Another Guest Posting from
EDOC Editor
Bryant Duhon ...
I emerged from AIIM's Germantown satellite office Tuesday for a trip into DC to take in the federal government IT trade show, FOSE. While many of the products on display are geared toward agencies with three letter acronyms (TLA), there were a few ECM-types exhibiting. While most shows have exhibitors handing out tchockes of some sort or other, many of the government employees out for the day take collecting to an artform. Helpfully supplied by Best Buy with HUGE bags (literally about 3 by 4 feet -- I could have carried my 5-year old in one), packs of workers roamed from booth to booth, snatching pens and standing in line for t-shirts. It's quite something. I spoke to someone who had gone outside and had seen a line of attendees waiting for buses. All with the aforementioned bags before them; all oohing and ahing over each others' hauls for the day -- like kids with giant Easter baskets.
While dodging the Best Buy bags (and CDW, nearly as large), I did manage to speak with Kodak, Visioneer, Snowbound, and Xythos.
Visioneer was showing off its line of Patriot scanners, which is the company's existing scanner line tweaked so that it's easier for the government to buy. They've done a nice, subtle job on the marketing -- digital camouflauge and the name of the line being about the extent of it. John Capurso, VP of Enterprise Marketing, pointed out that Visioneer is continuing to invest in its OneTouch technology. There is now an SDK for OneTouch as with as OneTouch with Kofax's VRS technology (regardless of destination, the scanned image goes through VRS for image cleanup). When asked about Kodak's renewed interest in the lower-end of the market, he didn't seem overly concerned. Competition is good for everyone and, having come from the consumer side, Capurso believes that Visioneer has a firm understanding of the need to make scanning idiot-proof (my words) and the need to bundle software to maximize the investment in the scanner, whatever the size.
Kodak was showing the S1220 Photo Scanning System (in addition to its wide range of business scanners). This is pretty cool. Everyone has boxes of photos somewhere. The idea is to offer the i1220 scanner bundled with software as a walk-up photo scanner service for consumers in Big Box or local camera specialty stores. Put 24 photos on the scanner, color or B/W, and they feed through quickly. They are scanned duplex to capture notes on the back (for those of you out there with family smart enough to have done that). The software can perform redeye reduction, sharpen the image, and improve contrast on old B/W images.
Snowbound Software's Ed Berberian explained to me why someone should care about viewing software. After all, PDF is near-universal, isn't that good enough? He made the point that viewing software will often shave seconds from opening a document in PDF. The other value is security; without permissions, you can't do anything with a document other than look at it.
I also chatted with Bill DePeitro, Federal Sales Director or Xythos. A few months ago, Xythos launced 6.0 of its eponymous software with DOD 5015.2-certified RM functionality built into the product. You buy the product, you get RM. I've always wondered why they didn't charge more for their product. At any rate, they're also working on their software as a service model, looking to see what makes the most sense from a vertical perspective. You can test-drive the service as well.
In the category of things you won't see at the AIIM show is the VME H2 Terminator Bomb Jammer, a black Hummer loaded with jamming equipment.
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