by C. Roy Payne

During this month of Thanksgiving, I would like to take a moment to thank you for your continued support. At AccuImage, we have a lot to be thankful for this year: the wonderful corporations and government agencies we are proud to call our customers, our dedicated employees who never falter in rising to the challenge, and our business partners who share our unwavering commitment to excellence.

Each and every customer is important to us. My entire team believes that true success can be measured by satisfied customers, quality products and effective solutions. Sharing your comments and concerns with our team helps us continually achieve these goals.

We are excited to introduce a new ASP offering for our service bureau customers and as a component of our in-house content management systems. In this issue of The AccuView, you will find more information about this exciting new offering as well as several articles about ASPs: what ASPs are, what they do, the advantages of ASPs, and even a list of questions to ask a prospective vendor.

For more information about our new ASP offering - or for details about any of our products or services - please contact our director of sales, John E. Fox, at 615.242.7226 or via e-mail.

Happy Thanksgiving!

C. Roy Payne
roy.payne@accuimagellc.com

Every business, regardless of its type and size, has certain common characteristics and challenges. They all have documents and information that they need to organize, manage and control in order to ensure their success. They all generate invoices, process payables, maintain human resource files and have to complete tax forms. Similarly, whether a one-doctor clinic or a 500-bed hospital, all health care providers have to keep medical records and process EOB paperwork.

Today, information and the documents generated from it are created from multiple sources and stored in many forms. Every organization has e-mails, faxes, paper and electronic documents, and many other file types. The challenge resides in bringing all these pieces together to create a history of their activities, provide customer support and comply with government regulations. Content management solutions are the answer.

In the past, the solutions that would allow organizations to build enterprise systems to manage these challenges were financially out of reach to all but the very largest corporations. They were faced with very few options other than printing everything to paper and filing it in traditional manual filing systems or scanning the paper into a basic imaging system. Even though these systems work, they can limit growth, consume resources and create regulatory compliance issues.

Two developments over the past few years have changed this paradigm. These are the introduction of web technologies and ASP services. Together, both of these have reduced the internal infrastructure required to deploy and support document management systems, while lowering the total cost of ownership to the point where content management solutions are within reach for all organizations.

Robust Repository, Anywhere-Anytime Access, Minimal Investment

AccuImage now offers content management solutions that utilize an ASP infrastructure. Our ASP solution enables you to access document images and content from one central repository from anywhere in the world at any time using a web browser. When it comes to getting documents into the image repository, you have two options:

Option 1: We Do the Scanning

The AccuImage service bureau can scan your paper documents into our ASP system. Using this option, you provide us with the physical files you need to be able to access electronically. Our experienced imaging specialists handle the document scanning and upload the images, content and index information to a remote repository. Your employees are provided with secure web-based access to the converted image archive. This option enables you to focus on your core business, while leaving the scanning job to us. You would not need to invest in a scanner or other imaging hardware or software; all you need is a computer with Internet access.

Option 2: You Do the Scanning

If you prefer to handle the document scanning within your office, AccuImage can custom-design a system that matches your imaging requirements. You scan your documents and upload the images, content and index information to a remote repository. Your employees access the repository remotely using secure web-based access. Using this option, you would need a scanner and scanning software, which we can provide, as well as the manpower to scan your documents and perform data entry. However, you would not need a robust back-end storage system for housing your document images, as you would be tapping into our already-robust storage infrastructure.

By utilizing AccuImage's content management ASP solution, companies can:

• Eliminate time spent locating misplaced or lost files.
• Reduce the need for backup or duplicate copies.
• Access secure content from any location via a web browser.
• Capture data electronically with advanced scanning technology.
• Enable file sharing throughout the organization.
• Decrease print, mail, copy and storage costs.

AccuImage can help you use the power of the Internet to drive your document repository. Through our new ASP offering, AccuImage is committed to making high-end document and content management systems available to businesses of all sizes.

For more information, contact us.

Sources: AccuImage, R. Lamb

What is an ASP?

ASP stands for "Application Service Provider." The terms "ASP" and "Application Service Provider" are applied specifically to companies that provide computer-based services to customers over a network, most commonly, the Internet. In most cases, the term ASP has come to denote companies that supply software applications and/or software-related services over the Internet. In essence, ASPs are a way for companies to outsource some aspects of their information technology needs.

How did ASPs get their start?

The Internet began to really heat up and receive significant media exposure starting around 1994. Initially, it started as a great way for academics and researchers to distribute information; but as millions of consumers flocked to the Internet, it began to spawn completely new business models. At the same time, in the mid- to late 1990s, IT resources and capital investment dollars were in short supply. All of these resources were committed to code reviews and rewrites to ensure that all the legacy applications and systems would accommodate the century date change. Most organizations that wanted to consider new applications during this time were required to look outside the organization to have any chance of implementation in a reasonable period of time. It was also during this time that the financial markets were flying; venture capital flowed to any web-based startup that could project worldwide adoption, page views, or click-through counts. As a result of these dynamics, development companies scrambled to web-enable their applications and most began to offer outsourced access to these same applications. With this, one of the most interesting behind-the-scenes Internet-based business models emerged, and the term ASP was coined.

How do ASPs work?

Following are the most common features of an ASP.

