This is the question that keeps Microsoft executives awake at night and gnawing at their fingernails.

Will home users, corporates and government agencies rush in to upgrade their desktops to Windows 8? I for one don’t think so and this is why I don’t think so.

The Vista debacle is still fresh in every CIO’s mind and I have not spoken to anyone who is planning to upgrade to Windows 8 in 2012 or even 2013. Most of my customers are still using XP and planning to upgrade to Windows 7.

Microsoft released Vista two years before it was ready and in doing so it inflicted a huge cost and productivity burden on its customers. Those same customers have long memories.

This isn’t a debate about whether Metro is a ‘good’ UI or whether or not Windows 8 should have a start button or whether or not the ARM version should have/will have the option of switching to the classical UI. That particular debate is for the techies and bloggers, not business owners and executives. For serious people this is a debate about value, cost and risk avoidance.

• What is the value proposition of Windows 8? What are the compelling reasons for upgrading to Windows 8? What are the benefits of Windows 8? What effect will Windows 8 have on the bottom line? How will the CIO compose a cohesive business case to convince the board to allocate scarce funds to a Windows 8 rollout?
• What will it cost to purchase Windows 8? What will it cost to upgrade all desktops to Windows 8? What will the cost be of lost productivity as your users grapple with the changes and differences? What will it cost to retrain your users?
• Will the initial Windows 8 experience be a repeat of the Vista experience? What is the risk of this happening? What is the risk of some of your current devices not working with Windows 8? What is the risk of some of your current applications not working with Windows 8? What is the risk that you will have to upgrade or replace some of your PCs? What is the risk that your will have to roll back to Windows 7 from Windows 8 as many customers had to roll back from Vista to XP?

Value Proposition

As a business owner I don’t believe Windows 8 has a compelling value proposition. I don’t see any reason to upgrade from Windows 7. Windows 7 works fine and I will follow the old but wise maxim, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

Cost

In my business, if I add up all the potential costs including manpower and retraining and lost productivity I come up with a minimum of $1,000 per desktop to upgrade to Windows 8 and that doesn’t include any hardware upgrades that may be required. And this cost assumes that Windows 8 is not a Vista and that all my current devices and application programs (like accounting, CRM and payroll) continue to work fine. The absolute worst case would be $2,000 a desktop if my assumptions are incorrect.

Risk

There is no reason to accept any risk. I will be recommending to my customers that they stick with Windows 7 and wait at least two or three years until Windows 8 has gobbled up a couple of service packs and proven itself.

Maybe Microsoft hasn’t noticed but most of the world is still in recession and every one of my customers, private and government alike, is still trying to cut costs and do more with less. I don’t know where Microsoft thinks the money is coming from to fund a Windows 8 upgrade.

From my perspective as a long-term Microsoft .NET application software developer I have decided not to redevelop my Windows applications for Windows 8 because of the huge amount of retraining, effort and money required to do so. I have been on the Microsoft treadmill for 28 years and have dutifully upgraded, redesigned and redeveloped my applications for each new release of Windows over that time. This time I do not believe the effort and cost is either justified or required. Instead, I am concentrating on converting all my application client functionality to both web clients (to run in a browser) and mobile clients (supporting smartphones and tablets). There will be some inevitable tweaking to do for Windows 8 but for the most part my new RecFind 6 clients won’t care if the user is running Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Linux, Apple OS, iOS or Android.

I actually can’t think of any good reason to redevelop for Windows 8 and have to believe that there will be lots of developers like me that will go the web client and mobile client route instead of spending scarce R&D funds and important developer time just to comply with Microsoft’s latest idea of how desktop applications should look and work. I already have enough trouble keeping up with the rapid changes in Android thank you.

It is every software developer’s dream to have just a single set of source code and to support multiple platforms with the same source. Unfortunately, this has never been possible but I still have to manage costs by minimizing the number of code variations I have to support. The advantage of a web client is that it is largely compatible with most operating systems and browsers and I can build and maintain my web client with a single set of source code albeit with a number of “ifs” to cater for variations in browsers and operating systems. I need separate source code for Both Android and iOS for my ‘native mode’ mobile apps so I end up supporting three development environments, browser, Android and iOS. This is fine because my customers are demanding web clients and mobile clients so I know that my investment in these three environments will pay off. No customer has yet asked for a Windows 8 compatible/certified RecFind 6 client but it is early times yet.

My applications (all based on RecFind 6) are in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) sector and are designed for the records management, document management, document imaging and business process management sectors. As such we could best describe RecFind 6 as an information management solution and luckily for us this is an ideal application for the three environments we now support, browsers (web clients), Android and iOS (mobile clients).

My customers are also happy to use my products in these three environments so I have absolutely no compelling reason to redesign and rewrite RecFind 6 for Windows 8. My browser clients will run under Windows XP, 7 and 8 so there is absolutely no need for me to build a ‘native’ Windows 8 RecFind 6 client. Hopefully, my current Windows 7 RecFind 6 client will run with only minor tweaks under the Windows 8 ‘classical’ desktop so that my clients that still want to run my ‘fat’ client can still do so. However, there will be no need to do so because my RecFind 6 web client will be faster and easier to install and maintain.

What if a majority of software developers think like me and Microsoft ends up with a new desktop platform and very few ‘native’ applications, especially designed and written for Windows 8? Customers buy Windows to run applications, to do work. If Windows 8 doesn’t have the applications they need they will not bother with it.

Microsoft has thousands of very, very clever people and a marketing budget I can only dream of so we should never write them off. They proved they can get it very wrong with Vista and they have also proved they can get it very right with Windows 7. Fingers crossed that they again get it very right with Windows 8. But, they are taking a very, very big chance and with most of the western world still in recession they have not chosen an exactly auspicious time to launch Windows 8.

To reiterate, and for all the reasons espoused above, I do not see Windows 8 being the success Microsoft is hoping for.

Many years ago when I was living in the USA I watched in amazement as US car companies in Detroit outsourced car production to Mexico and Canada and laid off thousands of workers. My mind struggled with the logic because surely laid-off workers wouldn’t be able to afford new cars even if they were made cheaper in Mexico?

