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Open Document Interchange
In the knowledge economy of the 1990s, any company’s ability to compete
rests largely with its workers’ ability to swiftly find and easily exchange
information. Without unimpeded information exchange and gathering of that
information, workers cannot collaborate efficiently or effectively. Without
effective workgroup collaboration, companies cannot sharpen their information
assets into the competitive edge they need to survive in today’s fast-paced
marketplace.
In theory, one of the hallmarks of the modern corporation is the existence
of an enterprise-wide electronic mail network. It is designed to make information
exchange and workgroup collaboration effortless. In practice, however, e-mail
installations alone are not enough. Given today’s heterogeneous computing
environments, corporations must couple electronic mail technology with a
new type of document conversion technology called open or universal document
interchange to provide links among the islands of incompatible word processors
in use throughout the enterprise today. Without open document interchange,
e-mail users can receive documents produced by other users’ incompatible
word processors, but cannot readily work with such documents --that’s
what true information exchange is all about. This rationale is also very
important for the retrieval of information and being able to convert or view
all information found to a format the user will be able to read and manipulate
for dissemination.
Keep in mind, however, that getting the infrastructure in place for information
exchange is understandably the first step toward achieving true document
interchange capability. The next wall you’re likely to hit will be that
users complain they can’t see or use shared information. With a little
planning, you can head off the user unrest. In fact, the good news is a number
of software vendors have made it their business to supply this missing piece
of the information exchange solution. Their aim is to prevent scenarios such
as in the following example.
You’ve been patiently, albeit nervously, waiting for the document to
arrive. It finally arrives yet the information needs considerable clarification
to help management make some tough product development decisions. You have
less than five minutes to get it into shape. Your engineering department
is using Uniplex UNIX workstations, and you use Microsoft Word for Windows,
so you know you’ll have to struggle with converting the document into
your processor’s format before you can even think about making the needed
revisions. The import filter adds even more confusion reformatting the document
makes you think you might as well re-type it from scratch. Any alternative
you think of eats up more time and still doesn’t solve your problem.
The outcome is certain: You can’t possibly deliver the report on time.
If this scenario strikes a familiar chord, it is because variations on the
theme are played out every day in countless corporations worldwide. Never
more apparent with new versions of word processing software such as the new
release of Office 97, Word Version 8 makes it virtually impossible for a
user of Word 6 to read a document created in Word 8. ANE recently sent out
a press release announcing this new converter and most of our prospects found
out that they did not have the capability to convert to the format of their
choice.
A recent Association of Banyan Users International (ABUI) study showed that
few are using document conversions and viewers, even though better than 50
percent of those responsible for information conversion in the company receive
complaints from users about document incompatibility. This suggests that
although people are beginning to recognize the problem, the solution is unclear.
Incompatible word processing applications pose one of the biggest hurdles
to effective workgroup collaboration.
These incompatibilities force workers to spend considerable time and effort
attempting to recapture a version of a final-form document they can then
edit. The time it takes to do this is a luxury few companies can afford today.
Now, more than ever, an organization’s personnel need the ability to
quickly and easily exchange revisable documents across the enterprise or
with the outside world regardless of the computer hardware, operating systems,
or software applications they use. ANE offers a cost-effective solution and
is the only company in the world that offers compatibility for most computing
platforms, with over 200 formats.
Already, the marriage of e-mail message delivery and open document interchange
technology is helping hundreds of corporations throughout the world overcome
the final barriers to true information interchange. Because e-mail enabled
document interchange fully automates the document conversion process, it
lets users access, revise and disseminate compound documents (i.e., incorporation
of text, images and graphics) without spending time on conversion and
reformatting or substantial company resources on courier, overnight mail
and paper costs. While it may seems a mundane chore, document interchange
capability is crucial; particularly when you adhere to the adage that time
is money.
The Role of E-mail
The ability to transparently exchange electronic documents throughout an
enterprise clearly has the potential to dramatically improve a company’s
productivity. That potential, in turn, is grounded in another
productivity-improving development of the 1990s: the proliferation of e-mail
connections.
Industry analysts say that several factors are fueling the rapid adoption
rates of e-mail, including the inherent ability of electronic mail to bridge
the connectivity gap among many different computing platforms and networks.
Electronic mail has become a kind of groupware, an increasingly popular buzzword
for describing computer technologies that foster interpersonal collaboration,
communication and productivity.
Yet, platform-to-platform and network-to-network connectivity alone does
not facilitate information exchange and collaboration among corporate workers.
This is particularly true when a document delivered via e-mail cannot be
readily accessed or edited because the sender and receiver use incompatible
word processors. True collaborations require another kind of groupware, a
document interchange technology that delivers application-to-application
compatibility across many different platforms.
