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IMX Review
Bericht von Crispin Coulson 
Crispin Coulson ist als Berater für die PCI PROJECT CONSULT International Ltd., London, tätig.
Sein Bericht gibt einen Überblick über die DRT-Szene in England.
The first Information Management eXpo (IMX) came to a close in London on 26th April after a tour around the UK commencing in Birmingham on 17th April and including York, Edinburgh, Newbury, Manchester on the way. IMX supersedes the long running Document Management Roadshow. This change occurred after the show’s organiser, iTx Marketing felt it was time to reassess the focus of the roadshow and sought the opinions of various suppliers. Based on the feedback from these organisations the show has received a major overhaul with Information Management as the focal point and thus IMX is born. By the end of the two weeks, some 3,000 senior management delegates attended the show. Roger Crumpton, iTx's Managing Director, observed,  "High levels of interest in e-Government deployment and in the use of XML. Records Management, Document Control and Content Management are all critical components for effective information management and these featured heavily in the Seminar programme and on the exhibit floor.”
A novel element of IMX was the decision to hold focused seminars some 45 minutes before the actual show officially commenced. These seminars proved popular with the e-Government seminars being oversubscribed by 60%. Industry consultants In-Form Consult ( http://www.inform-consult.com ), observed an increased emphasis on email management, XML and Records Management in the public sector. For government suppliers this is obviously good news, however those companies addressing the financial sector were rather left wanting. The overall feeling among the 50 or so suppliers exhibiting at IMX was that business in general was fairly quiet although some companies were performing slightly better than others during a lean time business-wise. Our observations at the London event, which has always been the best in terms of attendance and atmosphere, was that the show had many attendees in the morning possibly as a result of the seminar sessions and then a steady trickle of visitors during lunchtime followed by a pronounced lull by mid afternoon, leaving slightly bored, tired and frustrated exhibitors prowling their stands.
Electronic Records Management developer Tower Software, ( http://www.towersoft.co.uk ) used IMX to demonstrate its latest development TRIM Context.  The latest iteration of Tower Software’s record management solutions, TRIM Context combines EDM, email management, records management, imaging and workflow into a single off the shelf solution. Not to be confused with Tower Software but equally important was TOWER Technology ( http://www.towertechnology.co.uk ) who demonstrated its proven fail-safe document and content processing solutions.
At last year’s event there was a virtual invasion of companies attending from France and Scandinavia and most prominently Germany. Of those major German organisations from last year namely IXOS, Ceyoniq, SER and Easy Software, only the latter was exhibiting this time around.
The new UK managing director of Easy Software ( http://www.easy-software.net ), Andrew Graham has made some major changes within the organisation since he commenced last June by moving the operations from Manchester to a facility closer to London. Furthermore, Graham has implemented a "Keep it simple" strategy whereby Easy Software provides customers with a simple-to-use system that starts to return investment the day after it is implemented. Certainly this concept appears to have paid dividends for Easy Software with major business wins in the UK over the past few months including high street stationer WH Smith, Electronics giant Hitachi, Freight Forwarder TNT, Worcester City Council, Irish Defence and most recently Alcatel. The Alcatel deal has been won through the close partnership between SAP, Proceed- Solutions and Easy Software. Towards the end of 2001 Alcatel’s submarine networks business began its search for an archiving solution for SAP. The solution eventually chosen to address the issue was the SAP Archiving Packaged Service that encompassed Easy Software, combined with the resources for installation, commissioning and documentation for a single module of their choice. The solution was implemented by staff from SAP, Proceed-Solutions and Easy Software, and proved to be on object lesson in speed and efficiency.  Within 48 hours Alcatel had a fully commissioned and documented Production Order archive from the development system.
Increasing customer expectations and
the ability to carry out business processes
globally have driven Graphic Data UK ( http://www.graphicdataonline.com ) to shift its positioning and expand its service product offerings from comparatively low value commodity bureau service operation to a service driven organisation offering high value professional business services, underpinned by their internally developed web based business platform, “Graphic Data Online.”
According to Marketing Manager Nikki Sammé “Graphic Data can offer organisations instant access to documents and the information contained within them, 24:7:365 from anywhere in the world. “The benefits of this proposition,” continues Sammé, “range from increased productivity within paper based processes, lower costs, better communication and business critical decision making based on smarter information.  As an outsourced service, we offer a risk free IT environment without the requirement for significant capital expenditure.”