The trend continued and accelerated over the years and each time I read about more outsourcing and layoffs I wondered, “How do they expect laid-off workers to be able to buy their goods?” “What is the point of reducing costs if at the same time you also reduce the size of your market?”

Have you been to Detroit lately? Have you seen first-hand what outsourcing can do to a city and communities?

The why is easy to answer; senior executives wanted lower costs to make the Wall Street analysts happy and to then earn them much bigger bonuses. Hedge funds and M&A companies wanted lower costs to make doing deals easier and more profitable. A small number of very greedy and avaricious people at the top were more than happy to destroy livelihoods, towns, states and even countries just to get even richer than they already were. This is an example of greed on a scale we have never seen previously. Lives are being destroyed by people with more money that they can ever spend savagely and uncaringly destroying others to become even more obscenely wealthy.

We all know that no developing nation can transition to a developed nation without a large, growing and healthy middle class. Why then are western ‘developed’ nations now destroying the middle class? In the USA the obscenely rich are becoming richer, the middle class is shrinking and the poor class is growing. Is this how we want to continue? Is this a recipe for success for a country or just an incredibly selfish recipe for success for a tiny minority? Why are we letting it happen?

I almost choked when I recently read Apple’s explanation of why it now manufactures everything in China using Foxconn. Basically, they said it wasn’t because of lower costs (rubbish!); it was because the expertise and supply chains were no longer in the USA. Doesn’t Apple realize that the expertise and supply chains are now longer in the USA because USA companies outsourced their IP and laid off the expertise in the USA? Apple originally outsourced because of lower costs and eventually this outsourcing destroyed the ability of the USA to compete. It is a case of cause and effect; the outsourcing came first and this in turn destroyed America’s ability to compete. Now we have a situation where Apple’s competitors are unable to match its manufacturing costs and the only solution for them is to also outsource to Chinese companies like Foxconn thus further eroding the US’s ability to compete. If this trend continues the USA will soon lose the ability to build electronic devices.

Because of outsourcing western countries have lost not only jobs but key skills and manufacturing capabilities that they will never get back. Smarmy western politicians blithely talk about re-training programs to solve the unemployment problem but what is the point of re-training people if there aren’t any jobs? How long before these same idiotic politicians mandate children staying longer in school and making college education compulsory just to make the unemployment figures look better? Worse still, we are borrowing vast sums of money from the same countries we have outsourced to to fund unemployment benefits and retraining programs. How stupid is that? Let’s exacerbate the problem by becoming impossibly indebted to the countries that have already stolen all our jobs and destroyed our economies? Is it just me or are other people struggling to understand the big picture? Why are we letting it happen?

Did you know that Australia no longer produces tyres? We closed the last local tyre producer last year and we now we rely 100% on imports. Surely tyre production is a strategic industry that we can’t afford to lose? More importantly, once that factory is closed and the equipment sold off or scrapped we can’t simply restart this industry. The workers too have gone along with their many years of irreplaceable skills and experience. Production facilities and expertise irreversibly lost. This same thing is happening in all areas of our economy, we are losing the ability to make things and we are losing our self-reliance. We are becoming more and more vulnerable each year and more and more indebted each year. Why are we letting it happen?

In the last 30 years we have seen the largest transfer of wealth and IP the world has ever seen. Western nations have transferred their wealth and their IP to developing nations and become massively indebted in the process. Where is the up side for the vast majority of citizens in western nations? We are we letting a tiny minority of the super-rich destroy our economies and steal our future? Why are we letting it happen?

My main fear is that the outsourcing trend has gone on so long that it is now irreversible; that the problem can’t be fixed. I don’t just worry about my retirement; I worry about the future of my children and grandchildren. What kind of world have we left for them?

I own and run a software company that produces what we call enterprise content management software, a broad term that includes applications like records management, document management, CRM, imaging, contract management, etc. At least once a week I receive some kind of proposal from mainly Indian firms to outsource my development and support functions. I tell them not as long as I own the company.

We do everything in house because that way we produce a far better quality of product and an infinitely higher quality of support. Outsourced development doesn’t work and neither does outsourced support. In my business, outsourcing does not product better quality, it produces rubbish. Outsourcing is never done to improve the product or services or to improve the client interface. It is only ever done by naïve and greedy senior executives to fatten their pay packets at the expense of their employees and long-suffering customers.

Why do you let it happen? Why do you support companies that outsource key functions and lay off Australian workers? Do you enjoy making support calls to Indian and Filipino call centres? Please think about your responsibilities and the future of your children and grandchildren. It may well be too late but I for one will be doing everything in my power to support Australian companies that don’t outsource and to remove my support from Australian companies that do outsource Australian jobs. We need to start taking action or we will not have a future.

Why are you letting it happen?

I was recently speaking to a very senior public servant trying to understand the government’s purchasing policy as we had been locked out of a couple of bids. He explained that it was because they already had 3 ECM providers and that was all they needed regardless of any other factor or consideration. He said he always did things in threes so he had 3 automobile suppliers, 3 computer suppliers, 3 soap suppliers, etc.  He said he believed that as long as you have 3 options you can meet any demand or contingency.

At the time I thought this was pretty stupid; how can you possibly meet any demand with just 3 alternatives? Then the more I thought about it the more I realized that 3 is in fact the magic number.

The number 3 can be used to measure anything and to control and predict anything. Goldilocks rated porridge using the magic number; too cold, too hot and just right. She rated beds the same way; too hard, too soft and just right. Good sales people always give you 3 options and then recommend one, e.g., too complicated for your needs, too simplistic for your needs, just right, the one I recommend. People are either too fat, to thin or just right. A meal is too big, too small or just right and so on and so on ad nauseam.

You could easily get through life with 3 pairs of shoes (well maybe women couldn’t), 3 jackets, 3 pairs of pants, 3 ties, etc. We are supposed to eat 3 meals a days so food is already under the spell of the magic number.

Three is the basis for a whole new philosophy, the ‘Power of Three’. The Catholic Church is already under the spell with the Holy Trinity and most governments in the world have 3 tiers with a President a Lower House and an Upper House. We also know by experience that 3 wheel  bikes, trikes and scooters are far more a stable than their 2 wheel counterparts and that a 3 way bet is the safest bet of all. Just about anything we can think about is better in multiples of 3.

