Industry News shorts
To assemble a comparative evaluation of EDMS products and show what systems best meet various applications and business demands, Doculabs (www.doculabs.com) has issued a call to EDMS vendors to participate in its EDMS Integrated Solutions Study.
To participate, EDMS vendors must provide a solution that offers some or all of the standard EDMS technologies under a single user interface. They must offer functionality in multiple technology segments including document management, imaging, workflow, COLD, groupware and document capture.
"Our study will provide users with information designed to help them make more educated buying decisions, thereby shortening the sales cycle and enhancing the opportunity for a successful implementation and measurable business benefits," said Geoff Blanco, VP of EDMS vendor relations.
To participate, vendors should contact Blanco at 312-433-7793
Predicting that its bottom line will be scalded by Japan's ongoing economic woes, Adobe Systems (www.adobe.com) is reorganizing its management, marketing and product development operations. Adobe predicts Q3 '98 revenue in the range of $220 million to $225 million, compared with $230 million in Q3 '97. The expectation is for break-even earnings or even a loss, compared with net income of $53.4 million for the year-ago quarter. Official results will be announced Sept. 24. In response to the negative earnings news, Adobe is shuffling management and eliminating positions to align marketing functions and product development. The immediate result is a $50 million to $60 million annualized reduction in expenses and a work force reduction of 240 to 300 employees, which roughly translates into an 8% to 10% cost reduction.
Among the casualties are P. Jackson Bell, executive VP and chief administrative officer; Robert Roblin, executive VP of marketing; and Ross Bott, executive VP of Adobe's product divisions. Bruce Chizen, previously senior VP and GM of Adobe's graphics products division, will oversee all engineering and marketing operations as Adobe's new executive VP of worldwide products and marketing.
Blending knowledge management, document management and groupware to leverage knowledge for business decisions is the crux of Illuminar, a scalable software product shipping early this month from Verano (www.verano.com). Developed from its patent-pending Open Wrap technology, Verano's first product is a tool for helping companies manage unstructured information from their corporate intranet.
It automatically brings context to content via metadata, "wrapping" new dimensions of meaning around stored information. Information thus becomes location-independent-retrievable by meaning and content-and platform-independent.
One beta customer, according to Robert Goldberg, Verano's VP of sales and marketing, is using Illuminar to take ERP reports and make them structured and retrievable on its intranet.