Imaging & Document Solutions - Tips & Traps: Capture Conversation for KM; Cram Course: iSCSI Cuts SAN Cost

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Capture Conversation for KM

Let's say you've successfully put all your company's activities online. As much business as possible is being carried out electronically, all emails are archived and any paperwork coming into your enterprise is being scanned.

There is still one source of corporate knowledge and information, however, that is escaping the content management system: conversations between employees and with business partners and customers.

Think about it. Conversations, meetings and telephone calls are the primary means by which collaboration takes place. However, most companies ignore these interactions, take cryptic notes or make simple tape recordings that are seldom revisited. If ordinary conversations between collaborators could be recorded, digitized and converted into text documents, it could open up a largely untapped source of corporate intelligence and creative thinking.

"Voice is an efficient input mechanism," says Steve Ehrlich, vice president of marketing for Nuance (www.nuance.com), Menlo Park, CA, a developer of voice interface software. "It is faster and easier than keyboard or mouse input. Plus it is available anywhere there is a telephone."

The problem, says Ehrlich, is that voice recognition technology is not yet up to the task of converting the range of vocabulary encountered in a typical conversation.

"Voice recognition systems work best with a limited vocabulary specific to a particular application," says Ehrlich. "Conversational voice recognition is about five years away."

A related technology in its infancy is "word spotting," in which a voice recognition system listens for key words within a conversation. A content management system then searches for and retrieves relevant content to enhance collaboration. Such technology is used in customer service applications where a caller describes a problem and the voice mail system routes the call to the proper department based on keywords in the caller's query.

There are, of course, significant issues to be considered before you start wholesale recording of employee conversations. For example, employee privacy must be protected, lest you create an impression of an invasive, "Big Brother" working environment. Many states have strict laws regarding how telephone conversations can be recorded. Some require that both parties be informed of the recording process.

Such a system would have to be controllable and selective. Not all conversations are worth keeping. Need we count the meetings that have degenerated into conversations about movies, sports or what to have for lunch?

Whether or not wholesale conversation conversion takes off, voice recognition is emerging as an important user interface. Voice portals will allow customers and collaborators to use telephones to request information to be faxed, emailed, printed or pushed to the browser. Voiceprints, uniquely identifying the voice of a particular user, will be used for security, restricting access to content. And in meetings, voiceprint will be used to differentiate the different parties in a conversation.

For more information on speech recognition and application development check out www.speechdepot.com, and TMA Associates at www.tmaa.com.

Cram Course: iSCSI Cuts SAN Cost

How do you gain the benefits of a storage area network (SAN) without the expense?

The current frontrunner in connecting devices and creating SANs is fiber channel, which sustains 100 MB per second. However, fiber channel is expensive, with each port costing about $1,000. Moreover, not all fiber channel devices can communicate with each other, making compatibility testing a must.

One alternative to fiber channel is iSCSI, which uses regular TCP/IP networks to carry data. With iSCSI, data transfers and SCSI commands are encapsulated inside IP packets. Instead of having to deploy a fiber channel network just for storage, you can use relatively inexpensive Ethernet, which is probably already installed in your data center. The ability to use SCSI commands embedded in the IP packets lets you use existing storage management software with little modification.

By using iSCSI, you will save money on long distance links between pools of storage. Some high availability strategies require data centers to be mirrored to locations several miles away. Running a fiber channel connection over such a distance is expensive; iSCSI lets you use existing network connections without modification. It can also be used over short distances, particularly as Ethernet technology moves to gigabit Ethernet (1000 BaseT supporting 125 Mbytes/sec).

One disadvantage of iSCSI is that the TCP/IP network is an inefficient way to carry data and SCSI commands. It was designed for maximum redundancy over uncertain Internet connections. The best option may be a combination of fiber channel in the data center and iSCSI over long distance links. This takes advantage of the best features of both and lets companies keep their options open as far as which technology to expand.