I now realise that my aforementioned public servant is actually a philosopher and a prophet and far wiser than I had initially thought. What he should really do next is start a religion based on the magical properties of the number 3. I for one would certainly line up in the rain to join (hell, I would even crawl over barbed wire in the snow to join). We should call the new religion the ‘Power Of Three’ or POT for short as in pot the smoking substance or stemmed to ‘potty’ as in of unsound mind or the plastic contrivance toddlers use until they can graduate to the toilet proper. POT would attract people from all walks of life and of all persuasions because of its universal nature. That is, the number 3 controls all of our lives.

The priests of our new religion will be able to confidently predict anything and will be renowned for their unnerving accuracy.  The stock market will rise, fall or maintain the status quo. A cricket match will be either won, lost or drawn. A horse race will always have horses in the first, second and third positions. A patient’s condition will improve, worsen or not change. A new born child will grow up to be tall, short or of average height. That same child will be fat, thin or of average weight and at school will be academically above average, below average or average.

There is no better way to look at the world than through the number 3. We can manage our lives and responsibilities using this magic number. In fact, I see no reason to teach children to count beyond the number 3 because everything we need to do and have to do in life can be governed by the number 3. If we got rid of all numbers above 3 then we could have our kids out of school years earlier and into the workforce where we really need them. We could solve the unemployment problem with a resurgence of old-fashioned jobs like chimney sweeps and pit pony boys for the coal mines. We could drastically reduce the size of government by only allowing 3 political parties and 3 seats for each party. There would only be 3 government departments and they would only be allowed 3 employees each.

Once we have implemented our 3 policy we could sell off Parliament House in Canberra and lease out hundreds of government buildings because the government wouldn’t need them anymore. We could drastically cut costs in the same parliament by only allowing 3 phone calls a day and 3 choices at the canteen and by not allowing any politician to live greater than 3 kilometres from his office or be chauffeured more than 3 kilometres a day. Additionally politicians and bureaucrats would only be allowed 3 flights a year and no politician or bureaucrat would be allowed to stay in office longer than 3 years (then they would have to get a real job and suffer like the rest of us).

Of course if politicians and bureaucrats knew they had to get a real job in 3 years they wouldn’t pass the stupid legislation they now do. At the moment they can pass all kinds of draconian laws and taxes because they are not affected by them; they are protected with job security, guaranteed pensions and the like. If they knew they would shortly have to live and work in the real world they would be much more circumspect about the laws they promoted.

The Power Of Three (POT) is starting to sound like a truly wonderful idea. For example, there would only be 3 governments in Australia, not the 8 we currently have and tens of thousands less politicians and public servants to draft silly legislation and screw up our lives. We would pay 3 percent tax instead of 45 percent and we would only have to fill in a tax return every 3 years.

With all the ex-public servants and politicians now in the workforce we will have to get used to job sharing so we will all have 3 months’ vacation a year to make room for our new recruits.

The number three will become the guiding economic principle for Australia. We will only trade with 3 countries, we will only allow 3 manufacturers in any sector so 3 car manufacturers, 3 ice cream manufacturers, 3 fast food restaurant chains, 3 road makers, 3 accountancy firms, 3 law firms (that will be basis for a few lawyer jokes), 3 banks, 3 brokerage houses, 3 coal mines, 3 iron ore mines, 3 bread makers, 3 butchers, 3 types of ice cream, 3 types of cheese, etc.

No one will complain about a lack of choice because as my senior public servant said “With 3 suppliers you can meet any demand or contingency.” Little did he know that my initial disappointment would soon turn into inspiration and the stimulus to create a new world religion, the Power Of Three.

I am now working on my next publication, “The thoughts of Chairman Frank on the Power Of Three.”  When that is finished I will begin working on the first testament of my new bible and it will start with “In the beginning, Frank spoke to the great God public servant and was given the magic number…”

I can’t wait for the TV show when  I can proudly stand on stage in a shimmering silver suit, wig and makeup and implore you to send money so I can air-condition my dog’s kennel (I had better make that 3 dog’s kennels). The possibilities are endless, long live the Power Of Three.

We have all suffered and suffered from network issues and outages and failing servers. One reason is the unparalleled complexity of Microsoft server-based networks and the other is the very low availability of really talented, knowledgeable and capable server and network specialists. The core problem is complexity; if the environment wasn’t so incredibly difficult to setup and debug we wouldn’t require so many really clever people.

Even large enterprises, presumably with all the resources they need, are not immune. We have all seen and suffered from major outages at banks and airlines in 2011. If the big guys with all the money and resources can’t keep their networks up and running what chance do the rest of us have?

If it seems too complex it is too complex.

The level of complexity now bedevilling most of us has slowly crept into our business and home systems since the early days of networks and servers starting around 1980. Whereas there were some weird and hard to configure networks in the early days the offerings thinned out as the market made up its mind about standards and we were eventually left with mainly Microsoft-driven networks from about  1990 onwards. These same Microsoft Windows driven networks have gotten a little more complex year on year until they are now almost unmanageable by ‘ordinary’ IT personnel.

As always the industry counters by proposing more and more training and certification. In other words, let’s not solve the complexity problem let’s instead address the symptoms of complexity by throwing more money and time at it. All the while the problem is getting worse and there are fewer and fewer people who really understand it. We don’t have a skills shortage; we have an overly complex environment to manage.

There is another serious problem and that is security. The Internet has exposed more evil and people of ill purpose that ever existed in Sodom and Gomorrah. These evil people are able to penetrate our networks because the networks are too complex. Windows is too complex, way more complex than it needs to be. Every time we plug a hole we open two more because of the complexity of Windows. Battling evil is a never ending task and a losing battle because we cannot win using the current tools we have. In my opinion, there is no way we can ever make our current IT environments, and even our home computers, really secure and immune from attack.

If you want evidence that what I say is correct just look at the massive security industry that has built up around Windows. There are multiple billion dollar companies like Symantec that only exist because Windows is insecure and will always be insecure. IT security is a multi-billion dollars industry because Windows is rubbish.

