ITR53 PageDocMngSpecialReport 25/9/07 11:43 Page 8
Document Management Special report
<< Rory Staunton, managing director, including e –learning and sales tools, to rethink the way it offers its solutions.”
Strategy Partners, also picks up on the consultancy and a dedicated partner portal. Training, for example, is one area where
theme of integration. He believes the market Cassidy believes the requirements of SMBs
is now seeing much better integration with
Wider end-user scope
are vastly different to that of large enterprise
business applications. “Document and And what of the size and scope of customers. “Expertise levels will generally
content management used to be stand-alone implementation; has DM increased its be lower in an SMB to begin with, and
systems for archivists; now they are no feasibility among a wider user base? Darren there will be more need for localisation
longer a silo, separate to the IT mainstream,” Cassidy, director and general manager, among the different European markets,” he
he said, adding: “Document management is Xerox Office Group (UK), points out that said, adding: “To provide different document
now largely just another form of relational DM used to be the preserve of the large solutions for each vertical market, there is
database; this is why companies such as enterprise. However, he says, over the past a real challenge for vendors to offer
Microsoft are now offering such components.”
In terms of vendor value-adds, the past ten
years has seen key improvements in DM
functionality, believes Abraham. “These
“
To provide different document solutions for each vertical
market, there is a real challenge for vendors to offer technology
solutions now include advanced technologies, platforms that enable the simple development of interfaces by
such as OCR and web deployment, which
channel partners.” – Darren Cassidy, Xerox Office Group (UK).
has resulted in the reseller being able to
offer a much more complete solution and
better business case to its customers. Being two to three years the SMB community technology platforms that enable the simple
able to offer end-to-end business solutions has also become much more involved in development of interfaces by channel
‘under one roof’ also has a great appeal for this area. “There are around 15 million partners. EIP (Extensible Interface Platform)
the end-user …” From Biffar’s perspective, SMBs in Western Europe and so in order technology, for example, enables developers
he highlights the fact that DocuWare now to address their needs DM is becoming to create server-based applications for
offers more mature products and more tools more commoditised,” said Cassidy. “As multifunction printers. It has been developed
that are able to support the reseller channel; such, the DM industry has been forced by Xerox in direct response to this need for
simple, yet smart new technologies that
can be harnessed for a variety of innovative
uses across vertical channels to boost
productivity and manage costs.”
Shopping basket
Continuing on the theme of the DM vendor
community, have individual companies
established a growing number of
differentiators over the past decade or so in
terms of system functionality and service
provision? According to Howells, the focus
on acquisitions to create a full ECM suite,
and lack of technical innovation, has made
the legacy vendors indistinguishable from
one another; with similar products and
messaging to that of the 1990s. “The
approach of some ECM vendors has been
to acquire a large shopping basket of
applications but with little, if any, strategy for
integration,” he said, adding: “Any form of
product differentiation is coming from the
open source arena or the web 2.0 arena,
“Unstructured data has much larger storage demands than structured data, so the advent
with wiki, blogs, RSS, tagging and ‘mash-
of much cheaper on-line mass storage options in the form of a hierarchy of cost and
performance mediums has lifted the hesitancy of the cost benefit of capturing and storing
ups’ being distant hopes for ECM vendors
the full spectrum of unstructured data.” – Nick Rowley, Oceanus. based on legacy architecture.” >>
8 IT RESELLER – SEPTEMBER 2007
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