From the Tech Vault Dept.: Some of my old stories pop up and inspire no recollection at all of writing it. I interviewed people, I put together quotes, I cranked out 1300 words. And I don’t remember a damn thing about it. Reading it today, I’m impressed – as I am with so many of my elderly tech pieces – at how obsolete everything in the story has become. The magazine itself, VARBusiness, I do remember mostly because I so enjoyed working with editor Beth Adelman. But we lost touch not long after this as other magazines lured me with more money. Until the whole computer-magazine empire collapsed. VARBusiness retooled its website in 2005, but has now been absorbed into CRN, “a media brand of The Channel Company.” Anyway, here’s how the Marines stored data 34 years ago.
YOU KNOW THE FRUSTRATION of accumulating page after page of information that needs to be filed? Documents that you may not need right now, but you know they’re going to come in handy. And they sit in rows of cabinets, hogging valuable office space.
Tell it to the Marines.
Thanks to what’s billed as the world’s largest document image processing (DIP) system, filing cabinets and attendant frustration were replaced last June by a PC-based scanning system.
Because of the sensitive nature of the material being processed, spokespeople for both the Marines and the VARs involved can’t divulge all of the story. But at the heart of it is the kind of challenge that all vendors face.
“With 360 users on a large network running a variety of applications, you have to provide a flexible image processing interface,” says John Karagosian, sales manager for Image Tech of Southfield, Michigan. With a strong presence in the Washington, D.C., area, Image Tech has developed sales relationships with a number of resellers. Principals in the Marine Corps installation were two Virginia-based firms: Versyss Benchmark Systems in Arlington and Potomac Systems Engineering in Annandale.
“Once the Marine Corps chose the hardware vendor, we came in to set up the software,” Karagosian says. That software is called Marvin, which Image Tech wrote and introduced in the early days of Windows. “Our first release was designed under Windows 1.0, and we had the first document processor to run under 3.0.” With the release of Windows 3.1 will come an all-new, even faster Marvin.
And Marvin isn’t only in D.C. The Marine Corps have DIP installations in several west coast bases thanks to Integrated Network Systems, a San Diego, California, VAR that won a contract thanks to the promise of a speedy installation. “Before we got involved,” says INS general manager Larry Leathers, “the Marine Corps had been working for about 18 months to implement a DIP system. When we got the contract, we had them on-line in 45 days.”
Back east, a versatile software product and an impressive track record worked in Image Tech’s favor. “We’ve done a ton of installations in the D.C. area,” explains Karagosian. “We showed them a versatile product, we let them talk to other user sites. About 30 percent of our business is with government agencies, which are very paper-intensive.”
The bottom line was also attractive. “If you’ve ever dealt with the government, you know that we’re generally looking for the best quality at the lowest price.” Pat Shaw is the Marines’ in-house project manager, who worked closely with Image Tech to see that the installation adhered to specifications. “We looked at a lot of vendors and chose the Marvin software also because it did what we needed it to do.”
Getting Marvin to work with the existing PC-based Banyan Vines network was one of the first challenges. “We’re accustomed to using other networks,” says Karagosian, “but the Marines were able to solve those problems for us.”
Support was important, at least at the start. “You’ve got a vast amount of people in different departments with different amounts of computer literacy. Our training had to be designed to show them how to fit DIP into the suite of applications – desktop publishing, word processing, and so on – that they already are used to using.
Addressing another area of concern, Image Tech made sure that Marvin satisfied the Marines’ security requirements. “We offer up to 255 levels of password security on each document,” says Karagosian. The program can be reconfigured easily, and improvements continue to follow.
The hardware base at the seven-story building is impressive: 360 PCs are linked in seven suites across Banyan Vines networks connected with Token Ring topology. Workstations are a mixture of 286- to 486-based PC machines, and optical storage is based in a Reflection Devices optical jukebox. Cornerstone high-resolution monitors are installed among VGA color devices, and Fujitsu M3096 and M3093 scanners handle the papers themselves.
Susan Kehoe is manager of image scanners with Fujitsu Computer Products of America in San Jose, California, and she’s watched the scanners change and improve quickly. “Scanner technology is still relatively new,” she says. “The machines are moving up in speed and paper handling. It’s similar to the way that laser printers evolved after they first were introduced.”
Is document image processing a good VAR opportunity? “Absolutely, because it’s not strictly a fulfillment kind of sale. There’s a lot of service and support required. Over a quarter of the 1991 revenue was in maintenance, as opposed to the basic hardware and software product. And this is true across the entire spectrum of the image processing market, from high end to low end systems. I think this is the kind of opportunity a lot of VARs are looking for now because straight fulfillment stuff is going by the boards for them.”
Although the prospect of ongoing support provides lucrative incentive for VARs wishing to go the DIP route, the Marines wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible.
“Money was a big issue,” says Shaw. “We needed something we could maintain ourselves -- we don’t want to have to bring in a contractor every time we have to make a change. We can modify Marvin as our needs change, but John can still come out and look over the product as those changes occur.”
The way Karagosian explains it, there’s a hint of military strategy in his approach. “Our people went in there and showed them what we could do for them. That we have a good product, good references, a very good price. And we’ll be there for support.”
Image processing systems were first developed over a decade ago, but didn’t take off until the introduction of economical optical storage disks during the past five years. As with all computer hardware, a steady advance in technology combined with falling prices has made scanners and optical storage devices options that even low-end VARs can reasonably consider.
“At Comdex last fall I saw for the first time a lot of interest in DIP from the VAR community,” says Silver. “Thanks to the greater availability of low-end systems, the market is being transformed. People are waiting now to see the shakeout of some market factors, such as Novell’s association with Kodak and the impact of products like Lotus Notes and Windows/NT on the PC LAN environment. But all in all, it’s getting easier for the low-enders to move ahead.”
Leathers seconds the notion that the VAR opportunity lies as much in support as with the initial installation. “Once we’re in with an imaging system, anything that happens on that network is liable to become our problem.”
A broad base of management experience was also a key to making the sale. “One of the advantages we have in securing this kind of contract is that we’re management consultants at the highest level at the front end. We’re able to look at a client’s requirements and quickly match those needs.”
– VARBusiness, April 1992
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