I liken Windows to the tax system. The tax system has been played with and modified thousands of times over many, many years until it is now so complex that no one understands it and you need to go to court to get a judgement. The advice of a trained tax accountant isn’t enough to ensure compliance. Even the tax office can’t rely on its own advice and nor can you. The current tax legislation is not fixable; we need to start afresh and produce something new and simple replacing tens of thousands of pages with 50 or 60 pages. The tax system and Windows suffer from the same problem, the more you try to fix it the more complex it becomes and the more fragile it becomes.  To use the common vernacular, “there are holes in the tax system and Windows you can drive a truck through.”

If it was up to me I would replace our current tax system with a simple flat tax system (say 17% on gross income) and do away with tens of thousands of pages of tax legislation, deductions, exemptions and rulings. It would take five minutes to do your tax return and it would not require a tax accountant and thousands of dollars in fees. (Of course this won’t happen because tens of thousands of accountants and public servants rely on the tax system being complex otherwise there would be no need for their services.)

I would like to do the same thing with Windows. It too can’t be fixed and it needs to be replaced with something far, far simpler. My educated guess is that the crooks and the Windows security industry won’t like this proposal either; both have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. We are in the ridiculous situation the opposing parties both benefit from the system not being fixed. Is it only me that thinks this is crazy? How did we let it happen?

When I go home at night I don’t switch on my Windows PC anymore; I just turn on my iPad. It is quicker, easier to use, infinitely more secure and it provides access to all of the information I require. I do have to switch on my Windows PC at least once a month to download all the updates and use up large chunks of my broadband GB allowance. This process also wastes many hours of my time for no discernible benefit other than to ‘protect’ me against the latest round of attacks from the army of crooks on the Internet.

Multiply the time I spend keeping my PC up-to-date to avoid the crooks by the hundreds of millions of Windows users around the world and you have the largest single productivity black hole the world has ever seen (and the largest chunk of unpaid work). Now add all the time government agencies and corporations spend keeping Windows up to date and battling the crooks and you have enough wasted time to probably double the world’s GDP output. Again, is it just me that thinks this is a stupidly ridiculous situation and a massive waste of manpower?

I have over twenty years’ experience programming, supporting and managing mainframes so I have a little knowledge of this genre of computers. Most people think mainframes are dead but I assure you they aren’t. There are still mainframes out there and they are still doing what they have always done, quietly, efficiently and securely processing huge numbers of transactions and rarely failing. The following Wikipedia link provides a good introduction to modern mainframe computers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer

I think we need to reconsider the path we have taken with both network servers (and clusters) and home PCs. We need to move away from Windows before it starts consuming 25 hours out of every 24.

Microsoft isn’t going to fix Windows, it is going to ‘improve it’ with even more features and functions and complexity, just as it has done year after year. Microsoft is not listening to its consumers. We want less complexity and greater ease of use that’s why we all rushed out and bought iPads, millions and millions of them.

We need servers like mainframes, built to do a specific job and brilliant in doing that specific job. Similarly, we need something a hundred times simpler and less complex and easier to use than Windows for our PCs. It is time for a fundamental and seismic change in how we access and process information. We have followed the Microsoft pied piper for way too long and it is time to wake up and follow a different leader and move to a different model.

Long live the mainframe and the iPad, they could be our salvation.

This article is designed to be used as a guideline by the records manager or business owner when considering having paper records digitized; that is, scanned to create digital images of the original paperwork. It includes most of the things you need to think about and allow for and it should help you when formulating budgets and negotiating with vendors.

Overview

The safest approach is an end-to-end one where the vendor handles everything and takes responsibility for the final product. That is, starting with the paper documents and doing all the preparation work involved to make your paper ‘scannable’, capturing all contextual Metadata and the attachment/linking of same to the scanned images. It should also include the design and configuration of the best way to index and organize the images (and Metadata) in the final product (e.g., your electronic document and records management system – EDRMS). There is little point in digitizing a mass of paper if the results are not easily and conveniently searchable using your preferred terminology or Taxonomy.

For peace of mind you really want the vendor to handle everything required including the importing of all scanned images and Metadata into your EDRMS so you end up with a working and ready-to-use solution.

The cost is always an issue and no one in my experience ever really means it when they say, “We have to have this at any cost.” There will always be pressure from someone (usually the resident bean counter) for you to take on some of the workload yourself to help lower the costs. I caution against this because it absolves the vendor of some of the responsibility for the final product and additionally, I have to assume that you and your staff are already busy in your usual day jobs and that taking on extra work isn’t always possible.

The usual processes involved are:

Data inspection

The vendor will want to analyze the data to be scanned and determine what preparation is required. The vendor will double check your estimated volumes and make recommendations based on the characteristics and properties of the data to be scanned. Most vendors (that is all reputable vendors) will be reluctant to provide you with a fixed price quotation until after the data inspection is completed. An example, based on local government Development Applications, of the things what will be discovered in a data inspection follows:

• There is a need to back-capture Development Applications (DA);
• That each DA is stored in a file folder;
• That there are 8,000 DA file folders, each containing on average 130 sheets of letter paper – totalling 1,040,000 sheets of paper;
• That each DA file folder contains seven different document types;
• That the images are required to be indexed via the file folder number & document type (i.e. each file folder has to be scanned and indexed into 7 multi-page images – one for each document type);
• That most pages are single sided but some are duplex (double-sided); and
• That documents are generally not stapled (approximately 11% are stapled) and don’t require repair (5% do require repair).

Data Preparation

This normally involves removing pages from a cardboard file folder, removing staples, smoothing paper, orienting paper, etc. The objective should be to organize the pages into documents and batches to facilitate faster scanning using automatic document feed scanners. The most important component of any scanning quote is the time estimate (duration) and data preparation time is a key component of this.

Data preparation costs are sometimes called ‘handling’ costs. You want a fixed cost quote from the vendor for handling costs, that is, the vendor takes the responsibility and risk, not you. The responsible vendor will do random sampling during the data inspection step to better understand the handling costs involved in your job.

Scanning

This is where all paper is captured as TIFF images and multi-page documents are captured as multi-page TIFF images. At this stage the vendor may offer to optionally convert all or some of the TIFF images to text via an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) process. Note that this is usually an option; do not assume your digitized pages will be searchable because TIFF images are not full-text searchable. There is an additional step required for images to be full-text searchable.

