RETHINKING SQL AND DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT WITH UNIFIED ECM June 1, 2009
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Contact: Abby Jane Bair
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tel. 800-859-8641
Email: info@unifiedecm.com
RETHINKING SQL AND DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT WITH UNIFIED ECM
June 1, 2009 – Unified ECM is the latest software developer to throw its hat into the billion dollar Enterprise Content Management Industry with its two new Windows SQL based products, Enterprise 5.0 and Unified Home Edition. Unified leverages the power of a SQL server but replaces the traditional database distribution style with a software architecture that separates a client’s file repository from its database, thereby greatly reducing the size of that database and relieving the stress from concurrent user’s query calls.
Unified has also gone even further to create customized API’s which allow Unified to still offer the common advantages of using a standard SQL server while staying within the 4GB maximum allowed by the SQL Express version, saving their clients tens of thousands of dollars with this alternative approach.
Originally developed at the request of an industry leader in the Film Finance arena, the Unified team conceived this unique structure in order to deliver a quality Document and Records Management application without costing their clients an arm and a leg in the process.
“Sometimes a development budget forces you to rethink your entire approach and that’s how we came up with our distributed data model. Of course, it does limit us to 4GB of metadata, but when you’re dealing with a company of fewer than 100 employees, it’s plenty of space if you design it efficiently. I can’t think of many companies out there this size that can really afford to pay for yearly standard SQL licenses.” Says Rafael Moscatel, CEO and Information Architect at Unified.
SQL server still arguably reigns as the status quo of database engines, and Unified decided early on that in order to attract the widest range of customers, they’d have to develop their products with proven Microsoft technologies. Unified has also broken new ground by becoming the first Records & Document Management application of its kind to package and harness a full SQL Server with its Home Edition. Using the SQL Compact edition was not an option because their products require stored procedures in order to deliver some of its finer features.
Both of Unified’s products now offer a centralized or decentralized repository for documents, photographs, music and movies; comprehensive search tools including full text search across all file types; scanning and data capture tools to help customers go paperless; built in Microsoft Office application integration, automated revision tracking and reporting tools; printing, e-mail and document distribution shortcuts; a preview pane to view documents; handy navigation menus and a built in media player; a built in browser and notepad ideal for collecting research from the net, label printing options to maintain a paper filing system, disaster recovery tools to backup and restore important SQL data from Unified.
About Unified ECM
Unified ECM is a provider of feature rich Document Management, Records Management and Enterprise Content Management software and services for individuals and businesses. Unified ECM has customers in entertainment, real estate, education, and the healthcare industry.
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For more information about Unified ECM or to request a demonstration of one of their products, please visit http://www.unifiedecm.com or call 1-800-859-8641.
The Creepy, Kooky, Mysterious and Spooky World of ECM April 4, 2009
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software, Filing Systems, Records Management, Uncategorized.Tags: Document Management, Enterprise Content Management, Globalization, Outsourcing, The Addams Family, Vic Mizzy
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My grandfather made his living after the Great War writing catchy jingles for shows like The Addams Family and Green Acres. He was an absolute perfectionist in his craft and thankfully a micromanager when it came to his music. I’ve been told that not only did he write the score for The Addams Family, but he actually directed the opening credits, wrote the now classic lyrics and insisted on singing them himself. He’s revered for leading a fight for residual rights for musicians and I’ve always admired him for that.
However, when the nineteen-sixties rolled around and Elvis and the Beatles began redefining pop-music, my grandfather was reluctant to welcome the change and over time became disillusioned, bitter and jealous of the new musical trends. He was such a great talent, certainly still is, but he resisted innovation and fell out of the limelight.
Lacking musical genius, what was a simple Records Management consultant like I to take from this troubadour’s history and legacy into the world of records, document, and content management? Quite simply it’s the lesson he had failed to pick up when confronted with the new wave of rock music, the benefits of accepting and embracing change and innovation.
Of course, my background was quite different from Mr. Vic Mizzy’s. After all, I worked in bookstores, libraries and as a law firm records manager for the majority of my adult life. I’d never been a leader in my craft like him. One thing we had in common, undeniably, was a commitment to our industry. Yet as I came to understand the details of his biography, I recognized the underlying power of his discipline but also the mistake he made by not respecting emerging trends.
It was around this time that I was consulting with a top film finance entity in Hollywood. The outfit, run by a sharp young man in his early thirties, was redefining the way that investment deals were structured in the Entertainment Industry. The CEO was an educated man, respectful of the risks taken by those of his predecessors and emboldened by the financial savvy he had picked up on Wall Street just a few years before. He was an innovator, and unlike my grandfather was open and enlightened by new ideas and approaches to the business he was married to.
At the time, this client was interested in finding an affordable document management solution. Despite his corporation’s unparalleled success in the field, his company was horrified at the prospect of paying an arm and a leg to manage their records and workflow needs. I presented them with a number of solutions ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and one after the other, they rejected my proposals. They were shrewd and knew what they wanted, and even though nothing was out of their price range, they demanded a good deal, which happens to be one of the secrets of their success.
Finally I gave up and in a half-hearted and off-hand manner proposed building them a system to their specifications. To my surprise they agreed and told me to design for them exactly what they needed and build them the perfect document management beast.
The very next day I found myself sitting behind my Touchsmart wondering how to approach building this company a sophisticated document management application. Nevertheless, I couldn’t disappoint them and gratefully accepted the challenge. At the time they were one of only a few clients I had and I felt like a Venetian painter, indebted to my patron and pleased with my pittance. Suddenly, here they were offering me what I viewed as the opportunity of a lifetime, the chance to design my own information management application.