Contenders in the Document-Interchange Arena
Three technologies are widely heralded as the answer to this requirement
today and all of them fall short for these reasons:
Word Processor Import Filters: Incorporated into most of the leading
word processor packages for desktop computers, these automatic document
conversion utilities permit, for example, a WordPerfect user to read and
edit documents produced in Microsoft Word. Although import filters’
format translation capabilities are adequate for some users, the converted
documents still require reformatting due to loss of features such as frames
and extensive styles. In some cases, users have to completely rework or reformat
the documents. In the case of Word 8 in Office 97 there is no compatibility
between various versions, therefore leaving the users with a need for a
conversion tool. Further, import filters fail to provide links with legacy
system-based processors applications operating in host mainframe and minicomputer
environments. Word processor import filters do not deliver an enterprise-wide
document interchange solution.
Portable Documents: Pioneered by Adobe, the developer of the Postscript
Page Description language, Portable Document Format or PDF technology permits
high-quality, on-screen imaging as well as printing of documents across
heterogeneous desktop computing environments. What PDF does not permit is
editing. PDF technology converts what was originally a revisable document
into a non-revisable or final-form document. If a recipient wishes to edit
a PDF file, he or she must copy/paste the unformatted text into a new file,
and then reformat the document. Portable document technology’s real
market niche is the publishing arena. Here it is well suited to on-line
publication of static data such as manuals and books. Collaborative document
interchange, however, remains well outside the scope of PDF.
Traditional conversion utilities: These utilities long provided the
only means for computer users to read and edit documents produced in incompatible
formats. While they represent a proven technology, they score low marks for
ease of use. Most users continue to struggle with initiating and running
such applications, making them a less than optimal approach to document
interchange.
Fortunately for today’s businesses, electronic mail-enabled document
interchange technology such as that provided by ANE Resources, Inc. picks
up where these other strategies leave off. Unlike conversion utilities,
ANE’s e-mail integrated KEYpak®, operates in a way that is virtually
transparent to the end user. At the LAN server and WAN gateway levels, the
e-mail system automatically activates the necessary KEYpak conversion before
routing the document to the intended recipient.
Unlike portable documents, KEYpak converted documents are fully revisable.
They also deliver high document fidelity with minimal or no loss of the original
document’s format features even complex document features such as frames,
tables and styles. Time previously spent on reformatting is saved for more
productive pursuits.
And finally unlike word processor import filters, KEYpak software delivers
document compatibility across all of an organization’s platforms. The
result is a true enterprise-wide document interchange solution.
The Formula for Success
The ability to deliver such a solution depends on three factors. First, vendors
of document interchange solutions must be willing to enter into a broad range
of strategic partnerships. ANE, for example, has spent years to form
relationships with leading e-mail system vendors, word processing suppliers,
and major legacy system vendors. This spectrum of partnerships underlies
the company’s ability to support document interchange across the enterprise
in a multi-platform environment stimulated by the Internet explosion of users.
The second factor for success in this market is the vendor’s software
architecture. Virtually all document-conversion architectures comprise three
basic components: front-end source document interpreters, an intermediate
file format, and back-end converters that translate an intermediate file
into a specific format used by a target word processor. What sets ANE’s
KEYpak Open Document eXchange (ODX) architecture apart from many competing
architectures is the range of features such as modularity, extensibility,
and support of standards supported by its intermediate file format. ANE culled
these features from the spectrum of document processing formats in use throughout
the industry today. KEYpak also comes equipped with a set of APIs for seamless
integration.
The third and possibly most significant factor is placing a high priority
on responding to customer needs. That focus represents the key to meeting
end-user requirements quickly and delivering effective document-interchange
solutions that evolve with the marketplace to provide an enterprise-wide
solution with upgrades and version enhancements. ANE prides itself on keeping
the customer base satisfied, which has led to much repeat business from the
Blue Chip existing customer base for many years.
Other Uses for KEYpak-- Converters and Filters for Text Search and
Retrieval.
An enterprise-wide solution requires that all users have access to all types
of data located on all different types of computers. All kinds of data can
be distributed across client servers with information access that is independent
of document format, location, operating system and network. Using the KEYpak
legacy converters and ODX filters eliminates the bottleneck of document
retrieval, independent of the platform. ANE has made it easy with various
APIs to integrate the largest array of filters and converters in the industry
to convert most any type of document.
KEYpak converters and filters have become the main ingredients for text search
engines which are required to convert huge amounts of data, which is either
stored in a large databases located on site, or databases found throughout
the Internet. KEYpak converters and filters are not only used to convert
today’s word processing formats, but supplies a host of legacy filters
which can be converted to HTML, ASCII or your choice of over 200 formats.
The filters and converters can be used on many computing platforms such as
Windows, UNIX, VAX, LAN, and IBM mainframes, all filtering to a common format.
The converters can be connected seamlessly through the various KEYpak APIs,
depending on the computing platform.
The number of users that are entering into the marriage of electronic mail,
search of text and retrieval and open document interchange software on
multi-platforms is climbing. The increasing numbers of companies worldwide
are reaping the benefits of this combination with greatly enhanced communication
and collaboration among workers. As electronic mail-enabled document interchange
continues to evolve and the growing ranks of e-mail users across the enterprise
avail themselves of its capabilities to the Internet, incompatibilities will
become a thing of the past and a new era of swift, easy information exchange
will arrive. That day is here, thanks in part to technology from ANE Resources,
Inc..
Copyright ANE Resources Inc.
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