If full text indexing is a requirement then make sure it is specified in your requirements document and included in the vendor’s quote. Note that if you do mandate full text indexing that the final format of the digitized image won’t be TIFF, it will probably be PDF or even better, PDF/A (an internationally recognized standard).

The time to scan each sheet paper depends upon a few key factors like the quality of the original source document, whether it is single or double sided and its condition, i.e., wrinkled, folded, torn, stapled, etc. Expect a much higher cost when the quality of the source documents is poor.

OCRing the scanned images to create full-text searchable electronic documents

Whether or not this line item appears in your quote really depends on how the vendor handles it. Note that it does lengthen the time taken to process any page, in some cases easily doubling it or worse.

However, it is also usually an automated ‘background’, asynchronous process that consumes computer time and not much person time. It may double the time required to complete your job but it should not double the costs.

Verification – Scanning

This is where the vendor applies quality assurance processes to ensure that all pages have been properly scanned. This means the vendor should be able to confirm that all pages have been scanned at the agreed quality standard. Some form of quality control is mandatory in any scanning job and you need to ensure that you have specified quality control in your specification and that it is included as part of the vendor’s quote.

Capture

This is where the vendor imports the digitized images into your EDRMS and creates all the links and Metadata necessary for efficient and appropriate searching. As mentioned previously, there is no point in having a huge database of scanned images if it is not searchable in a manner appropriate to each organization’s business processes.

Verification – Capture

This is where the vendor sanity checks the capture process and confirms that all pages have been scanned and captured/exported into your EDRMS as per specification. If you begin with 100,000 paper pages then you should end up 100,000 scanned, indexed and readable images of pages in your EDRMS; this sounds simple but it often is not so. Please think about the metrics required to ensure this level of quality control; you can’t afford to lose information.

Final inspection and sign-Off

This is where you inspect the final product and approve the job for payment. Please make sure that inspection and sign-off acceptance steps are part of the requirement specification. When doing so, ask the vendor to provide signed copies of its verification paperwork and also have your staff do random sampling to confirm that nothing has gone awry. This is IT so things will go wrong.

Costs, specify quote format

To ensure you are comparing apples to apples you need to detail how you want the costs expressed in your requirements document. For example, what will be the travel, expenses or transport costs? I would always suggest that you give the vendor a standard cost schedule to complete with its response to ensure uniformity.

You can either specify the breakdown of costs (see example below) or just ask for a fixed price per scanned page. Please don’t ask for a fixed price per document (I have seen this many times) because the vendor will then have to assume an average number of pages per document and this will lead to significant variations in the quotes. Obviously a ‘document ‘ can be from 1 to several hundred pages so it is not a standard unit of measurement.

Even when asking for a quote per ‘page’ you need to specify whether your ‘page’ is single or double-sided because a double-side page takes at least twice as long to scan as a single-sided page.

Please also be aware of the issues of handling blank pages; you do not want to be charged for scanning blank pages. Most modern multi-feed scanners have a feature to ignore blank pages. This is especially important if your pages are a mix of single and double-sided.

Contents of the quote

If you ask for a detailed breakdown, the vendor should detail all of the professional services and costs required including solution design, project setup, paper handling, scanning, capture, transport costs (if the job is being done offsite), etc.

If you ask for a simple fixed price per page the vendor will bundle all costs into a single figure such as a flat cost per page, e.g., 12 cents. If this is the case you need to ensure that there are no exclusions, that is, no possible additional costs not included in the quote.

The following is a sample generic quote listing all components of the quote. In real life you are unlikely to get all of these lines items unless you specifically ask for them.

Data Inspection

$150 per hour for 4 hours = $600

Data Preparation

$40 per hour for 120 hours = $4,800

Scanning

$40 per hour for 200 hours = $8,000

Capture

$150 per hour for 4 hours = $600

Verification

$150 per hour for 20 hours = $3,000

Delivery and Installation

$150 per hour for 4 hours = $600

Standard costs per page scanned

If you specify a single fixed price per scanned page the quote will look like the following:

“Standard simplex, 200 dpi black and white, OCR creating TIFF/PDF = $0.13 per image”

Other Considerations

The main consideration is whether the work will be done on your premises or at the vendor’s site. In most cases, because of the volumes of paper involved and the danger of lost data if data is shipped back and forth, it is preferable to do the actual scanning at your premises. However, when this is not possible, the vendor will provide an alternative site but additional costs may apply (e.g., transport costs, office rental, etc.).

This is a little article I wrote in 2003. I am republishing it today because it is still true, maybe even more so, and because it predicted that a replacement for email would shortly be upon us. That replacement is of course already taking over from email in our personal lives if not yet in our business lives. The replacement is of course two technologies, SMS and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

                                                                                                                                      

Today, many of us meet our partners on the Internet and profess our undying love and devotion via email.

The email, or “courriel” as the French now insist on calling it to stem incursion of English words into the French lexicon, is a wondrous and multifaceted thing. How blithely we regard it with no thought to the stupendous expansion of human-to-human communications it has facilitated within just one generation.

This now ubiquitous means of communication and expression would have been unthinkable to our parents or grandparents who struggled to compose two or three letters a year to distant relatives and friends and waited patiently for months, sometimes years for the ‘turnaround’ necessitated by steamships and railways and taciturn postal workers stoically slogging through the snow on foot.

With electronic communications traveling at the speed of light (or sometimes marginally slower if an older, lesser megahertz, aging and weary server blocks its path and slows its forward motion) we can conduct almost instant conversations with associates in distant climes with nary a thought to the wonder of it all.

Emails now easily comprise eighty percent or more of all business and personal communications. It would be a much higher proportion had not lawyers (the last bastion of all the paper supremacists); all over the world resisted the trend by insisting on non-standard paper lengths, unintelligible language and billing weight of paper. Would it be they discovered “Tools/Word Count” on the Word toolbar they could have abandoned this ancient form of revenue generation and made far more money be learning how to “cut and paste” and write voluminous, equally incomprehensible emails; charging by the word.

Have any of us really had time to think about the wonder of it all? Probably not, because the email revolution has snuck up on society slowly and inexorably over the last thirty years until it now permeates every facet of our business and personal lives. When I was young we met young ladies at church and dances, school, college and work. Today we meet our partners on the Internet and profess our undying love and devotion via email.

