Imaging parts mix to match user needs - Technology Information

Software Magazine, Dec, 1995 by Richard Adhikari

With the imaging market's expansion to open platforms, greater integration and lower-end solutions, more user shops are taking a component approach to assembling their systems

While imaging technology did not beget the promised paperless office, it did give birth to an industry that represented $3.2 billion in revenue last year, according to Delphi Consulting Group, a research group in Boston. Once the domain of vendors offering high-end, monolithic, all-inclusive systems, the market is now peppered with vendors offering lower-priced imaging system components that can be mixed and matched in an open environment.

"Imaging vendors used to sell highly proprietary, bundled solutions that included software, hardware, everything," said Ted Ryrie, the La Palma, Calif.-based national practice director for imaging and workflow services at Automated Concepts Inc. (ACI), a New York City-based systems integration and consulting firm. "Now, anything from servers to scanners to optical juke-boxes and other [imaging] software may come from multiple vendors."

For example, Ryrie said, "If COLD [computer output to laser disk] is a specific part of an overall application, and the primary imaging vendor doesn't have a COLD solution that suits the needs of the application, it may require the integration of a different COLD solution. Or in the case of image viewers, to meet some of the viewing requirements of certain customers we've had to put in a different viewer than what came with the imaging system. Or we've had some situations where customers have gone with one vendor's workflow and another's imaging solution."

Another evolution in the imaging market, Ryrie said, is that imaging software vendors are developing their products for standard hardware platforms. Customers are responding. For example, sporting goods manufacturer Spalding Sports Worldwide, Chicopee, Mass., uses document imaging and workflow software from Keyfile Corp., Nashua, N.H., running over HP-UX on three HP 9000s. The Keyfile database holds thousands of specifications for building or ordering Spalding products. Every document that comes into the company is scanned into the imaging system. Offices in remote locations worldwide access the data on the Keyfile database, said H. Oldham Brooks, operations researcher. The Unix servers are linked to NetWare LANs over Ethernet to 10 NetWare servers and about 400 PCs.

With fewer hardware restrictions and software that's more easily integrated, corporations like Rockwell International's RocketDyne Division, Canoga Park, Calif., are increasingly taking a component approach to assembling an imaging system. "I felt I could buy a couple of components and have a good solution with the best of breed," said Ashok Kohli, Rocket Dyne's manager of data systems. "I want the best components for each task. "

Kohli is not alone. "People are interested in buying best of breed [for their imaging systems]," said David Yockelson, program director, advanced information management strategies, Meta Group, Stamford, Conn.

The RocketDyne Division, which manages the logistics of the construction of the U.S. Space Station, evaluated several imaging solutions, including Keyfile, PaperClip from PaperClip Imaging Software Inc., Hackensack, N.J., and ZyImage from ZyLAB based in Gaithersburg, Md. For image capture, Kohli chose Ascent Capture from Kofax Image Products Inc., Irvine, Calif. "That gives me a speed of 35 to 40 pages a minute, and users can scan and do QA [quality assurance] at the same time because it shows the image of the page while it scans," Kohli said. "Also, you can insert and renumber pages, which some of the other packages don't let you do."

Ascent Capture integrates high-performance batch scanning, image processing, optical character recognition (OCR), document indexing and bar code recognition. Nonetheless, Kohli said he selected ZyImage for OCR and document retrieval because Ascent Capture is expensive when it comes to publishing and back-end capabilities.

One of the benefits of ZyImage, he said, is its OCR search capability. "You can just type in one word and it will run a search throughout all your documents. For example, if I type in `welding,' I can find out where, throughout the corporation, [the term] `welding' is being used," he said. ZyImage also holds up to eight indices simultaneously for better search capabilities.

RocketDyne uses the system to store incoming paper for all departments involved in the Space Station project. A CD-ROM jukebox, hooked up to the corporate Windows NT LANs, acts as both a storage box and a server for the imaging system. About 500 Microsoft Windows PC users in three buildings on the campus access the imaging system via the network.

The proliferation of distributed systems has contributed to the need for multivendor solutions like RocketDyne's, according to industry observers. "It's not very often that you can go to a single imaging vendor and procure a total solution from them," said ACI's Ryrie. "Usually, it's a combination of several vendors' products -- hardware and software -- with some custom integration or application enabling."