Initially, I contacted a plethora of programmers from New York to the Silicon Valley eager to assist me with my project. I wanted to get this developed in the United States because after all, it had given me this opportunity. The devotion was short-lived though as I collected bids that were not only far out of my price range but little more than a sales pitch.
I began searching for an offshore company to handle the development. I had a vision of what I wanted; a simplified document management solution that worked in unison with a records management system, but it needed a professional and intelligent architecture behind it. Luckily, I had made many good friends in the information management community, from ARMA to AIIM, who were generous in their advice and recommendations.
Eventually, I decided on partnering with a popular online outsourcing service and posted a proposal on their site. The responses were overwhelming, from all corners of the world from the Ukraine, to China to New Delhi.
After two months I finally selected a developer from a lesser known region in New Delhi. The process was tiring, from signing Non-Disclosure Agreements to testing, but it was well worth it. The effort and expertise they offered was far and beyond anything I could expect from some programmers in the United States. They were delighted to work my team as we were with them. Our interactions with the good people of India have provided us with a fresh, genuine and positive perspective on globalism and mutual cultural prosperity.
After three years of development, over 14,000 man hours, and a thousand calls from antsy investors, we finally had our answer to comprehensive document, content and records management, and we call it Unified ECM. In building Unified, our mission was and is to embrace the future of Enterprise Content Management, while respecting the innumerable contributions of archivists, librarians, records managers and others to the field of information management in all of its previous incarnations.
Information is our music, and it lives, breathes and must adapt to change, as “creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky” as it may seem.
The Case Against Cloud Computing January 23, 2009
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software.Tags: Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise Content Management
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The Case Against Cloud Computing, Part One
by Bernard Golden, CIO
I’ve had a series of interesting conversations with people involved in cloud computing who, paradoxically, maintain that cloud computing is-at least today-inappropriate for enterprises.
I say paradoxically because each of them works for or represents a large technology company’s cloud computing efforts, and one would think their role would motivate them to strongly advocate cloud adoption. So why the tepid enthusiasm? For a couple of them, cloud computing functionality is really not ready for prime time use by enterprises. For others, cloud computing is too ambiguous a term for enterprises to really understand what it means. For yet others, cloud computing doesn’t-and may never-offer the necessary functional factors that enterprise IT requires. While I think the observations they’ve made are trenchant, I’m not sure I’m convinced by them as immutable problems that cannot be addressed.
I thought it would be worthwhile to summarize the discussions and identify and discuss each putative shortcoming. I’ve distilled their reservations and present them here. I’ve also added my commentary on each issue, noting a different interpretation of the issue that perhaps sheds a little less dramatic light upon it and identifies ways to mitigate the issue.
There are five key impediments to enterprise adoption of cloud computing, according to my conversations. I will discuss each in a separate posting for reasons of length. The five key impediments are:
Current enterprise apps can’t be migrated conveniently
Risk: Legal, regulatory, and business
Difficulty of managing cloud applications
Lack of SLA
Lack of cost advantage for cloud computing
Current enterprise apps can’t be migrated conveniently. Each of the major cloud providers (Amazon Web Services, salesforce force, Google App Engine, and Microsoft Azure) imposes an architecture dissimilar to the common architectures of enterprise apps.
Amazon Web Services offers the most flexibility in this regard because it provisions an “empty” image that you can put anything into, but nevertheless, applications cannot be easily moved due to its idiosyncratic storage framework, meaning they can’t be easily migrated.
Salesforce.com is a development platform tied to a proprietary architecture deeply integrated with salesforce.com and unlike anything in a regular enterprise application. Google App is a python-based set of application services-fine if your application is written in python and tuned to the Google application services, but enterprise applications, even those written in python, are not already architected for this framework. Azure is a .NET-based architecture that offers services based on the existing Microsoft development framework, but it doesn’t offer regular SQL RDBMS storage, thereby requiring a different application architecture, thus making it difficult to migrate existing enterprise applications to the environment.
According to one person I spoke with, migrating applications out of internal data centers and into the cloud is the key interest driver for clouds among enterprises; once they find out how difficult it is to move an application to an external cloud, their enthusiasm dwindles.
I would say that this is certainly a challenge for enterprises, since if it was easy to move applications into cloud environments, quick uptake would certainly be aided. And the motivation for some of the cloud providers to deliver their cloud offerings in the way they do is difficult to understand. Google’s commitment to Python is a bit odd, since Python is by no means the most popular scripting language around. Google sometimes seems to decide something is technically superior and then to insist on it, despite evidence that it retards adoption. With regard to Salesforce, I can certainly understand someone with a commitment to the company’s main offering deciding to leverage the force architecture to create add-ons, but it’s unlikely that an existing app could be moved to force.com with any reasonable level of effort; certainly questions about proprietary lock-in would be present for any enterprise that might entertain writing a fresh app for the platform. It’s quite surprising that Microsoft would not make it easy for users to deploy the same application locally or in Azure; while the Azure
architecture enables many sophisticated applications, the lack of ability to easily migrate will dissuade many of Microsoft users from exploring the use of Azure.
On the other hand, a different architecture than the now-accepted enterprise application architecture (leaving aside that current enterprise architectures are by no means fastened upon one alternative, so it’s not as though the choice were between one universally adopted enterprise architecture and a set of dissimilar ones) doesn’t necessarily mean that it is deficient or even too difficult to migrate an application to. It might be more appropriate to say that there is a degree of friction in migrating an existing application; that degree varies according to which target cloud offering one desires to migrate to.