This new paradigm in human relationships came too late for me to enjoy but it would have been greatly appreciated in my youth. It is extraordinary difficult to mislead someone over your height, appearance or other facial or bodily characteristics when asking for a dance, rejection was my greatest fear and embarrassment as a young man competing for a partner. Via email we can be whatever we wish to be either innocently or fraudulently and all us men with “great faces for radio” can do far better than we could in the ‘olden-days’; at least until that fateful day when we and our true-love finally meet. Hopefully, ‘she’ has been as creative with the truth as we have so there is no great discrepancy in the ‘hope-versus-reality’ aspirations of both parties.

How would email have changed our past had it been available? How will email and its successors change our future? Will the human race retreat into a world of electronic communications eschewing face-to-face contact in an effort to avoid contagion from SARS, AIDS, Mormon missionaries, born-again-Christians, the homeless and relatives in need of money and advice about which computer to buy? Will the increase in communications further the advance of the human race or will the diminishing amount of human contact retard our development?

What will be the next big advance after email? Will we all have brain implants within 30 years and then communicate by direct thought as easily as we think of a distant friend or relative? Don’t laugh or discard this idea too quickly. I think back to my coal miner dad in 1952 in austere post-war Britain and try to imagine how he could have conceived something so extraordinary and far-reaching and revolutionary as email.

What’s next? Whatever it is you can be sure of two things. Someone has already thought of it and someone else has already begun designing the embryonic technology that will support the mind-mail system of the future. In laboratories around the world the next phase in human-to-human communications is already under development and it too will sneak up on us just as its predecessor did. The successor to email is out there; the majority of us just aren’t aware of it yet.

This is my idea of the ideal gift but to be honest I am not sure if it exists or even if anyone is planning to manufacture it. If the answer is in the negative then hello Apple and Samsung, put down your swords and shields (lawyers to the rest of us) and start spending those wasted hundreds of millions of legal dollars on something useful you can actually sell.

Frank’s law of the perfect mobile device says it must:

1. Be light, weight no more than a pound or 0.5 kilograms. It should be like a really big oversize watch or maybe, next generation iPhone (come on Apple, where is the iPhone 5?);
2. Be really cool to look at;
3. Feel great in the hand;
4. Be really easy to use;
5. Be able to connect via 3G, 4G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and whatever comes next;
6. Have a minimum 24 hour constant use batter life;
7. Accept verbal commands;
8. Have great quality sound;
9. Have no more than 3 buttons (have a look at the Apple TV controller for the best example of design excellence, simplicity to the point of elegance – the perfect combination of form and function);
10. Have a USB 2.0/3.0 port (Apple, why don’t we have this now?);
11. Have a micro card slot (Apple again, please listen to us users);
12. Attach to my person in way that makes it hard to lose (i.e., like a wristwatch or pocket watch on a chain or lanyard);
13. Support soft and external keyboards;
14. Have a touch screen;
15. Provide variable form factors, probably by projection of both screen and keyboard – Microsoft demonstrated this functionality a couple of years ago and then seemed to lose interest;
16. Have the ability to connect to external monitors and TVs;
17. Have a generous solid state hard drive, minimum 128GB;
18. Have an accessible file system (are you listening Apple? How about this for the iPad?);
19. Have a native email client (are you listening HP?);
20. Have a fully Flash/HTML 5 compatible web browser that isn’t limited and crippled (this is for Apple again);
21. Have a fully functional but easy to use and non-complex operating system (iOS is fine but so is WebOS – I am not so keen on Android);
22. Cost no more than $500 for a 128GB version;
23. Work as a telephone and accept SIM cards (this is for HP – tell me again why the Playbook isn’t selling unless you slash the price?);
24. Have a 10Mb camera or better;
25. Have a processor powerful enough to support my workload; and
26. Have enough memory to support my workload, say a minimum of 4GB

This is the ideal device because it replaces all the mobile devices I currently carry around. That is, notebook, Smartphone and tablet. It obviously must also have the functionality within the operating system to perform all the tasks I need to do and would normally do on my 3 current devices.

I will be able to carry it in my pocket or wear it on my wrist or even wear it like a fob or pocket watch on a classy gold chain. Maybe waistcoats will come back into fashion.

Innovative organizations will jump on the bandwagon and design cool accessories for it like a projection screen in a pen that you can unfurl and stand on your desk and hang on the back of the airplane seat. They will also design roll up keyboards in a pen that connect via Bluetooth and that sit flat once you unfurl them using advanced fabric memory functionality.

It actually isn’t hard to design our ideal device because all you have to do is think about all the frustrating missing features of your current devices; all the functionality you would like and need that isn’t there yet. This is why we all carry multiple mobile devices; because none of them do all the things we need them to do.

The vendors cannot tell us that they don’t have the design talent or technology because they patently do. They can’t tell us they can’t afford to build my ideal device because right now Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft are spending billions of dollars on lawyers for stupid, non-productive legal cases over simply absurd patent disputes. They are trying to earn their income from lawsuits in lieu of product sales.

Here is my message to the vendors, “give us the products we want and need and you won’t have to worry about profits, you will be swimming in money like that Disney character Scrooge McDuck.”

So Apple, HP, Samsung and others, where is my Xmas present?

I have written previously about the growing dominance in the business world of mobile devices. I have also written about the need for a new or variable form factor for a new generation of mobile devices.

As an iPad and Smartphone user I already see desktop PCs and notebooks as archaic devices saddled with being too big, too heavy and having too many cables and connections. To me, my DELL Optiplex Desktop PC and DELL Precision notebook look like big, ugly, bulky, awkward museum pieces taking up way too much desk real estate even though they are current technology.

Please note that I run a software development company and that I am heavily involved in designing and developing application software products for Windows so I and my staff have little current choice in what hardware and software we use for our core tasks. We have Windows 7 PCs and notebooks and Windows Server 2008 R2 servers. We use Visual Development Studio 2010 and use SQL Server 2008 as our relational database. We are, as they say, a Microsoft shop and our legacy products are solid Microsoft .NET smart clients based on Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and the .NET Framework.