• The ASP owns and operates a software application.
• The ASP owns, operates and maintains the servers that run the application.
• The ASP employs the people needed to maintain the application.
• The ASP makes the application available to customers everywhere via the Internet.
• The ASP bills for the application on a per-content basis and/or on a monthly fee basis.

What are the advantages of using an ASP?

The ASP model has evolved because it offers some significant advantages over traditional approaches. Following are some of the most important advantages.

• Especially for small businesses and startups, the biggest advantage is low cost of entry and, in most cases, an extremely short setup time.
• The pay-as-you-go model is often significantly less expensive.
• The ASP model, as with any outsourcing arrangement, reduces labor cost.
• The ASP model also eliminates specialized IT infrastructure for the application as well as supporting applications, including client-side and back-end hardware and software.
• The ASP model can shift Internet bandwidth to the ASP, who can often provide it at lower cost.

One thing that led to the growth of ASPs is the high cost of specialized software. As the costs increase, it becomes challenging for a small business to afford to purchase the software, so the ASP makes using the software possible. Another important factor leading to the development of ASPs has been the growing complexity of software and software upgrades. Distributing huge, complex applications to the end user has become extremely expensive from a customer service standpoint, and upgrades make the problem worse. In a large company where there may be thousands of desktops, distributing software can cost millions of dollars. The ASP model eliminates most of these headaches.

Why use a content management ASP?

If you evaluate the offerings of content management ASPs up against some of the traditional in-house software for license providers, you will likely discover that several advantages such as cost, minimizing risk, flexibility, scalability and continuity exist. As we explore some of these, one of the first advantages we find is that by choosing an ASP solution for your enterprise content management needs, you minimize the risk associated with making a large financial and cultural change decision. If the solution doesn't meet expectations and creates political adoption issues, it's much easier to change. Financial risk is also kept at bay because ASP solutions typically only require a minimal upfront investment and a usage fee rather than a long-term, high-risk capital investment. Also, since ASPs aggregate volumes across multiple customers, they create economies of scale in infrastructure and operational costs that are passed on to their customers. The next advantage is scalability and flexibility, since the ASP is managing large volumes of content for multiple customers. As a single customer's needs change, it is very easy to accommodate those needs immediately. Additional advantages include redundancy, disaster recovery and business continuity. Typically these services are architected to provide infrastructure and physical location redundancy. This would be very difficult and costly for most organizations to implement and manage.

Sources: AccuImage, HowStuffWorks, R. Lamb, Wikipedia

It is important to make sure that the ASP you choose will handle your information and relationship in a mission-critical way. Here are a set of questions you should ask.

How do customers access the software?
Is it through a browser or an application? If it is through a browser, how does the user experience feel?

How are customer service issues resolved?
If you (or employees) have questions and/or problems with the software, what happens? Does the ASP provide training?

How secure is the data?
You want to find out about internal security policies with ASP employees, passwords and access reports to protect your employees, firewall and other safeguards against external attack, and things like tape backups to handle hardware failures.

How secure is the connection between the ASP and the user?
Data flows between the ASP and the user whenever the user accesses it. Is it secured by encryption, a VPN, proprietary techniques or some other system?

How is the application served?
Is your data on a dedicated machine or a shared machine?

How does the ASP handle redundancy?
If a machine fails or an Internet pipe goes down, what levels of redundancy are in place to keep your servers online?

How does the ASP handle hardware/software problems?
If a hard disk fails or the application hangs, what are the policies in place around recovery?

How does the ASP handle a disaster?
If the building were to burn down or a hurricane came through, how would the ASP handle the complete loss of the facility? How long would it be before the ASP restored service?

Who owns the data?
Obviously, the customer should, but this fact should be stated in the contract.

The AccuImage sales team is standing by, anxious to answer these questions and any others you may have. Please call 615.242.7226 or e-mail info@accuimagellc.com.

Sources: AccuImage, HowStuffWorks

AccuImage, LLC is a systems integrator that empowers their customers with solutions designed to gain the maximum value from their information at every point in the information lifecycle. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, AccuImage specializes in the design, installation and support of document and content management systems, forms processing solutions, and electronic workflow systems. The company offers hardware and software from leading companies - AnyDoc Software, Böwe Bell+Howell, Canon, Captaris, Captovation, EMC Documentum, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Kodak, Kofax, Panasonic, Plasmon and Verity - as well as consulting, document conversion and professional services.

* Limited time offer. AccuImage may discontinue the offer at any time without prior notice. Offer available only to current and new subscribers to The AccuView. No purchase necessary. Following the two-hour complementary consultation, additional consulting is available at AccuImage's regular professional services rates. Consultation may be conducted in person or over the phone, depending on location. Call for additional details.

Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Update Warning

*As Internet Explorer 7 is a new release from Microsoft, none of our software manufacturers have yet released versions of their software that are certified with it. It is recommended that Internet Explorer 7 not be installed on ay machine that will need to use browser-based modules since this is not currently a support configuration. The affected modules include, but may not be limited to AppXtender Web & WebXtender, Captovation ecNet & Web Capture, and Liquid Office.

Please be aware that since Microsoft is currently pushing the Internet Explorer 7 install as a critical update through their Windows Update system, the install may be automatically installed to your workstations and servers if they are configured to automatically install updates downloaded through the Microsoft Automatic Update utility.