Certainly it seems well within technical capability for someone to develop a P2C (physical to cloud) migration tool that could all or much of the technical effort necessary for migration; of course, this tool would need to be able to translate to several different cloud architectures.
Even if an automated tool does not become available, there is the potential for service providers to spring up to perform migration services efficiently and inexpensively.
Naturally, performing this migration would not be free; either software must be purchased or services paid for. The point is that this is not an insurmountable problem. It is a well-bounded one.
The more likely challenge regarding clouds imposing a different architecture is that of employee skills. Getting technical personnel up to speed on the requirements of cloud computing with respect to architecture, implementation, and operation is difficult: it is a fact that human capital is the most difficult kind to upgrade. However, cloud computing represents a new computing platform, and IT organizations have lived through platform transitions a number of times in the past. In these times of Windows developers being a dime a dozen, it’s easy to forget that at one time, Windows NT skills were as difficult to locate as a needle in a haystack.
On balance, the lack of a convenient migration path for existing applications is going to hinder cloud computing adoption, but doesn’t represent a permanent barrier.
Next posting: The challenge of risk: legal, regulatory, and business
Bernard Golden is CEO of consulting firm HyperStratus, which specializes in virtualization, cloud computing and related issues. He is also the author of “Virtualization for Dummies,” the best-selling book on virtualization to date.
SAP CEO: SaaS Won’t Work As A Core Platform says CEO – NEVER January 15, 2009
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software, Filing Systems, Records Management.Tags: Cloud Computing, SaaS, SAP, Unified ECM
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By Mary Hayes Weier
InformationWeek
January 8, 2009 12:12 PM
Bill McDermott, SAP (NYSE: SAP)’s CEO and president of global field operations, has a prediction on when software-as-a-service will become a popular platform on which large business will run their core business operations.”Never,” McDermott said, in an InformationWeek interview on Tuesday.
Companies require a software foundation on which to build business processes, McDermott explained, and by its very nature, SaaS doesn’t offer the bandwidth or the capability to deal with complex operations, he added.
As the world’s largest provider of business applications, it’s important for customers to understand SAP’s stance on SaaS, given the software industry’s considerable amount of attention and funding for the platform within the past few years. But it’s been difficult to follow exactly where SAP is going with SaaS.
In some ways it has enthusiastically supported it — such as its glitzy launch more than a year ago of the now-idled Business ByDesign software product for small-to-midsize businesses — but more recently, co-CEO and board member Leo Apotheker said it’s difficult to make money on SaaS.
In Tuesday’s interview, McDermott indicated that SAP still believes in some forms of SaaS, but not as a core business foundation for its typical customer. It just wouldn’t work, he said.
McDermott notes that it’s taken SAP 36 years to build a “core” on which modern, global companies can run their businesses, which is tailored to specific industries and offers a huge partner ecosystem. “These foundations are very important to companies,” McDermott said. “They like having control of data. They don’t want to leave destiny in someone else’s hands.”
McDermott said SAP’s strong position in the software industry comes from customers’ ability to have applications that run on the same platform, avoiding tough integration issues and improving visibility into operations. A company that tries to do that with SaaS will be left with trying to integrate hosted software from a variety of vendors using middleware from yet another vendor. They’re discovering “maybe software as a service wasn’t so cheap after all,” McDermott said.
Plenty of SaaS vendors would disagree, of course. Workday, which is developing a full SaaS ERP suite, is building its company on the very idea of SaaS as a foundation, and ERP SaaS vendor NetSuite consistently reports double-digit revenue increases. Salesforce (NYSE: CRM).com, meanwhile, is trying to build a large SaaS ecosystem and development platform. Businesses that have chosen a best-of-breed software platform wouldn’t agree with McDermott, either.
Despite McDermott’s critical view of enterprise SaaS, SAP still has high hopes for Business ByDesign. It’s going to appeal to companies that are retiring aging legacy systems and “can’t afford traditional ERP,” McDermott said. (It’s likely SAP also sees it as a stepping-stone to its traditional onsite ERP). Additionally, Business ByDesign may appeal to some global companies as a good ERP platform for use by some satellite divisions.
More than a year after its release, however, only a handful of SAP customers are using the product, with SAP executives citing both profitability problems and functionality issues.
However, more information on Business ByDesign’s broader rollout should come at the Americas SAP Users Group (ASUG) conference in May. “We have every intent of saying more about Business ByDesign at Sapphire,” McDermott said. “We have high aspirations for Business ByDesign. We’d rather have it a little late and right, than early and wrong.”
SAP also is developing a software-plus-services strategy, in which large business could purchase SaaS modules that “snap on” to existing applications. Newly hired executive, John Wookey, who was previously head of Fusion application development at Oracle, is heading that effort.
Information Week on the $50 Billion Health IT Project January 6, 2009
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Great news for Document Management companies reported by Marianne Kolbasuk
If there’s one thing most presidential candidates agree on, it’s that many more doctors must deploy e-health systems to reduce health care costs and improve care in the United States. But one candidate is proposing a whopping $50 billion, five-year investment to make that happen. That would be an enormous shift from what the feds have spent so far on these programs.
If you troll through the campaign Web sites, many of the candidates say they want more health care providers using health IT, but leave out specifics for such programs, especially dollar figures.
Rudy Giuliani’s site says the ex-mayor of New York City wants to “invest in health IT to reduce medical errors, improve efficiency, and detect health threats.” John Edwards’ site says he’ll “provide the resources hospitals need to implement information systems that improve patient safety and hospital efficiency.” No estimates on funding by either candidate.