But, there are new boys on the block in 2011. We now also have Apple PC’s and develop in Xcode for the iPod, iPhone and iPad. We also develop Android applications for Smartphones and tablets like those from Samsung. We will shortly start adding our new apps to the Apple Store and the Android Marketplace.

Even in our Windows development projects we are moving away from .NET fat and smart clients and developing all future products as either web clients able to run in virtually any browser on virtually any operating system or native mode apps running under iOS and Android. None of my future products will require the Microsoft .NET Framework. In fact our current web based products no longer require the .NET Framework and are both browser and operating system independent; these are our models for all future developments.

These two changes (web and mobile) represent a paradigm shift of seismic proportions in the software development industry. The end result will be that my customers will shortly no longer need Windows PCs to run my applications. They will be able to run my applications on any device they choose. They won’t need Intel chipsets and they won’t need Microsoft’s desktop Windows operating system, Windows 7 for now and the much touted Windows 8 in the future. All my future products will be either web based clients or native mode mobile apps.

If most other software companies are following our lead then Microsoft has a very rocky road ahead come two years or so into the future.

True, we will still need Windows PCs and Windows Servers for software development and our customers will still need Windows servers; at least for the medium term.

There is an opportunity in the market for a non-Microsoft software development environment. That is, something other than Visual Studio and there is also a market opportunity for a new development language that allows common source code across multiple platforms.  No smart developer really wants to support multiple source code versions of its products; that is just redundant work and dumb.

Note that none of this is new. Fifteen years ago we were all developing thin-client applications using ASP and IIS. Twenty years ago we were developing applications for multiple platforms using common source code with languages like Pascal, C and MicroFocus COBOL. The pain in those days was the need to compile and test on all the different platforms we supported. We had white-coated acolytes running from one end of town to the other ‘borrowing’ different servers and operating systems to compile and build our products on all the machines and operating systems we supported. That part of the process I won’t miss and would not like to see repeated.

If Microsoft gets smart again, and in my opinion it is far from smart now, it will seize the opportunity and leverage off its best human assets to give us the truly platform independent language and development environment we all need. Maybe Bill Gates needs to come out of retirement and kick more than little ass at Microsoft; I for one would vote for that to happen. Microsoft’s future depends upon it changing its business model and getting ahead of the eight ball for the first time in a very long time. Winners aren’t chasers, winners are leaders.

Back to the topic; what will our desktop PCs and notebooks look like in two years’ time if everyone in the software development business follows our lead? The simple answer is they won’t look like anything because they won’t be on our desktops or on our laps at Starbucks. My end user customers will be using Smartphones and tablets and will have no need for clumsy, overcomplicated, heavy, antiquated PCs and notebooks. Home users will have also no need for PCs and notebooks and will no longer have to suffer because of all the troubles associated with these overcomplicated devices and unfathomable Windows. They too will be using Smartphones and tablets.

It will probably be another two years before us developers have alternatives to replace PCs for development and maybe another two years before we no longer need Windows servers. On this last matter the key factor will be Microsoft making SQL Server a cross platform solution as it should have done at least ten years ago. What we need is SQL server on Apple, SQL server on Unix, SQL Server on Linux, SQL Server on Android, etc. Mark my words; if Microsoft doesn’t do it, someone else will come up with a viable SQL Server alternative that is platform independent and software developers and customers will switch. Perhaps even Oracle will mend its ways and become a friendly partner? Then again, maybe it will snow in Sydney at Christmas.

Maybe I should have called this blog the future of Microsoft? The truth is that the only reason we are saddled with overcomplicated PCs and notebooks that suck up all our productive hours just keeping them running is because we all have to run the Windows operating system. Take away the need for Windows and you also take away the need for PCs and notebooks.

I think PCs and notebooks and Windows for that matter are already in their death-throes and I for one will not miss them; I have suffered for long enough. They are long past their use-by date and we have waited way too long for something smaller, faster, simpler and better.

The replacement devices will be the next generation of Smartphone and tablet devices probably powered by either iOS or Android; most of the current alternatives will simply die out.  Unlike today, we will have the choice of several form factors from pocket size to say 12 to maybe 14 inch (approx. 30 to 35 CM) diagonal. We may even have adjustable form factors using new technologies. We will have the option of wireless/Bluetooth keyboards just as we have now and we will probably use keyboards at work but not at home or when travelling, relying then on the soft keyboard. Everything will be Wi-Fi enabled and we will all be running much higher speeds than we are now. Everything will be lighter, easier to use and more stable. I can’t wait.

 

The following Morningstar article is worth reading because it is an excellent and timely analysis of the real problem and the EU’s total failure to do anything as well as its total inability to solve the problems of the European Union.

http://www.morningstar.com.au/funds.mvc/article/credit-crunch/4284/1

Basically, hundreds of billions of Euros in rescue funds but trillions of Euros of debt plus shrinking economies means the problem gets worse every day and can’t be solved other than by default which will bankrupt most of the major European banks. The tax revenues of European governments are falling far faster than their ability to cut costs. The longer they screw around with crisis summits and talkfests the bigger the problem becomes and the harder it will be to solve.

The European Union is finished and so is the Euro (an economically stupid and irrational idea to begin with; ignoring all the rules of currency valuations) – everything you see from the EU is just stalling and obfuscation in an attempt to keep the wolves at bay.

Europe will stagger along and sink lower and lower and end up with massive unemployment, over 25%, and deflation for at least the next 10 years.

My prediction is that Germany and France will negotiate a ‘deal’ that will screw all the weaker countries but try to protect Germany and France. It has already begun with the proposed changes pushed by Sarkozy and Merkel and rejected and vetoed by Cameron of the UK (he had no choice) – That’s why Sarkozy and Merkel are so mad at him; their plan wasn’t a rescue plan for Europe, it was a rescue plan for Germany and France at the expense of everyone else but the other European nations are both too stupid and too reliant on Germany and France to object.

Ergo, don’t rush out and buy a holiday home in Europe yet – much lower prices will follow soon but so will the massive social unrest that always comes with unemployment rates above 20% (which we are already seeing in countries like Greece and Portugal).

