I recently read the current report* from AIIM entitled Document Scanning and Capture: local, central, outsource - what’s working best? There were some interesting revelations in here, worthy of several posts, but one in particular stood out to me.

Although 78% of those surveyed have some form of distributed scanning via MFPs [multi-function scanner/printers], desk top scanners or branch-office scanners “many managers still consider it to be a scan-to-archive application, rather than opening up to the possibilities of scan-to-process.”

This says to me that people are predominantly scanning documents to get rid of paper file cabinets and archives – they’re scanning documents that are already “dead.”

Unfortunately, the real value from document scanning comes from those documents that are very much “alive” and that require action. About 57% of respondents identified “improve process throughput (productivity)” as an important business driver for document capture.

Yet, in reality only 37% of survey respondents are scanning over half of their inbound documents. Of those scanned documents, 57% are passed to archive rather than a business process.

In other words far fewer than half the organizations doing scanning are using less than half of those documents to power their business processes, while more than half of them think that improving productivity is important. So where’s the disconnect?    [Read more]

We're proud to announce the availability of commercial editions of KnowledgeTree 3.7. This release comes jam packed with new features, enhancements and support for new operating systems:

• Deployment on Zend Server
• Thumbnail and Instant View Functionality
• Cross Platform Repository Explorer
• Microsoft Windows 2008 Server, IIS 6 and 7 Support
• Native RPM and DEB packages
• New web-based Setup Wizard
• New Date, Large Text and Multi-select field types
• CMIS 0.61 Interface
• OpenSearch Interface
• Indexing of Microsoft Outlook Emails

Visit the KnowledgeTree What's New page for details.

If you're interested in trying out KnowledgeTree 3.7, download an evaluation of the software or sign up for an online demo.

KnowledgeTree Community Edition 3.7 is now also available for download.

It always feels good to pass a test – even one that you don’t know you’re taking. I don’t ever recall thanking someone for giving me a test, but I will thank Matt Aslett at the 451 Group for giving KnowledgeTree passing marks on his Open Core Transparency Test.

Since we agree with Matt (and others) that transparency is a vital component of the open core model, it’s important to us that we’re viewed as upholding that standard. We appreciate being recognized for our efforts! Thanks, Matt.

Kudos go to our friends at Zoho for standing up to Microsoft with style, humor and chutzpah! Responding to a comment from Microsoft that Zoho and other cloud-based office productivity applications offered “fake Office capabilities,” Zoho seized the gorilla by the…um…horns, and quickly launched www.fakeoffice.org.

This decisive marketing coup was accompanied by a well-produced video and I’m looking forward to seeing some of the additional mileage that Zoho gets from Microsoft’s latest gaff.

It’s also amusing to think about Microsoft’s own “fake” efforts. How about the fake iPod (Zune) and the fake PlayStation (Xbox)? Now, of course, there is the fake search engine. One could also argue that Excel was the fake Lotus 123 in it’s day, and Word was the fake Wordperfect. And dare we say that Internet Explorer was also the fake Netscape? We could play this game for a long time given that the basic premise for office productivity tools has been around for a long time and there have been generations of them by now (anyone remember Harvard Graphics?!)

I hope that some similarly creative folks out there will make the most of this opportunity. Although Microsoft is incredibly easy to ridicule, it’s certainly more fun when they set themselves up for it so adroitly. Do let me know if you’ve managed to join in the fun!

P.S. KnowledgeTree's Software as a Service offering, KnowledgeTreeLive, integrates very nicely with Zoho Office, providing customers with web-based editing of documents in the KnowledgeTree repository.

Follow me on twitter: @danielchalef

The vibrancy of the European systems integration community is very evident at the Open World Forum in Paris this week. Companies exhibiting at the forum include NXC, Smile, solinux, and the sizable Bull. Many of these companies are quite large, with hundreds of employees and distinct practices (which often include ECM-related services).

What is interesting about these companies is their focus on open source and their significant customer engagements. These firms, and many like them, are actively contributing to the open source communities that they participate in.

What is driving the growth of this SI community? Or perhaps more importantly, why don’t we see a similar groundswell in the UK?

Yes, government policy, in particular the preference for spending locally and on open source, is driving money towards SI’s. Many of these policies are however in place in the UK and we don’t see a similar effect. Additionally, most of the SI’s I have spoken to have very many private sector customers, with some of the SI’s earning more revenue from these contracts than from public sector engagements.

So why, compared to Europe, is there such a dearth of private sector demand for open source in the UK? I asked Matt Aslett from the 451 Group, an analyst firm, and he had a rather interesting answer: language and culture. He believes that in the UK, it is just too easy to purchase English language proprietary products and associated services, many of which originate from the US. The European desire to localize and customize for local norms is both supported by open source and drives open source innovation, to the benefit of all.