Hillary Clinton’s site (at least from what I was able to find) doesn’t mention health IT, but is heavy on details about her universal health plan. However (courtesy of Janet Marchibroda, CEO of eHealth Initiative, a nonprofit, multistakeholder organization) the details of Clinton’s plan include an “investment” of $3 billion a year in health IT grants. Funding would come from ending Bush’s income tax cuts and exemptions and “redirecting” those savings.
If you think Clinton’s $3 billion annual investment sounds like a big figure, check out Barack Obama’s site. Relatively speaking, his proposal is eye-popping.
“Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records, and will phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT,” says the site.
Wow. $50 billion? To date, federal government spending on e-health initiatives has been in the millions of dollars, not billions. Most government money so far has been in the form of grants and demo projects. There also have been a few pilot incentive programs, such as Medicare paying bonuses to some doctors in small or medium-sized practices for using certain e-health applications, like electronic prescriptions.
Marchibroda of eHealth Initiative says that from 2005 to 2007, the federal government (specifically the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Office Of the National Coordinator for Health IT) spent a total of $374 million on e-health related grants, contracts to support implementation in the field, and other projects, including standards work and research. That’s the total for three years — $374 million.
In 2004, President Bush set out the goal for “most” Americans to have e-health records by 2014. And while deployment of those systems have ramped up, it’s estimated that less than 10% of U.S. doctor practices — and 5% of solo practices — are using e-health records today. For hospitals, the adoption rate is somewhere between 20% and 30%
Some pundits think it will be more like decades before most physicians drop their paper-based habits for digital records.
One of the biggest obstacles in adoption has been the cost to implement and support those systems. Doctors argue that while they’re the ones shelling out the money and dealing with the pain to deploy e-health record systems, they’re not the ones that reap the financial return. It’s mainly insurers and other payers who benefit from streamlined processes and the reduced costs associated with eliminating unnecessary or duplicate tests and keeping patients safer and healthier by avoiding medical mistakes (and expensive hospital stays.)
Obama’s site doesn’t specify (nor did his media team respond to my e-mail questions) about where the spending would actually go. For instance, would the annual $10 billion in funding help doctors purchase those systems? Would there be new financial rewards to physicians using e-health records? New grants? And where would that money come from?
Also, when Obama says he’ll “phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT,” is he suggesting making e-health records a mandate?
There are those who think that a “do it or else” mandate is the only way you’ll force doctors into deploying these systems. Others are adamantly against any such mandate, especially if there’s no money to back up such a program. Sounds like Obama might have plans to do just that.
Hmmm, $50 billion over five years? I’m sure some critics are already grumbling that Obama’s plan is another example of how Democrats love to spend and throw taxpayers’ money at private-sector problems.
But wouldn’t it be ironic if Obama ended up helping President Bush reach his e-health record goal for 2014?
What do you think?
Almost 36 Million Records Exposed In Data Breaches in 2008 December 31, 2008
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software, Filing Systems.Tags: data breaches, identity theft
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According to a report by the Identity Theft Resources Center, http://www.idtheftcenter.org almost 36 million records were exposed because of data breaches in 2008. The figure is up from prior years, which makes me wonder exactly how much progress we’ve been making in terms of protecting our information.
High Software Maintenance Fees and What To Do About Them December 24, 2008
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software.Tags: Document Management, Maintenance Fees
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The following is a reprint from a 2005 article but it is very telling in it’s predictions given the current economic conditions. It comes from a ComputerEconomics.com
High Software Maintenance Fees and What To Do About Them
February, 2005
There’s an interesting side note to Oracle’s takeover of PeopleSoft: it turned out that PeopleSoft’s software maintenance business was even more profitable than Oracle realized. Once Oracle found out how much money PeopleSoft was making on its recurring maintenance business, it justified a sweetened offer that closed the deal.
If you’re a corporate buyer of software, you might want to take a look at what you’re paying for software maintenance.
What is software maintenance?
Maintenance fees pay for two services from the vendor to the customer. First, they pay for ongoing product development that provides new product features, regulatory updates (e.g. tax table updates), and bug fixes. (That’s right. You pay for the software, and then you pay the vendor to fix defects in it.) Second, maintenance fees pay for phone and Web-based support for times when you need help with the system.
One little secret of the software industry: the maintenance business is really profitable for vendors. It’s somewhat analogous to the situation when you shop for a big screen TV at Circuit City. You may be impressed with the terrific bargain you’re getting on the sales price. But when you go to sign the deal, there’s a lot of pressure for you to sign up for the extended warranty›—where the store, and the salesman, make most or all of their profit. Buying enterprise software is similar, with the key difference being that you don’t really have the option to forgo the maintenance contract.
I’ve long thought that software buyers are too focused on the up front license price and not paying attention to how much they are paying on the back end—in software maintenance fees. Buyers forget that when they pay a dollar for a software license, they pay that dollar once. But when they pay a dollar on software maintenance fees, they pay that dollar again and again, year after year, as long as they stay on maintenance. Over the life of the system, most customers pay far more in maintenance fees than they ever pay in up front license fees.
Software vendors understand this, and as new sales continue to be hard to come by, they are turning their attention to increasing revenues from their maintenance business.
Vendor tactics
Vendors are working to increase maintenance revenue in two ways. First, they are increasing maintenance fees directly. A few years ago, 15-18% of the software license fee was a typical benchmark. Now, I’m seeing vendors quoting 20% or even more. It might not sound like much, but run the numbers out three or four years and see the impact. On a $500,000 license deal, a five percent difference in maintenance fees is $125,000 over five years. That equates to a price increase of 25% (not factoring in the cost of money, of course).