OITUK ( http://www.oituk.com ) part of the Graphic Data Group, specialists in the deployment of imaging, document management and workflow systems recently extended the scope of its OIT Content Management Suite with the addition of a records management module called OIT Records Manager.  The module targets organisations seeking regulatory compliance for their records handling, in areas such as health records, crime records or government administration related to particular individuals or organisations. The company has also added a new web-based portal module, OITPORTAL to extend the reach of the OIT document management suite. Users and business teams can view customised content from OIT and other business applications in a single screen, profiled to the user’s job function so that documents, reports, work-items, e-mail etc are driven to the portal view rather than the user having to search for them.
Hummingbird ( http://www.hummingbird.com ) attended the show with new versions of core technologies as part of Hummingbird Enterprise. This is an integrated enterprise information management system (EIMS) but components can be used standalone. It includes new versions of Hummingbird's portal, document management, business intelligence, records management, web publishing, workflow and collaboration solutions. Each new component of Hummingbird Enterprise features a common user interface for consistency. The new versions which will ship in the second quarter of 2002 are as follows: Hummingbird Portal, Hummingbird DM, Hummingbird BI, Hummingbird RM, Hummingbird Collaboration, Hummingbird Web Publishing, and Hummingbird DM Workflow. It would seem that Hummingbird is now addressing each element of its business with a modular solution that allows customers to build a system that suits their needs as opposed to what would be nice to have!
Authorised Saperion ( http://www.saperion.com ) partner, Audata Ltd, ( http://www.audata.co.uk ) an Information and Records Management consultancy attended both London events and the company’s Dr David Bowen presented a talk on the issues surrounding digital preservation at the York leg of IMX. Through its work with the Government of the Netherlands and the Public Record Office in the UK, Audata is at the forefront of digital preservation practical experiments and implementation. According to Audata, the strategic relationship between Audata and Saperion established some two and a half years ago has resulted in its first UK contract for Saperion with a major medical engineering company. Because of the nature of its business this particular company is under strict regulatory control.   Combining Audata’s specific industry knowledge and Saperion's scalability the solution is being used for live and archived documents and replaces a manual paper-based system. It provides workflow and management for scanned images, electronic documents and those created internally by a bespoke database.  
Document capture specialists ActionPoint ( http://www.actionpoint.com ) recently announced a merger with Forms Processing solutions provider Captiva ( http://www.captiva.com ). The resultant company will be called Captiva Software Corporation and creates the largest information capture software provider and the only provider of a complete information capture solution. Both the UK and Germany are considered by the company to be their two most important markets in Europe. Already the company boasts an impressive list of German customers including, Aachener Münchener Versicherung AG, AOK, die Bundeswehr (Kreiswehrersatzämter), Bayer AG, BASF, DKV, E.on, GEFA, Nürnberger Lebensversicherung, Rheinische Hypothekenbank, Thuringia Versicherung, Viag Interkom, Volksfürsorge, Volkswagen AG, Wüstenrot Bank and Wüstenrot Bausparkasse.
Document and Content management solutions provider CC Data ( http://www.ccdata.co.uk ) used IMX to unveil a number of new products including e-MARC E-Mail Archiver.  This solution copies all e-mail messages that are sent or received through an Exchange Server into an Alchemy database. Messages can be stored in an Information store together with other related information so users are able to access all the files that relate to the files they wish to review. It also provides an excellent copy of the messages for security, long-term storage and an easy method of recovery if the Exchange Server goes down or loses files. Given the increased reliance of email as a primary means of communication and business as well as issues relating to the legal admissibility of emails then e-MARC E-Mail Archiver promises to become an essential business tool for archivists and administrators alike.
Without question IMX or the Document Management Roadshow is still the only UK event for EDM / ERM / KM / IM suppliers to meet with their peers, customers, competition and colleagues.  With the lack any other major UK EDM show, there is still a need for the Roadshow, IMX or whatever it is known as.  The question is how IMX’s organiser iTx will respond to the criticism being levelled at the event.  Some suppliers felt that the show was ‘tired’ and needed to be given an even more major overhaul.  Other companies on the other hand preferred the show as it had been for the last 10 years and resented the changes that had been made. The bottom line is that many suppliers were questioning whether the show provided an adequate return on investment to justify attending next year.  Ultimately iTx is between a Rock and Hard place in that they must listen to what the suppliers are saying yet the show must evolve to meet the changing demands of the industry. (CC)
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