My first trip to Moscow
I made my first business trip to Moscow a few weeks ago. It was a remarkable experience and it’s always very interesting for me to indulge in different countries and cultures.
Traveling internationally has a great way to put things into perspective. The world is a very big place, but at the core “people are people”. What people want is to live, work and be in peace. We all have that in common for the most part. One of our drivers was kind enough to take a slight detour and drive by infamous Red Square as seen in the photo below:
The Russian people aren’t so unlike American or Japanese people as you might imagine, in my opinion. I have found obvious commonalities in each of these cultures are a ‘hard-working element’. It’s inspirational to go to a foreign country/city and just witness the people and business go-about their daily routines. True, living in the United States, I sometimes get jaded and frustrated with American laziness and gluttony but I feel, honestly, if I think about it in comparison to other societies, American business is quiet efficient.
Another commonality between Russian and Japanese society is their consideration for visitors. I absolutely admire this quality about these two countries which are distinctly different in some ways, yet quite similar in other ways. The Russian people went out-of-their-way to try and communicate in English at the airport, in the restaurant or in the hotel. They really did their best to make me feel at home.
If you ever do visit Moscow, however, be prepared for traffic! Wow – this was something I was surprised about. Although we had drivers for our travels and didn’t have to rent a car it was crazy just simply being a passenger. There is massive traffic in Moscow that you should know. Give yourself plenty of time to get to your destination and know the back roads, if possible. I would compare the level of traffic congestion to that of Manhattan, New York (US). However, the drivers in Moscow are aggressive, just like in Manhattan, but they have amazing skill to weave and dodge obstacles and they lack the anger that overcomes American drivers. In Moscow I did not witness one single driver either honk their horn and/or ‘flip-the-bird’. It seems as though this traffic mess is just accepted as a condition for living in Moscow.
To compensate for the traffic congestion it seems that law enforcement is quite lenient. A result of the massive traffic is that people have to park their cars somewhere and, believe me; they park them wherever they can find space! You park on the sidewalk, sideways or in other areas because you how to. Maybe I can go into the Parking Garage business in Moscow?
Finally, again, I appreciate all the hospitality of the Russian people. Stigma and history is something hard to overcome but it seems that the integrated approach of a world economy is truly a reality. I’m humbled to see it, and to be a part of it.
Великие люди
偉大な人々
Great People,
Kevin
Print and Document Services
Posted by Kevin in Technology on April 24, 2012
I have seen this role in Windows Server 2008 R2 before but I never dug too deep into the functionality. I want to post this photo then I will investigate.
Here is one more I will investigate. Handwriting Recogntion.
Getting the most out of your document capture solution – Multistream, color dropout for forms processing
Posted by Kevin in Technology on April 12, 2012
Leveraging an investment in scanning hardware and software should always be a priority. After all these are typically not cheap investments although the ROI can be outstanding if implemented properly.
In this blog I would like to share some little known, yet extremely useful, features that can dramatically improve forms processing automation and accuracy. I am occasionally asked about these features and I believe if more people knew these were available then it would help improve efficiency in the capture process tremendously.
Multistream – Multiple versions of one captured image
The first feature I would like to explain is “Multistream”. As the word would indicate this means that for each image captured, the scanner can output two or more versions of the image. Why in the world would anyone want to do this you ask? Good question and the answer is to improve Forms Processing data extraction accuracy. Typically when people use Multistream they will output a color version of the image and a bitonal (black and white) version of the image. The color version is stored for the purpose of retaining an electronic version of the original document. This version of the image is for human’s to retrieve and view images. However, the bitonal version is used for the capture technology such as OCR to process by computers. Bitonal images are preferred for OCR because the color is unnecessary for a computer to interpret pixels and might actually decrease the level of accuracy.
As you can see in the image below the OMR (Optical Mark Recognition – checkboxes), ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition – Handwritten) and OCR (Optical Character Recognition – Machine characters) are much cleaner on the bitonal image on the left. While the color image on the right is good for human viewing but not as good for capture and data extraction.
Dropout Color – Remove form background color
Another useful feature to use, in conjunction with, or just use in general on certain types of forms, is called “Dropout Color”. This means that either the scanning hardware, sometimes the scanner driver or even capture application, can remove the forms background color. In the image below the form color for the Healthcare form is a red color. This red color is a good way to guide humans completing these forms to which area of the form to fill-in information. However, this color is unneccasary and not needed for a computer to read this information via OCR, ICR or OMR. Therefore, we can “dropout” the color to expose only the information on the form that we really care about.
Forms Processing – Automatically extracting data from forms
Now, after using Multistream and/or Color Dropout, as you can see in the image below, you can now expose all the data you wish to capture in a neat manner which a computer can better understand and interpret. The combination of using these advanced features can certainly help improve your data capture automation and accuracy levels.
Gaining value by using tools available to you
Enabling these features is quite simple so I encourage everyone to consider if these, or other features, might be available to you in your document capture solution that might help improve productivity. These are just a few examples of using available functions to enhance process. Within the entire capture process there are many techniques, functions or features that can be incorporated that would make capture much more efficient.
What do you think? Are you getting the most out of your capture solution or do you think that there are possibly areas of improvement had you known about capabilities such as Multistream or Color Dropout?