Second, vendors are tightening enforcement of existing agreements. In the past, vendors might not aggressively pursue customers that exceeded user counts, which usually forms the basis for software pricing. Today, it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy. Vendors are enforcing their contractual rights to audit customer usage of the software and are charging customers license fees for additional seats, plus the maintenance fees on those seats.
Balance of power
Why are vendors squeezing customers? First, it’s a sign that, although we’re not returning to the heyday of tech spending in the 1990s, business is improving. Vendors are finding that they don’t need to make as many concessions as they have in the past. And, as we just saw, the easiest way to increase revenue is through maintenance fees.
But more significantly, vendors are increasing maintenance revenue because they can. Implementing an enterprise-wide system is a huge undertaking for most companies. Few customers are going to select a new system and go through the pain, risk, and expense of another implementation just because they are paying a bit more in maintenance fees than they had planned on. Customers are a captive audience—to a point.
My feeling is that if vendors continue along this path, there’s going to be a backlash. There’s a limit to what the market will bear, and I think some vendors are starting to reach that limit. A study by AMR last year found that because of maintenance policies, 22% of customers are considering switching vendors, 21% intend to stop taking upgrades, and 12% will discontinue paying maintenance.
Practical tips
If you are concerned about high software maintenance costs, there are several steps you can take to keep costs in line.
If you have not yet purchased the system, understand that your negotiating power will never be greater than before you sign on the dotted line. Maintenance fees as a percent of the license cost are not cast in stone. Everything is negotiable. For example, ask for a lower percentage. Ask for maintenance fees to be based on the discounted price of the software, not the list price. Ask for maintenance fees to be locked in, not allowing the vendor to increase fees from year to year.
Furthermore, don’t buy software you don’t need, even if the vendor offers a tremendous discount on additional modules. There’s no free lunch. If the vendor is charging maintenance fees based on the list price of those modules, you’ll likely be paying for software that you never implement. If you think you’ll implement it later, buy it later. That will encourage the vendor to be sure you are successful with the modules that you do buy.
If you are already a customer, your negotiating power may be diminished, but you still have options. First, check whether you are using all of the modules you purchased. If not, consider canceling maintenance on the modules you are not using. Second, look hard at whether you are using all of the user seats that you originally purchased. Vendors will tell you if you exceed your user count but probably won’t let you know if you have excess seats. Finally, if you plan on buying additional software from the same vendor, see whether you can negotiate a better deal on your existing modules in exchange for buying additional modules.
If your vendor is still not showing flexibility, consider whether more hardball tactics are warranted. Third party maintenance and service providers, offering lower fees, are one alternative. Canceling maintenance (”going naked”) for older or less critical systems might be another alternative, especially if you seldom use the help desk and are not planning to upgrade in the future.
Then there’s always the nuclear option: looking to other software providers. For some applications, open source software might be an alternative, with maintenance either provided in-house or through a third party.
Paying close attention to software maintenance agreements during the sales cycle, and monitoring their costs after the sale, can save companies significant dollars over the long run.
Massachusetts seeks Madoff records December 17, 2008
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EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT!
Madoff Burning Through Cash
BOSTON, Dec 16 (Reuters) – Massachusetts’ top securities regulator ordered Bernard Madoff to turn over all records related to money he managed for state residents, as officials probe how the disgraced investor ran a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
William Galvin, the state’s Secretary of the Commonwealth, sent subpoenas to Madoff’s Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities and to Cohmad Securities Corp, a firm that marketed Madoff’s investment products, on Monday and expects answers by Dec. 29.
Galvin wants the New York-based firms to give him all names and addresses of Massachusetts-based investors and any notes, emails, meeting agendas and telephone records that relate to investments he made on their behalf from 2000.
Massachusetts sent its request five days after FBI agents arrested the 70-year old investor when he described his fraudulent operation. Galvin’s office has already received complaints from a handful of Madoff’s victims, officials said.
While the fallout is touching wealthy investors, banks and investment advisors around the world, the impact is especially deeply felt in Massachusetts, where Madoff made many connections with wealthy investors, officials said.
One is Carl Shapiro, who has been friends with Madoff for decades and bestowed much of his fortune on local hospitals including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the city’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Meanwhile, in another connection for the state, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co said on Tuesday that it lost money on Madoff because one of its units, hedge fund group Tremont Holdings Inc, invested with him.
People familiar with Tremont said that its Rye Investment Management unit had virtually all of its assets invested with Madoff and lost roughly $3 billion. (Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
World’s First Computer 1800 years old! December 16, 2008
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Rod R. Blagojevich, Governor, on Electronic Records Management December 15, 2008
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software, Filing Systems, Records Management, Uncategorized.Tags: Chicago Records Management, Document Management, Electronic Health Records, Rod Blagojevich
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| EXECUTIVE ORDER | NUMBER 8 (2006) |
EXECUTIVE ORDER CREATING THE DIVISION OF PATIENT SAFETY WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH
WHEREAS , nearly 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of preventable medical errors and these patient safety errors cost Americans as much as $50 billion per year;
WHEREAS , thousands of Illinoisans die each year as a result of medical errors, costing Illinois citizens more than $1.5 billion per year in increased patient insurance premiums, hospital costs, co-pays, physician insurance rates, and prescription drug costs;
WHEREAS , current law, such as the Illinois Adverse Health Care Events Reporting Law and the Hospital Report Card Act, require the Department of Public Health to track medical errors and to create hospital report cards to apprise the public of existing problems;
WHEREAS , Illinois has created the Electronic Health Records Taskforce which is currently developing an electronic health records system in the State;
WHEREAS , the Illinois Health Network provides information technology upgrades for rural health care facilities to enable hospitals to quickly transmit information such as radiology images on-line;
WHEREAS , Illinois strives to remain at the forefront of health care and patient safety while reducing health care costs to Illinois taxpayers;
THERFORE, I, Rod R. Blagojevich, hereby order the following:
- Creation of the Division of Patient Safety Within the Department of Public Health
There is hereby created a Division of Patient Safety (the “Division”) which shall be located within the Department of Public Health (the “Department”) that will consolidate the Department’s efforts to eliminate medical errors.