Australia is still the safest place to be because we are small and close to Asia and have lots of stuff Asia will want even with a slowdown in China and India. For once our isolation is a blessing as is living on the oldest continent on earth with all the mountains worn down and all those minerals close to the surface. The Chinese and Indian economies will continue to grow albeit more slowly (like 5% instead of 10% per year) because of their huge and rapidly growing populations.

Our biggest danger is our current government which is doing everything in its power to screw our mining industry and soon, every industry that is successful. I predict the next stupid thing they will try is a super profits tax on all industries (including banking) not just mining.

All the signals are flashing in the sky like a New Years’ fireworks show on Sydney Harbour. They are telling us to cut our costs and rein in spending before it is too late or we will end up in the same downward spiral as the European Union.  The time to begin was yesterday, not tomorrow.

However, just as in Europe, our politicians prefer to talk and spin and obfuscate and delay doing anything other than raise taxes and in doing so depress an already slowing economy. I think the only way to wake them up is by forcing another Federal election. Let the people have their say before it is way, way too late.

Message to Wayne Swann, the world’s greatest treasurer, “Wayne, just in case Treasury has not informed you, no one in history has ever taxed an economy out of a recession.”

Twenty five years ago I used to give presentations and seminars on how to achieve the paperless office. After a few years I stopped talking about the paperless office because it was patently obvious that it was not going to happen. I used to joke that unless governments outlawed fax machines, copiers and laser printers that it would never happen and so far I have been proven right.

We now use and store more paper than ever. All around the world off-site storage companies like Iron Mountain and Crown are building or acquiring hundreds of new off-site box storage warehouses each year as we continue to pulp trees into paper and then store the paper in boxes which we then ship off to warehouses and then forget about.

Even if we outlawed the storage of paper tomorrow we would still have trillions of pages stored for at least the next 50 years because of compliance reasons. We can’t even convert all this paper to digital images because the handling and conversion costs would be monumentally “this will bankrupt you” high.

So for existing paper at least it looks like we will be managing trillions of pages and hundreds of millions of archive boxes for a long, long time to come.

However, what about the use of paper in our normal working and personal lives? Will we still have newspapers and books and magazines and business letters and paper contracts in five years’ time?

Will we still buy paper tickets at bus and train stations? Will we still buy movie and theatre tickets? Will we still get paper receipts from stores and restaurants? Will we still use paper and cardboard for packaging and wrapping presents? Will we still take paper minutes to meetings and will we still print out documents to review? Not to mention the unmentionable, that is, what will we use in the bathroom to wipe our you know whats?

One of the reasons paper has not disappeared from our lives is that it is sometimes the absolutely best solution. In fact, paper isn’t bad; paper is a great invention with multiple uses and it has been of great benefit to mankind and it continues to be an invaluable, often irreplaceable product.

There is no doubt however that we use far too much paper in business and that much of it is unnecessary, wasteful and expensive. There is also no doubt that the digital technology necessary to replace a great deal of business paper already exists and in fact has existed for many, many years. The question is, why are we not utilizing it? This is the conundrum facing today’s businesses and government agencies; simply, “why are you not digitizing most of your paper processes when the technology is available and it would actually save you a lot of money?”

We thought the digital revolution would kill paper but it didn’t despite our best efforts over more than a quarter of a century. The pundits are now say that the mobile revolution will kill paper but will it? Will the iPad and iPhone and Kindle and mobile apps kill paper? Will the best efforts of the Obama government to digitize medical records and other areas of business kill paper in the USA? Has China mandated digital in lieu of paper; has India? What about the bankrupt nations of the European Union; where will they find the money to digitize their vast stores of paper?

The root problem with both business and government is that neither fixes things that aren’t broken and neither wants to spend money on something that won’t generate a profit in the short term. Both Wall Street and government bureaucrats have short attention spans; three months appears to be about the maximum time anyone wants to look ahead. For these reasons paper usage in both private enterprise and government is unlikely to change anytime soon; both have more important priorities and paper still ‘works’. So what is the future for our old friend paper in other areas of our lives?

Will we all be reading books on the latest Kindle in five years’ time or will the troglodytes stubbornly demand old-fashioned books? Will we all be reading the news on our iPads or Kindles in five years’ time or will there still be a place for paper newspapers and magazines? Will we all go to meetings with our iPads or Smartphones and forego paper minutes? Will retail establishments email or SMS receipts instead of printing them? Will we all have electronic signatures so contracts can be signed without paper and pen? Where will the raw material come from for paper airplanes and kites? How will we wrap our  birthday and Christmas presents? What will the English wrap their fish and chips in? Will we all have to follow the French or Japanese and install bidets or those awfully clever but worrisome robotised Japanese toilets (I certainly worry about all that mechanised hardware so near sensitive body parts)?

Personally I don’t think paper is going to disappear in a hurry. I do think usage will gradually fall, especially in business but I don’t see any “fall off the cliff’ sudden drop in paper usage in the next five years or so. In fact, I think paper manufacturers will continue to come up with clever and innovative ways to use paper.  How about disposable paper underwear, shirts, dresses and the like? How about electronic paper able to receive and display digital information? How about fibre-impregnated and baked paper car bodies? They would be cheap and easy to make and one hundred-percent recyclable.

We have to remember that if it wasn’t for the paper companies there would be far less trees in the world. Tree plantations provide the perfect sustainable resource and must surely meet every greenie’s best practice requirements. No, I do not have shares in any paper making company. I just happen to like trees and paper and I think paper is still a brilliant invention and often the absolutely best and most appropriate medium. I also don’t like reading books on the iPad or Kindle; give me a good old paper book every time thank you. I guess that makes me a troglodyte!

Maybe it will take a few future generations who don’t read books or newspaper or magazines but get all their information from the TV or their mobile device via RSS feeds to finally kill paper. If that happens it will be a sad time because then the population will be like trained rats; fed whatever information the powers to be want them to have.  

If this happens, we will have lost the ability and will to seek out and research information. The only information we will get is what someone else thinks is suitable for us (I could be talking about Google here) and that will be a very sad day for mankind. Let’s hope we do not allow this to happen. Unfortunately, these things have a habit of slowly creeping in over years so we don’t notice. I for one certainly don’t want to wake up in 5 years’ time and realize I am on a hundred-percent diet of ‘fed’ information and wonder how it happened. How about you? Maybe we should hang on to paper just a little bit longer.