Capture: The ideal application for Cloud
Posted by Kevin in Cloud, Technology on April 11, 2012
Capture: The ideal application for Cloud
As I was brainstorming on a topic to write for this blog, I was inspired by Bob Larrivee’s latest AIIM community blog entitled “It Came From The Cloud” (http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/It-Came-From-The-Cloud) where he asked some simple, yet thought-provoking questions. So this begs the question why anyone would resist such obvious benefits of “cloud” (http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/A-cloudy-future-for-document-capture)? I’m sure there are many legitimate concerns and issues but I would like to focus on the concern of security for the purpose of this blog post.
These days the term “cloud” as it relates to usage in corporate enterprise typically engenders strong feelings one way or the other. Benefits such as quicker application deployment, reduced IT costs and the ability to offer a more feature-rich experience to workers is not often debated. What is debated, and is a reasonable discussion, is the viability of “the cloud” from a security standpoint.
Security: Technology versus Trust
These concerns are well founded and should be addressed but we should definitely draw a major distinction between the technology itself and whether a provider is trusted with data. Therefore, when we understand this distinction between technology and trust, the cloud should not be discounted as a legitimate option for enterprise simply due to fear alone from a technology perspective.
Below is a short list of various security items that should be considered when contemplating a cloud strategy. This short list is not by any means an extensive list of security items to consider, however, please ask yourself this, for each one of these items is an individual business or a mass data center more equipped to handle capabilities? For those who would really consider the question of whether on-premise or cloud is more secure then the conclusion to me is clear.
- Private clouds – Dedicated servers and databases to only one organization
- Physical access – Limit access to only those that might need to physically touch equipment
- Data encryption – Encrypt data in motion and data at rest
- Device authentication – Trust devices in addition to users
- System updates and patches – Apply security updates as soon as possible
- Secure disk wiping – Securely erase temporary data from disk drives
- Network architecture – Databases beyond firewalls and web data on front-end servers
- Logging – Track all activity to detect intrusions
- Policy/Governance – Consistently review policies and procedures for improvement
Conservative cloud adoption by Enterprise
While I certainly would not expect major enterprise organizations to jump in head-first and move all their data and applications to the cloud, what does make logical sense is for them to move transactional applications (versus storage applications) to the cloud. Specifically, moving “Capture” to the cloud makes complete sense. Why? Capture processes images only temporarily then stores the data wherever you’d like, including in the security-hardened ECM system. In other words, the capture application does not store images or metadata in a database. Capture is a processing activity, not storage and retrieval.
One other observations about Cloud for the Enterprise; I can absolutely see a trend towards building massive infrastructure now in preparation for delivering robust applications eventually. Having attended Cloud Connect 2012 (Santa Clara)http://www.cloudconnectevent.com/santaclara/, it was remarkable to see the level of interest among major IT providers and well-known Enterprise organizations. Without a doubt, the infrastructure is being implemented now for what will be an onslaught of cloud services in the not-too-distant future.
Major adoption by Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMB’s)
In contrary to Enterprise, Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMB’s) have to make a decision on how to improve efficiency with no or limited IT resources. For SMB, the cloud offers opportunities like never seen before. Why? Because a shared resource makes sophisticated technology available to a greater audience. Why? Because costs to the vendors are decreased through mass-consumption by users and this allows vendors to make these advanced technologies available to the masses. Also, and from a security perspective, using cloud storage and capture as a rented service from providers allows SMB organizations to focus on their businesses instead of burdened by maintaining technology. When the choice is to not utilize any technology and continue to process paperwork manually, or to utilize cloud technology to capture, store and retrieve with a little, yet limited, risk, it’s clear that SMB’s have chosen limited risk with great efficiency improvements.
Like never seen before, SMB’s are empowered to create a mash-up of useful business applications without the high cost associated with doing-so. Clearly there is an undeniable trend towards Cloud Storage from providers such as Box, Evernote, Catch, Google Docs, Dropbox, etc. and Cloud Capture is a logical complementary technology to further improve efficiencies and decrease operational costs.
Next steps: Being indecisive is inefficient
With such overwhelming evidence that adopting cloud services makes sense then the next logical question is “what now?”. Clearly security is, and should be, a major concern for enterprise as well as SMB, but with enterprise the stakes are much greater. SMB inherently has this element of risk/reward that drives them to make business decisions quicker. The topic of “access vs. security” balance is often discussed within the ECM industry and the truth is that you have to find a balance of making information available to users, yet also making sure the data is protected in a responsible manner. SMB that does not have dedicated IT resources can utilize “the cloud” to improve business efficiency at minimal costs and trust that security is taken care of by their storage provider.
There are many wonderful solutions available right now for businesses of all sizes to benefit from “the cloud”. For example, for an organization to migrate e-mail, CRM, expense management, document management, corporate web site and an accounting system to 100% cloud today is do-able. With known monthly operating expense costs and no IT burden. Also, these cloud applications are not cheesy, cheap applications; these are robust, Enterprise-ready applications that are now made available to everyone which are easy to use and secure.
What do you think about “the cloud”? Is it a fad? Will it be embraced by Enterprise? Is it secure?