InfoImage’s fully scalable “digital dashboard”
Last October, InfoImage and Microsoft announced a strategic alliance, the purpose of which was to develop and implement large-scale portal software based on the Microsoft knowledge management platform, which includes server applications and Office 2000 software. With the introduction of InfoImage’s freedom 2 software, the Microsoft digital dashboard has gone from a glimmer in Bill Gate’s eye to full-fledged enterprise-wide portal.
Jon Michaels, InfoImage co-founder and executive VP of sales, says, “We have the first portal that has an architecture behind it that can truly scale in the largest organizations. We’re doing business with a number of fairly large multinational organizations, and one of the reasons why they chose us is because of our Federated Architecture, which allows portal servers to be deployed pretty much anywhere — and they talk to each other, so knowledge workers can collaborate anywhere within or outside of the organization.”
Michaels adds that once another server has been added, it automatically becomes part of what the company calls the Portal Federation. And, with the Federated Component Directory, which automatically recognizes any new servers added to the system, “It’s very easy to deploy a new server and have it become part of the federation. We can support about 500 concurrent users on an entry-level server. If you scale more processors, more speed or more memory, the number of concurrent users grows linearly.”
He explains that by using some of the Microsoft Windows 2000 advanced servers an organization can add as many as 32 processors. “Then the scalability numbers are off the chart. We figure if you can run 1,000 users concurrently, you can put about 3,000 users on that server, because it’s unlikely that many will be on that server simultaneously.”
Michaels cites a number of features that he believes makes freedom 2 unique in the portal space. One is Content Forwarding. “We actually build a gateway directly into the portal between the information you’re looking at on the screen and the collaborative system,” he says. Rather than cutting and pasting, the software takes whatever content is on the screen and automatically brings it into the collaborative climate. He says the user can annotate around the content and bring it into a discussion environment. “You can click to send e-mail, assign a task, schedule a meeting or execute any other type of collaborative capability, such as opening up a desktop video session or a net meeting. It saves users by allowing them to collaborate without leaving the portal.”
Peripheral Vision allows users to get links to related information and people as they are navigating through the portal. “For example, if you’re a chip manufacturer and you’re looking at RISC product specifications on your screen, your Peripheral Vision panel would actually give you a series of links to other RISC product specs. You might want to know who’s the program manager and who is responsible for manufacturing and then shipping. By clicking on the ‘people’ tab, you get a list of the experts.”
The software also includes graphical tools that categorize and standardize all the sources of knowledge within an organization, including structured data, unstructured data and people. These Knowledge Maps are basically a hierarchical categorization of all the knowledge within the organization. Users are able to do what appear to be simple searches but are actually complex, compound queries running in the background.
In a typical, multistage deployment, users can be up and running with basic content in two weeks, says Michaels. Full implementation to executive level users should take no more than six weeks, he says. The process usually requires an InfoImage technician on site for initial installation, and the company offers a variety of training alternatives.
The freedom 2 offering includes two distinct code streams: The B2E server for internal use and the B2B product with additional security, which allows an organization to implement a secure and scalable portal. Pricing for the B2E package is $50,000 for the first server, $25,000 for each additional. Client access licenses range from $100/user down to $20 each for very high volumes. The first B2B server goes for $75,000, each additional is $25,000; there is no fee for registered B2B users.
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