From its original design as a way to create dynamic web pages, PHP has evolved into a language (and supporting environment) that is particularly well suited to rapidly developing web-scale applications. Examples of these include Facebook and Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, its genesis prevented it from being taken seriously as an enterprise-grade language and environment, especially when compared to the incumbent 800 pound gorilla, Java.

PHP is enormously popular, with some estimates putting the number of internet domains running PHP at over 28 million. PHP’s popularity largely stems from how it, as an interpreted language, supports rapid development cycles, and the ease with which novice developers can learn the language.

Until only a few years ago PHP lacked strong object orientation and other features of modern development environments. PHP’s low barrier to entry also led to much of its criticism: developers just coded, often with no separation between presentation and business logic. The result: badly architected and unmaintainable applications.

Java’s rich ecosystem of frameworks, libraries and application servers (from Spring to JBoss) have underpinned enterprise use of the language. Frameworks provide architectural patterns and scaffolding, leading to rapidly developed, maintainable code. Application servers provide robust and rich environments for enterprise applications to exist within.    [Read more]

I read with interest, and some alarm, an article by eWeek’s Nathan Eddy that reported on the recent results of an IT effectiveness survey. Unfortunately, the results indicated that many US small businesses are receiving failing grades when it comes to IT effectiveness especially because today’s economy is constraining IT resources so tightly.

One of the suggestions put forth by the survey sponsors is for “small businesses to concentrate on core competencies while seeking to explore outsourcing options, take advantage of free software and other offerings, explore the benefits of cloud computing and consider IT infrastructure alternatives to capital expenditures through hosted hardware, software and services.”

This is hardly a novel recommendation; in fact it is one that has been put forth by open source software and SaaS proponents for quite some time. What’s changed is that open source software products have reached a level of maturity and stability that makes them acceptable to normally risk-averse small businesses. Many SMBs are now willingly embracing free open source products, such as Joomla! and are considering making the modest investment needed to obtain some commercial open source products, such as from CRM vendor, SugarCRM.

Similarly, many more SaaS products are available at price points that are attractive to smaller businesses. It seemed like the earlier days of SaaS were more focused on enterprise-class applications, while today’s SaaS offerings can be purchased for under 10 users. Now, small businesses can run human resources, financials, customer relationship management and more via a web browser and a credit card.    [Read more]

Last night's SourceForge.Net Community Choice Awards held at OSCON in San Jose saw PortableApps.com sweep the board with no less than 4 awards, including for the awards category KnowledgeTree was nominated: "Best Commercial Open Project". Other winners included phpMyAdmin, Audacity, Firebird and OpenOffice.org.

Congratulations to all who won and kudos to the SourceForge.net crew for putting together a really exciting and slick competition. Thanks too to our community for nominating, and voting, for us!

Follow me on twitter: @danielchalef

I’m pleased to announce that KnowledgeTree is a founding member of Open Source for America (OSA), a broad cross-section of more than 50 companies, academic institutions, communities, related groups and individuals that serve as a unified voice for the promotion of open source in the US Federal government sector. Open Source for America strives to effect change in government to encourage broader support of open source technologies and the open source development community.

KnowledgeTree has always been an advocate of the advancement of open source, and now as a member of Open Source for America we’re specifically supporting the organization's mission and its founding principles. This includes the belief “that the US Federal government can and should become more transparent, participatory, secure and efficient by leveraging the advantages of open source software; the open source community can drive collaborative innovation for government; and the decision to use software should be driven solely by the requirements of the user.”

KnowledgeTree has already taken steps to increase our visibility within the Federal government, and we’re looking forward to playing an active role with OSA.

Follow me on twitter: @danielchalef

While upfront license fees coupled with ongoing maintenance contracts have been the accepted model of software sales for a long time, here at KnowledgeTree we believe this model is inherently dishonest. It’s dishonest because it hides the future of the product to get prospective customers to buy the product today.

Think about the famous case of Osborne Computer Corp in the early 1980s. According to Wikipedia, “Adam Osborne boasted about an upcoming product months before it could be released, killing demand for the company's existing products. Unsold inventory piled up and in spite of dramatic price cuts - the Osborne 1 was selling for $1295 in July 1983 and $995 by August - sales did not recover.” What ultimately happened? Losses continued to mount and the company went bust.

Not all software companies suffer from “Osborneing,” and many have learned how to successfully pre-announce without causing current sales to drop, but they do it by intentionally obscuring the details of the release. Why? Because most organizations will hold off on a major purchase (especially of a software product that requires a long implementation time) if they know that a major platform release or significant new features are only a few months to a year away. To protect today’s sales, those prospects can’t know what’s coming.

But there is a different way of selling software that makes the dialogue with prospects more honest and upfront. At KnowledgeTree, we’ve adopted the subscription sales model in part because it allows us to tell our prospects what’s coming without fear that they’ll wait to buy – because they’ll get the new features as part of their subscription to our software.    [Read more]