides such annotation tools as electronic stamps, text-markups, circles and underlines for all types of documents. GTE recently purchased more than 15,000 iXOS-Archive licenses.
iXOS-Archive is not sold as a standalone imaging product.
Siemens Nixdorf (Mississauga, Ontario 905-819-8000) has written OLE and Windows messaging gateways that link its Arcis 7 imaging product ($200-$1,500/seat) to the enterprise software of SAP, PeopleSoft, BAAN, JDEdwards and Oracle. These gateways let the general-purpose enterprise applications access the image archive in Arcis 7.
Arcis 7 stands on its own as an enterprise-wide imaging system running on a large multiprocessor Unix server or NT server. "Some installations in North America scan 50,000-60,000 images a day, have 400-500 users and make 40,000 retrievals a day," says Walter Aallen, support manager at Siemens Nixdorf.
Arcis 7 uses NT 5.0 technology to distribute processing across multiple NT servers. It lets each server component sit on its own hardware. One server could handle the database while another takes care of the clients. If one server becomes overworked with its task, you could replicate that process and have two processors working on the problem instead of one. As the number of clients grows, more server jobs can be replicated and distributed to more servers.
This distribution of work among servers helps with fault-tolerance and backup. If one out of five NT servers goes offline, the work that server was doing is automatically shifted to other servers. This may slow down the server, but the work does not stop. For data integrity Siemens recommends a dual database. If one database server fails, the other keeps going. The product works with ODBC-compliant databases such as Oracle, SQL Server 6.5 and Informix.
The system's front-end is based on Visual Basic, making it easy to customize and grow. Siemens Nixdorf has added some new features to Arcis 7 including overlays for COLD documents to the image viewer. The viewer lets you view PDF and PostScript files. Annotate images with red stamps, highlighters and sticky notes. Arcis 7 provides full-text retrieval using Fulcrum's search engine.
More Client/Server
for the Enterprise
Client/server systems often let you start with a small individual user or workgroup configuration. They promise to grow with you no matter how large your company becomes by letting you add more servers. Ask these companies about their largest installations. Call and find out how the system works for these users.
INSCI's (Westborough, MA 508-870-4000) sells enterprise imaging with a COLD storage engine for Unix and NT platforms. Advanced Coinserv with Advanced Coinscan runs on Unix ($54,000 for the server, $200 per seat with a lower per-seat price for large numbers of users). On a single Unix server, this system supports 500-1,000 concurrent users. Up to 10,000 people can access information from the server. This system sends images a page at a time to workstations, to prevent network overload.
"At very high volumes and high numbers of concurrent users, Unix is still where the action is," says Jim Matteson, senior vice president. "We have customers that want Unix and customers that want NT."
Coinserv for NT is for slightly smaller enterprises. With an imaging option for one scan station, it comes to $38,000 for the server, $270 per seat for the first 200 seats, then it's $200 per seat.
LaserFiche's (Torrance, CA 310-793-1888) Enterprise Edition ($19,800) can manage 15 databases per server, or 75 million pages of scanned documents. Each department can have its own database.
Sensitive records are protected at two levels. User-oriented security lets you assign specific rights to individuals and groups. Object-oriented security lets you give some people the right to see a document and others the right to change it. Audit Trails track each user's activities making it easy to see who has worked with each document. Search ranges include full-text, index field, Boolean operator and fuzzy logic.
Optical Image Technology's (State College, PA 814-238-0038) OptiIMAGE Global Enterprise 7.0 ($200,000+) can run on any number of geographically scattered NT, OS/2 or Unix servers. Feed image information to any number of SQL databases. It supports batch scanning on ISIS scanners. It stores images to optical disc jukeboxes, CD-ROM jukeboxes and magnetic storage.
The system lets you add files in different formats -- including word processing documents, images, spreadsheets, CAD drawings, multimedia presentations and sound and video files -- to existing folders and display them in your file/folder tree. Within a document, some pages can be electronic files, others images.
You can conduct keyword, Boolean and full-text searches and get the results in a Windows Explorer-like hit list. Display as many of the files as you want in multiple windows on your screen. Drag and drop items between windows. Annotate the files with sticky notes or highlights.
OptiIMAGE can be used with third-party OCR, ICR, barcode and mark sense recognition programs such as Caere's OmniPage Pro, Kofax's Cimage, Datacap's Paper Keyboard and Ascent Capture. It supports IPX/SPX, Net.BIOS, NetBui and TCP/IP network protocols. An Internet module works with standard Web browsers.
OTG Software's (Bethesda, MD 301-897-1400) ApplicationExtender (100 concurrent users $55,000) is imaging software that scales for thousands of users. The latest release, 3.2, supports ISIS scanners and the Oracle 7 server. It lets you save and view images in their native formats. It provides user group security. It works with any ODBC-compliant
