Document and Content Management
Decision Matrix

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Access Research

Its been quite a week.  Something like 9 Docova demos in 5 days.  Sitting at Heathrow waiting for my gate to be announced so I will compose a blog entry.   Here is a bit of a synopsys of the week past:

April  24

Volcanic ash clouds have cleared up...so I am at the airport about to depart for Heathrow...the hub from hell.  Flight leaves at 11:30 PM out of Toronto.  This was my best flight to the UK to date as I slept pretty much the whole way.

April 25

Andy met me at the airport. He is the business partner who saw Docova and immediately booked a weeks worth of appointments with propective customers. He picked me up outside Terminal 3 and in about 40 minutes I was in Godalming, a nice historic village outside of London.  The challenge now is to stay awake.  Sleeping this early in the day just makes the jet lag worse.  Went to a pub up the street called the Anchor, recently under new mgt.  Inn keeper is a 64 old former chef.  Turns out he is a regular on a TV cooking series and at one time was known as Great Britain's greatest chef.  Yes...the food was good.

April 26

Docova training starting at 10 am for the partner. Basically doing an intro for the sales team in the morning and the technical team in the afternoon.  That pretty much consumed the entire day. Had lunch eating a sandwhich with Andy in an old cemetary that dates back something like 800 years.  Sent the evening at the Pub playing bar billiards.  Cool game.  People are very friendly, and thanks to a mispent youth playing pool I was able to hold my own.

April 27

Off to Gatwick the next morning...catching a plane to Edinburgh for our first appointment on Wednesday.  Flights in the UK are cheap... 30 ish pounds. Double that for the taxes but in Canada that would not get you past security for any Canadian destination.  Andy is running a Mac Powerbook.  Got to admit, this thing is impressive. He runs several virtual machines for the Windows environment.  Works well...and fast.

April 28

Off to the client site first thing in the morning.  Demo is to a customer that supplies interrior displays to hotels, retail, almost any organization that needs them.  They have a Notes application that is based on the mail template.  It has become a bit of a bear to maintain.  

We demonstrated Docova, and the drag and drop capability will turn a long process into one that only takes a few mintues....virtually eliminating the admin required.  Customer has 600 users and looks like they want to get going soon.  Docova supports Notes 6- 8.5...so they do not have to upgrade their older R6 environment.  Welcome news as they let the M&S slide.  Then again the DAOS in R 8.5 may push them that way.  That will consolidate any attachments, saving storage space and making the system more efficient.  We also support a distributed server model and since they have several Domino servers this bodes well.

In the car and off to our second meeting with a  window manufacturer in the afternoon.  Andy is doing a demo for Notes Pump, to help them with their 8.5 upgrade.  Docova came in on the tail end.  The demo went well. Nice when the customer has web development skills, as they can appreciate the speed of delivery Docova offers for Web applications.  

Bit of a run to the airport, and a short 30 minute flight over to Belfast in a twin turboprop.  Grab another rental call then off to the hotel in Carricfurgen, up the coast from Belfast. This is our second Ford Focus rental in a row.  Like driving in a tin can.  The car is a standard transmission, as all rentals are in this part of the UK, and it was freaky for me to have the stick in the right place  but no steering wheel or peddles.

April 29

Up early again.  Off to a meeting with a DomDoc customer in Northern Ireland.  Stopped at a place called Burnt Island and had Black Pudding at a small cafe.  Hard to believe this is an English dish and people order it for breakfast.  Gound pig intestines,  formed in a patty and served warm with a laryer of skin holding the shape.  Yikes!

Had a group of five for the demo, including the Document Control Manager.  They love DomDoc for its functionality and affordability. This is a power generating station, and process and control is the name of the game. We alsmost got an applause at the end. DomDoc is functional, but Docova is even more so and the UI is a breath of fresh air. The dream of the Doc Control person was easy to demonstrate, something they have been striving for with DomDoc but not quite able to pull off.  It requires integration with MS Word, and the pushing of info from Docova to bookmarks.  Easy task for thingFactory, one of the web toolkits used to create Docova.

Back in the car and a mad rush cross country to meet another partner in Antrim near Belfast. We have a demo an hour and a half drive to the east with two councils, the equivalent of municipal gov'ts back in Canada.   Andy is heading south to do  a demo of his own.  My demo went well, although the council's are at an early stage and do not have  solid grasp of their requirements yet.   Bit of a fight through construction afterwards but Geoff got me back to the airport in Belfast in time for the 7 PM flight to Gatwick.  Could not meet up with Paul Mooney, as there was simply no time. Paul lives in Belfast and I had indicated I may give him a ring on the way through.

April 30

Working out of the partner offices today.  Basically trying to get all of the quotes done.  Two more web demos, one to a Federal Reserve in the USA that learned about Docova following a meeting with the IBM team and a local business partner.   Meeting setup for Monday and Docova looks to be the missing link for their DomDoc migration.  Another demo in the afternoon for a food services company in Ireland. This time over a web meeting.  Project Mgt, Quality control...all things we have done before.   Partner is teeing up a followup meeting with senior mgt as we passed the audition with flying colors.

Andy showed me his Mac Time Machine. Wireless 1.5 TB device that backs up his machine every week. He can go back to any of the images at any time.  Graphics are stellar. Thats it, I am sold.   Goodbye stinkpad.

Out to dinner with Andy and the major sharholder.  Dined in an old church, that was converted to an auction house then to a restaurant.  Expected a bold of lightning to come through the roof at any time.  Talked about the state of the Notes world.  Agreed it is decaying, but that being the big fish in a small pond has some solid business logic.

May 1

Had the morning to kill before taking the train/bus to Hearthrow.  Wandered Goldalming.  Place is so quaint it is almost too much. Small cobbled streats, old buildings and lots of history.  This is where the telegraph operator from the Titantic grew up.  Went back to the old church and watched the lawn bowling while I strummed my guitar.   Sitting in a cemetary...wish I knew some Greatful Dead tunes.   Then wandered to the Red Lion in. Will miss the open mike session as I have to hit the road.  Very cool pub. Going to have to come back here.  

Train and a bus ride takes me to now...sitting in Heathrow waiting for the gate to be announced. Daughter and her boyfriend will be picking me up at the airport Toronto.  Another reminder how time marches on.

Cheers,