Powers and Duties
The Department shall work with existing advisory committees and additional persons, as necessary, to ensure that representatives of affected constituencies are informed of the work of the Division. The Division’s powers and duties shall include, but not be limited to, the following:
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- To encourage all medical providers to utilize e-prescribing programs by 2011. E-prescribing allows a physician to legibly write and electronically send prescriptions to reduce the risk of medication errors.
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- To evaluate the areas within Illinois in need of enhanced technology to support e-prescribing programs.
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- To determine the types of technology needed to implement the e-prescribing program.
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- To coordinate with the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation and the Department of Healthcare and Family Services to draft and issue recommended medication practices such as prescribing, dispensing, and maintenance to all health care providers.
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- To expand the Department’s nursing home database to include information such as staffing ratios, medication distribution, on-site services, and citations issued against each facility, enabling consumers to make well-informed decisions.
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- To implement and expand the State’s efforts at health care provider information transparency, such as the Hospital Report Card, the Consumer Guide to Health, and similar efforts to ensure that health care consumers and purchasers may make informed choices regarding the quality and cost effectiveness of medical care.
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- To implement the Illinois Adverse Health Care Events Reporting Law.
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Savings Clause
Nothing in this Executive Order shall be construed to contravene any state or federal law.
Severability
If any provision of this Executive Order or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid by any court of competent jurisdiction, this invalidity does not affect any other provision or application of this Executive Order which can be given effect without the invalid provision or application. To achieve this purpose, the provisions of this Executive Order are declared to be severable.
Effective Date
This Executive Order shall become effective upon filing with the Secretary of State.
| Rod R. Blagojevich, Governor |
Issued by Governor: July 13, 2006
Filed with Secretary of State: July 13, 2006
Obama looking for a Chief Technology Officer from Google??? November 18, 2008
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software, Filing Systems, Records Management, Uncategorized.Tags: Barack Obama, Chief Technology Officer, Document Management, Google, IT
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Just yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt declared his support for Barack Obama, and already he wants to create a position for himself in Obama’s presumptive cabinet.
Alright, he’s been advising the Obama campaign behind the scenes for some time, but on Tuesday Schmidt is hitting the trail with his candidate, making his case on the ground.
In fact, all that work for Obama may have some personal (and institutional) benefits for Schmidt. According to the Wall Street Journal, Schmidt may be angling to be the country’s first Chief Technology Officer, a position that Obama promised to create if elected, oh, the day before visiting Google’s offices for the first time.
Schmidt may be a good fit, especially in light of Google’s interests in Washington, but this is not a Googlopoly. We’re taking nominations (after the jump). Who do you think should be Obama’s CTO?
Of course, you too can nominate yourself, but don’t be surprised if you only get one vote…
From CNET: If you’re borrowing from your vendor, you can’t afford it November 8, 2008
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software, Filing Systems, Records Management, Uncategorized.Tags: Alfresco, Document Management, Overpriced Software
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TechDirt tries to put a pretty face on vendor-financed software/hardware deals, but let’s be clear: if you have to borrow from the vendor that is overpricing its software (or hardware) in the first place, you can’t afford to buy it. If you can’t afford to buy software (or hardware) with cash or bank financing, you can’t afford to buy software.
I’m not sure why this is complicated for some. The last organization you want to borrow from to buy software is your software vendor. This lets the vendor completely control your destiny, not to mention the fact that it creates serious conflicts of interest for the vendor (e.g., it can charge maximum price since it is financing the deal). This is the sort of muddled thinking that put the global economy in the toilet in the first place.
Valleywag is right to call out that such arrangements usually end badly for technology shareholders. Defaults on loans are a fact of life, whether for bank loans or vendor loans. The difference is that vendors have to not only back out of bad loans, but also the revenue.
I have a better idea: spend less on IT. Buy open source.
Matt Asay is general manager of the Americas and vice president of business development at Alfresco, and has nearly a decade of operational experience with commercial open source and regularly speaks and publishes on open-source business strategy. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.So, John McCain KNOWS it’s a good idea to put health records online… October 25, 2008
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software, Filing Systems, Records Management, Uncategorized.Tags: Document Management, Government Contracts, Joe The Plumber, John McCain, John McCain Health Records, Online Health Records, Records Management
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We need to put health care records online. The V.A. does that. That will — that will reduce costs. – John McCain.
For a maverick who openly admits not knowing how to use a computer, it came as a bit of a surprise to me in the last debate to hear that John McCain KNOWS it’s a good idea to put health care records online. Aside from the obvious invasion of privacy violations that such a policy would undoubtedly create, the idea that it would reduce costs is highly doubtful. It basically amounts to a handout of government contracts to document management companies, possibly in the billions, with absolutely NO proven cost/benefit analysis from his campaign.
In addition, has it occured to Mr. McCain that health records are kept by doctors, insurance companies, hospitals and employers? Is John McCain proposing that they all just head down to Staples, buy their own scanners and hire their own extra staff to scan, index, catalog and maintain hundreds of millions of pages of pages of records. What software does he propose everyone use and does he know how much those systems cost? And who exactly will coordinate this operation, or mission… the Department of Earmarks?
