Intranets--Not Dreams, But Reality Combined scanning and file format solutions required for care and feeding of hungry intranets By Rita Marcojohn Intranets and even extended inter-enterprise intranets are wildly proliferating among businesses of all sizes and especially among government agencies. Once established, intranet managers report that their sites seem "to take on a life of their own" and grow in all directions. Small wonder. Corporate and government information systems personnel are clearly facing a huge challenge. Vast amounts of time and money are being wasted on document duplication, shipping, filing, storing and physical distribution. Information systems managers want to create and maintain a truly fast-access, data-sharing environment across the enterprise, but their most valuable asset--information--is locked up in mountains and mountains of paper. How then does IS bridge the gap from paper to secure, internal electronic distribution? The cost-effective answer lies in putting paper assets behind a firewall on internal LAN, WAN and enterprise Web sites so that all that valuable information is at the fingertips of managers, employees and sales personnel--an intranet. Turning this IS dream into reality, however, begs the question: How am I going to create an intranet and where do I get the tools? One part of the answer is combining high-performance and simple-to-use scanning solutions with drivers for a file format that is specifically designed to rescue valuable content from obscurity. Dramatic growth, important benefits The proliferation of intranets in the last year alone surprised most industry observers. Computer industry analysts at Yankee Group (Boston) reported last year that 56% of companies they surveyed said they had an intranet or were building one. At the same time, industry research firm International Data Corp. (Framingham, MA) estimates that this year 80% of Web servers will be used for intranets. CAP Ventures (Marshfield, MA) adds that intranet builders will spend $8.5 billion this year. At the root of this explosion in corporate, academic and government intranet growth is the unwieldy amount of paper that continues to hamper efficient processes and block the development of truly collaborative work environments. Datamation recently estimated that 1 billion paper documents are added each day to the nearly 3 trillion hard-copy documents stored in offices around the country. At least 3 billion pages are printed out each day, according to another estimate. Government agencies and corporations realize that these growing paper documents and archives are hindering effective decision processes and information sharing, and require unnecessary filing, physical searching and storing time. In contrast, intranets foster real-time collaboration and information. Intranets are platform independent, can be set up on networks with as few as 10 users or can extend across several independent enterprises (extranets). They are also more content-intensive rather than graphics- and multimedia-intensive. The result is a very compelling return on investment. Cadence Design Systems (San Jose), an integrated circuit design software consulting company, estimates that its $1.4 million intranet paid for itself in only a few months. Agencies have only begun to scan For government agencies, scanning to either the Internet or an internal intranet Web site is practically a matter of survival. Compliance reports, patent archives and reference documents are besieging personnel throughout the federal government, especially agencies such as the Government Printing Office, the Patent & Trademark Office, the Internal Revenue Service, the various armed forces and the Department of Defense. Because the size of this mountain of paper continues to grow, the federal government has called for 100% paperless proposals this year. A recent story in Government Computer News noted that intranets are particularly popular at the DOD and have only "scratched the surface" of the documents that could be digitized and put on an intranet server. A DOD director was quoted saying that his organization's goal is to take all the documents "sitting around in filing cabinets" and scan them into a DOD intranet. Once this process is completed, millions of documents can be made instantly available to DOD personnel with the same look and feel as the original. Productivity enhancements benefit businesses For the private sector, intranets are serving a different, productivity-enhancing purpose than getting information out to customers on Internet Web sites. A rapidly growing number of companies are scanning product specification sheets, training materials, presentations, articles about competitors and other vital information into their intranets for their sales forces and other internal audiences. Information is instantly available to salespeople who can reduce the sales cycle by answering prospect and customer questions almost immediately. For other areas of a company--accounting and human resources, for example--scanning manuals, forms and other records into an intranet can allow employees instant access to all kinds of valuable information. At least one study estimates that more than 250,000 documents are already available on a typical company intranet Web site. The emergence of extranets, or extended intranets, has also opened up the possibility of making inter-enterprise documents available, further fueling the conversion of paper documents. Scanning technology is crucial The success of converting paper-based information into useful, easily accessible intranet documents depends heavily on the performance and quality of the scanning device used and the software that captures and adapts the document to an intranet Web site. Depending on the size of an agency or company, the conversion process usually requires high-volume or production-level scanners with automatic document feeders for around-the-clock scanning. For example, Rockwell International's (Seal Beach, CA) Rocketdyne Division, a major contractor on the International Space Station Project, has scanned at least 500,000 pages of documents in the last few months as part of its efforts to digitize hundreds of thousands of contract, manufacturing and engineering document pages. As a result, Rocketdyne runs its scanners six hours per day. Considering that Rocketdyne is collaborating with scientists and technicians in 13 countries, timely digitization of paper documents and consistent integrity of the original scanning process is crucial. Scanned image resolution and quality is crucial for maintaining the look and feel of the document. Prior to the widespread use of the Internet, scanning documents was entirely focused on getting the content of a document digitized. Today, scanning to a Web site--whether for an intranet or the Internet--requires the highest possible resolution and quality so that the visual integrity of the original document is preserved. Maximum integrity of government seals, individual signatures and corporate logos is a minimum requirement, especially considering compliance with corporate identity programs. Scanners used for converting paper to electronic content also require high versatility and flexibility for unattended operations. Legacy paper documents come in all shapes, sizes and grades. Refeeding documents and clearing jams because the input hardware could not adapt can significantly slow the scan-to-Web process. Scanners specifically designed with the high-performance, ease of use, and high resolution required by networks and workgroups will become more and more important as organizations build and expand their intranet sites. Intranet Web sites can get extremely hungry, requiring a range of input devices that are scalable. Particularly in a decentralized document capture environment, high quality and performance-enhancing features such as duplex scanning operation is critically important in workgroup and departmental implementations. Those who have started intranets at their companies or government agencies report that intranet content seems to rapidly proliferate. As organizations realize the benefits of intranets, demand for paper document conversion into intranet-ready content will come from all directions--ranging from departments to individuals. These organizations need a full range of scanners--from 100-page-per-minute production scanners for massive conversion projects through high-volume, midrange scanners to desktop scanners--that provide the quality and flexibility required for meeting the needs of all levels of the company and all types of documents. Rescuing content from obscurity Even the most advanced high-performance scanners on the market will not rescue content from obscurity without a file format and software that is specifically designed to preserve the integrity of the original document, compress complicated graphics files for fast transfer and allow the searching of text in multiple volumes as well as in graphics. Adobe's (San Jose) Portable Document Format (PDF) is an example of an Internet/intranet Web site file format that bypasses the limitations of TIFF and makes an ideal combination scan-to-Web intranet solution. PDF, and associated software such as Adobe's Acrobat, is making it possible for intranet authors to scan just about any document or image from any platform and then distribute it across the intranet. With a PDF file, intranet Web site builders only need to scan in the document. No re-authoring into a new format or training on conversion software tools is required. Pages look exactly the same as they would on a printed page. File compression with PDF is up to 8-to-1, dramatically speeding transfer of intranet files and enhancing the whole purpose of building an intranet. Combined solutions--such as high-performance scanning and the PDF file format for scan-to-Web simplicity--are pulling expanding intranet content up from out of obscurity, making it compelling, increasing the ease with which data is accessed and is generally making intranets more practical. Some observers are calling 1997 the year of the intranet. Yet, simplifications in the input process and improvements in the ease of use are clearly setting the stage for even more widespread use and cost-justifying of intranets and extranets for many years to come. Rita Marcojohn is VP of product management, Imaging Products Group, Fujitsu Computer Products of America (San Jose), 800-626-4686.
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