I recently attended the capital area’s first Information Security & Wireless Technology Conference hosted by Fishnet Security*, Check Point Software Technologies**, and Secure Passage.***
In the age of security threats, business professionals must improve their knowledge of Information Security (INFOSEC) issues, solutions, and evolving technologies. The face of data security is rapidly changing and strategies must take a “data protection, data leakage” approach.
It's time to arm yourselves with expert advice in the war on information security.
Janelle Julien
Associate Editor
Google and Microsoft continue to butt heads in the search market. The latest in this tug-of-war between the two tech giants has seen Google accusing Microsoft of anti-trust violations. Considering Google's dominance in the search market (a market they control about 65 percent of, according to Hitwise), Microsoft is within rights to limit Google's search capabilities on its desktop.
There are known problems with Google's search capabilities, including its opaqueness and unresponsiveness to customers. With organic search, Website operators are continually frustrated by trying to maintain a prominent position with Google. They are always left guessing about how to stay near the top of Google search results.
With paid search, customers don't know where their money is being spent. Although Websites pay for the clicks they get, it's difficult to know where those clicks are coming from. What is the dynamic of how your paid search ad is ranked? Attempting a paid search strategy requires a third-party search market agency to handle Google.
Who’s the real monopoly here? Google and Microsoft should continue fighting for search market share.
Janelle Julien
Associate Editor
If you were present, good for you, if not, you missed out. This year’s AIIM event was quite good. The location was pleasant (although the timing was not great with the Boston Marathon), and the crowd was decent. I could write about the new products announced in the area of hardware and software, or about the gossip and rumors that always emerge, but I won’t. Instead I will write about the miss-conceptions about these events. Exhibitors mistakenly think they should close business (this could be the result of pressure put on marketing departments) and attendees think they will find the new solution to that nagging current ECM issue either with an already-implemented system, or one planned.
Both are right, but miss the real reason you should attend, and that is for relationship and understanding of the market. Have you ever had a favorite magazine subscription you regularly read, and then suddenly dropped? Only finding yourself picking up an issue a year later thinking geez look what I missed. Missing industry events like these is the same thing. Look at the shows as a periodical.
Exhibitors should be leveraging their partnerships with vendors, and staking a claim on the market.
Attendees should be taking the time to be critical of their current or possible vendors and getting answers face-to-face to your questions.
I will admit AIIM this year is mostly a partner event. The addition of the company tours was a good idea maybe not the best implemented. This year there was quite a bit of shirt changes and commotion surrounding this. It’s a fun industry in this respect, always refreshing. In my opinion the people who should be attending this particular event are all resellers in the industry and managers in the companies implementing solutions (this is a key place to find that hidden solution for the ever-nagging ECM problem). And don’t forget that not only are the breakout sessions and exhibits important, but also the more casual after events.
See you next year!
- Chris Riley, Artsyl Technologies, Inc.
With HIMSS around the corner I thought it would be a good time to talk about ECM technologies in the healthcare vertical. If you are not familiar with HIMSS, it stands for Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. This organization puts on a large event every year. This year it is in New Orleans. You usually are comforted that you are in the right location for HIMSS as soon as you make it to the baggage claim and have huge healthcare signs starring you in the face. Because the event is so large it covers a broad range of healthcare tools from portable x-ray machines to database back-ends. And of course there is ECM everywhere. In the area of scanning, ability to scan cards becomes important, and image dropout quality is a top concern. In the area of capture there is current buzz on how to handle the new HCFA and UB04 extraction. Technologies already exist on the market to accurately OCR HCFA, UB92 and a few now supporting UB04. Also the always challenging EOB capture has been solved by a few, and partially solved by many. For content management systems there are critical requirements around security, accessibility, and also support for input and output of the 835 file format. EDI is the keyword sounding digital information. Really for content management systems this is a challenging vertical that is dominated by several very large medical only companies. Healthcare also brings some other interesting content driven niches such as speech recognition, tablet PC notes, document codeing, and HUGE amounts of rich media such as x-ray images and video. There are specialized content systems just around managing this information. One aspect of healthcare that makes it a little easier is the fact that how information is stored is more or less static system. The healthcare vertical is one that understanding the technologies and lingo are critical to keeping and closing any deal. It is also critical to understand how all the pieces fit together, because your prospect will ask.
- Chris Riley, Artsyl Technologies, Inc.