You’d think people in my business would be absolutely thrilled about this baseless assumption. And you’re probably right. But I think this cuts to the very heart of this campaign because I don’t need a handout in the form of a government contract. I need a government that realizes it already has a contract to the American people to “think” before they speak about businesses that they have no understanding of whatsoever.
I’ll make this perfectly clear. I believe wholeheartedly in scanning and imaging as a practical and necessary tool for the smooth and efficient handling of an office’s day to day workflow. However, the notion that putting documents online reduces paper-output is erroneous.
Take the law profession for example. Before computers, attorneys drafted only a few copies of pleadings, contracts and correspondence. They did this because of the time involved in editing errors and mistakes. Legal professionals today have the benefit of editing a document as much as they want because of computers. As a result, they print out many more documents and increase the demand for paper, which has devastating effects on the environment as well.
Having worked for government and in records management for the last ten years, including as the Records Manager for Trucker Huss, a venerated Employee Benefits firm with some of the most respected HIPAA attorneys in the world, I feel I am entitled as say “Raf The Records Manager” to call him out on this.
The HIPAA law, while achieving some of its goals to fight against identity theft and abuse, was nevertheless a multi-million dollar donation to the tech companies that were enlisted to execute the specifics of the law. The cost to law firms and corporations to restructure their records polices and procedures was unnecessary and unwarranted.
The blacking out of names and social security numbers on patient records and other documents may have sounded like a good idea, but tell that to the thousands of medical office managers around the country. That HIPAA requirement as well as a number of others impeded office workflow because it was designed by politicians who had absolutely no input from actual end users or the individuals their law would actually impact.
If John McCain really wants to save some money on records management, maybe he should ask a records manager, a librarian, a file clerk, or ANYBODY who actually works with records for advice. Or maybe he should ask “Joe The 72 year old Doctor” or “Tito the 55 year old Nurse” how they feel about putting down their pens and paper and buying a machine they don’t know how to use instead.
Records are kept best, and records management overhead costs are kept lowest when organizations and government departments avoid gimmicks like “the paperless office” and take a more thoughtful approach to managing their information, and the information of others.
Those who live in glass houses should think twice before throwing another stone at Neverland. June 27, 2009
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software.1 comment so far
Like many fans, those devoted, new and even estranged, I feel compelled to write something in response to some of the less than flattering media coverage of the death of the great Michael Jackson. First, a confession. Until Michael’s death yesterday, it had been a long time since I really thought about this man whose music was literally the soundtrack to many of our lives, whose drive and success inspired me and so many of my friends in so many ways, whose voice comforted us when we have felt broken beyond repair, whose dancing and music literally set the world on fire, and whose experience with the range of life’s emotions is yet to be fully matched, expressed, packaged and understood and might never be.
The House of Representatives impressed me this morning with their moment of silence and even the Obama White House was clearly rattled, not knowing whether or not to make an official pronouncement. I don’t fault them, the news swept the world, and rightly so. We have lost a wonderful individual, not just a prodigy or what some in the media and the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s department tried to paint as a sideshow. We lost a person who embodied unhinged sincerity, core friendship, lost innocence, regained humanity and yet whose life was not spared the brutalities of everyday commonality, unholy rumors, power hungry district attorneys and the worst kind of trailer park opportunists.
If anything, all of the photo montages of this genius as a “freak” are ironically easy to digest and it’s exactly what we should all expect from marketing majors. Yet, for their benefit and for my own catharsis, I’d like to explain the truth behind why the passing of Michael Jackson is such a significant event, and why so many of us will remember exactly where we were when we got the call that Michael was gone. I for one, have not been able to leave my apartment for more than errands.
When an artist like Michael Joseph Jackson dies, all artists and old souls, those on top of the world, those struggling, and those of us stuck in the middle, sit down and feel a little part of themselves die. We do this because we know that the most important and rewarding ingredients and gifts that life give us have run their course in a once perfect recipe, and so we are left hungry, heartbroken, angry, in denial and at peace all at once. It’s a genuine emotion that is free to all and which we can all claim as our own, with one tear or many.
True artists like Michael Joseph Jackson don’t just live and perform for themselves, they actually, and I know it’s hard to believe nowadays, do it to to make the world a better place. If that sounds too naive to you I suggest you take a look at the content and context that went into Michael Jackson’s body of work.
While not as profitable, most significantly, Michael wrote and produced songs like “We Are The World”, “Man In The Mirror”, “Black & White” and an endless stream of human conscious driven jewels that we will be listening to the rest of our lives. What kind of person puts together a body of work like this? A weirdo? Sure, if that’s what you want to call it. In that case, I happen to love “weirdo’s”
Michael may have been the undisputed King of Pop, but his music wasn’t about “being popular”, it didn’t rely on cheap lyrics, tried and tired melodies and agent-driven publicity schemes. Michael was hungry for eyes and ears, but one thing can’t be denied… he built his own image, he did things his own way, and even in death, he did what he did through his music, put us into a state of shock.
I was lucky to see Michael Jackson in person a number of times, all of which are burned into my memory. God, am I dating myself already? Well, I’m not ashamed to admit I had the Michael Jackson doll, mimicked his dancing at the family thanksgiving, and danced with my sister to entire records all night long. One of my fondest childhood memories was when “Thriller” first came out (and it scared the you know what out of me) and my sister would force me to watch it with her on MTV. She did it to both torture me and entertain herself.
Let’s face it, we were all fans, big fans at one point, at least everybody in my family. Of all the concerts I’ve been to, the 1984 Victory tour was perhaps the most entertaining spectacle I’d ever been to and I’ve seen everybody from Sinatra to Stevie Wonder. I don’t think even one person in Dodger Stadium sat down the entire time. They weren’t just standing so they could see above the shoulders of the people in front of them… they were all dancing. It felt like ever single person in LA was there. A couple years later I saw him at the Beverly Hills Hotel because my family lived across the street. It was surreal. I may have ran into him a couple times after that. I grew up in Beverly Hills and have never been star struck, but with Michael Jackson, it was like… wow that guy is like Quincy Jones… but he can dance!
Interestingly enough, my sister, who has a very selective musical taste, limited to pretty much Jimmy Buffet and Michael, has a birthday today. She’s in Costa Rica and I haven’t been able to get in touch. I’m hoping she’ll read this because it’s partly for her. When Laurie was younger she went to school with Michael and felt first hand the feeling so many of us had when we first saw him. Michael was electric, electric and real, troubled and talented, and most of all a real person. A genuine person that you liked the moment you saw him.
As to the accusations and innuendo of child molestation, I’ll admit that during the last trial, I did think the worst of Michael. When such heavy charges are leveled against any individual, it’s almost impossible to survive the fallout, even if you’re 100% innocent. As a person who has been close to those who have suffered abuse, I can’t take this lightly, but after giving it a lot of thought, I’m inclined to think that these charges were likely entirely false and I’ll tell you exactly why. In Kern County in the 1980’s, a pig headed D.A. named Ed Jangles put dozens of innocent people in jail for many years, almost all of whom have had their convictions thrown out. Having lived in Central California for four or five years, I’m not entirely surprised by overzealous, power hungry D.A.’s and law enforcement. As progressive as we are, in many communities between L.A. and San Francisco, we still suffer from a less than sufficiently educated leadership as incapable of fostering and executing justice as some of our Southern States. The fact is that Michael was exonerated, found not guilty, and that should be the end of it. I’m not shaken by the fact that he paid millions of dollars out in civil litigation, it’s almost a given that the only people you can sue for money, are people who have money.
Michael Jackson wasn’t just a pillar, a captain or king of popular culture. Michael Jackson WAS pop culture. But Michael Jackson was pop culture before pop culture was a vehicle for empty materialism. Michael was the kind of guy you wanted as your brother, if you were a girl, your boyfriend, or well, for my gay friends, that too. To people like my Mother he was like a son, and to Lisa Marie and Debbie Rowe, a husband.
Before I put this all behind me and begin to let go, I’d like to make an observation inspired by the title of this blog posting which is derived from a proverb in the Bible. It warns those living in glass houses to not cast stones. Many people around the world criticized Michael Joseph Jackson because of his behavior, his relationships with women who we do not know, about whose relationships we do not know anything about, and his unconventional lifestyle and family choices. I just want to know where anybody, living, dead, or soon to be dead like Mike and every single one us, gets off calling a man who devoted his life to bringing people together anything but a brother, a friend, a hero, a genius, or an example of excellence and the abilities of mankind.
I have yet to see one reporter, one talking head, one newspaper columnist or one paparazzi who made this man’s life hell to give any recognizable fraction of the contribution that Michael did to the world. The least they can do now is recognize that without him, they would be less than the nothing they are now.
So to CNN, FOX NEWS, MSNBC and EXTRA I say, in Michael’s words did…
-Rafael Moscatel
Gearing Up For Electronic Health Records May 7, 2009
Posted by Unified ECM in Document Management Software, Electronic Health Records, Filing Systems, Records Management.add a comment
This interesting document was obtained by Wikileaks from the United States Congressional Research Service.
The CRS is a Congressional “think tank” with a staff of around 700. Reports are commissioned by members of Congress on topics relevant to current political events. Despite CRS costs to the tax payer of over $100M a year, its electronic archives are, as a matter of policy, not made available to the public.
The Administration, Congress, foundations, and the private sector have undertaken various initiatives to promote the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) as part of the national health information infrastructure. An electronic personal health record (EPHR) is a database of medical information collected and maintained by the individual patient. Commercial suppliers, health care providers, health insurers, employers, medical websites, and patient advocacy groups offer EPHRs. Congress has held hearings on electronic personal health records, and legislation has been introduced (S. 1456), ordered to be reported (H.R. 2406), and reported (S. 1693). Electronic personal health records are controversial among privacy advocates and patients, who are concerned about health information privacy and security, and misuse of individually identifiable health information. The extent to which electronic personal health records are protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule is discussed herein.
Here’s the link…. http://www.wikileaks.com/leak/crs/RS22760.pdf
Unified ECM Offers Free Software Suite To Non-Profits April 25, 2009
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April 7, 2009 – Unified ECM today announced the company will be offering free licensed copies of their Enterprise Content Management suite to qualified non-profits based in the United States.
The latest edition of their software, Enterprise 5.0, is a synchronized records, document and content management system with built in document capture, workflow, collaboration and retention tools.
“Unified ECM has been committed to making enterprise-level features available to individuals and the small business market at a reasonable price for a while.” explains David Sindell, Director of Product Development for Unified ECM. “It made sense during a rough economic time like this to offer up Enterprise 5.0 to organizations out there trying to make a difference, but burdened by their IT budget. We hope others follow our lead.”
About Unified ECM
Unified ECM is a provider of feature rich Document Management, Records Management and Enterprise Content Management software and services for individuals and businesses. Founded in 2004, Unified ECM has customers in entertainment, real estate, education, and the healthcare industry.
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For more information about Unified ECM or to request a demonstration of one of their products, please visit http://www.unifiedecm.com or call 1-800-859-8641.
