Documents-as-a-Service ℠ White Paper - Document Analytics - Document SEO - Document SEM - Document Search Engine - ECM - WCM - Vuzit
DocumentsasaService (SM) Harnessing value from and controlling document creation and sha April 2010 Contents Executive Summary ................................................................ 3 Introduction - Problems with Documents ................................................................ 3 Enterprise Content Management ................................................................ 3 Web Content Management and Analytics ................................................................ 4 Documents-as-a-Service (SM) ................................................................ 5 Documents-as-a-Service (SM) in ECM ................................................................ 5 Documents-as-a-Service (SM) in WCM ................................................................ 6 Gain control of document chaos: the payoff ................................................................ 7 Document Analytics ................................................................ 9 Document Search Engine ................................................................ 10 Mobile Devices ................................................................ 11 Digital Watermarks ................................................................ 11 Document Previews ................................................................ 12 Developer Community ................................................................ 12 Summary ................................................................ 12 Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 2 Executive Summary This White Paper addresses the specific technical aspects of the Vuzit Documents as a Service (DaaS) product by discussing its underlying architecture and features, by recommending deployment scenarios, and by providing detailed discussions on how to best use the product. To address the needs of a broad range of users, this paper first provides a basic tutorial on document manage-ment and document content creation. It then builds upon this foundation to explore advanced topics and opportunities for migrating desktop document creation to a web-based environment. In addition to discussing specific technical features, this paper discusses the key concepts and best practices for creating an accurate information architecture and site framework. Finally, this paper addresses how to formulate a plan for migrating to a secure web document management system. Vuzit outlines the current problems with documents in Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Web Content Management (WCM), and Content Management Systems (CMSs) environments and the respective workflows that facilitate these systems. This paper explains the Vuzit Documents-as-a-Service (DaaS) approach and techniques for migrating from traditional enterprise desktop document deployments to next-generation web technologies. Introduction Problems with Documents One thing is clear; CXOs and IT managers are struggling to keep pace with the ever-increasing demands surrounding documents, and supporting all the workflows required to interact and collaborate with them efficiently. Not only is the sheer quantity of documents exploding, so is the number of content types and software required to interact with them. To make matters worse, there is increased pressure to support more platforms including an array of mobile devices that require access to documents. Enterprise Content Management Enterprise Content Management is the discipline involved with the capture, storage, and management of this kind of content across the enterprise. It makes information easy to find, use, update, and discard when the time comes. Email is a huge source of problems faced by enterprise IT departments. The nearly unlimited storage provided by consumer email providers has trained many people to use their inbox as a solution for archiving documents, version control, and repository search. This leads to an enormous amount of wasted server storage, excessive network bandwidth consumed, plus human and financial resources required to support and maintain them. Electronic documents are portable, which makes them easy to share, but also hard to control and track leading to many problems and risks. For example, when documents such as whitepapers, financial reports, and contracts are posted to websites, web applications, or email messages, the document creator has already lost complete control of the document and it can never be revoked. Emails, once sent, are archived by external computers for months or in perpetuity. More importantly, the document creator cannot track who is reading the document, and when it was accessed. As workgroup collaboration and mobility continue to rise within Enterprise organizations, security policies regarding access-control, data retention, revocation, and auditing become increasingly important. Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 3 The impact and risk from security breaches and document misuse can create significant business disruptions. The Ponemon Institute, the leading privacy and data protection research center, indicates that 84% of businesses have experienced a breach of their sensitive information in the past 12 months. The cost to remediate such breaches averages $6.5 million per breach. Repairing damage to the company brand after such a breach can drive these costs even higher. In addition to the costs to remediate breaches, businesses and publishers risk losing millions in revenue when subscription content can be forwarded to recipients who will never pay for its use. Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions are costly, difficult to deploy, and come at the expense of usability. Another issue is that the DRM software can be cracked, and without the content creator ever being notified since the sensitive content has already been acquired (i.e. it is just encrypted). Many of these solutions require the recipient to install software on their computer in order to access the content, and this is often impossible if the recipient is at a different organization. This can disrupt critical business processes, so many people will resort to simply attaching the document to an email without regard to its sensitivity. The archival of documents in a centralized repository is a common function of all organizations. However, searching the repository for text and meta-data across all file types is an extremely expensive operation to maintain. This problem is exacerbated by the lack of version control capabilities and detection of duplicates that force search engines to search irrelevant content. Web Content Management and Analytics Sharing documents outside the workplace is a common activity for online marketers today. Marketing departments cannot easily update website content or copywriting without getting involved in the arduous IT deployment process. This affects the ability to market products efficiently, and ultimately impacts the bottom-line. Documents are the "black-hole of the internet." Search engines and analytics' packages do not satisfy the needs of content marketers that publish white papers, technical specifications, and user manuals in non-HTML format (e.g. PDFs, DOCs, etc.). For instance, there is no way to embed a document for an optimized landing page that includes branding, additional site navigation, calls-to-action, and lead capture. It's not possible to see what pages of a document were accessed and for how long, without requiring visitors/searchers to install additional software (prohibited by most usability experts). Many lead generation experts often advocate publishing content as HTML to avoid these problems. Downloadable documents, such as PDFs, take web visitors away from the website and force them to open a desktop application (e.g. Adobe Reader) to read the document, thus disrupting the online viewing experience. When documents are meant to be widely distributed, document owners have no way to know who is reading their documents, when and how, so important document usage data is also lost. If the website is advertising-driven or promotes its own products, then this will result in lost revenues, decreased high-quality leads, and poor returns for expensive documents, such as reports and white papers, due to a lack of knowledge regarding how these documents are utilized. It is becoming increasingly difficult and nearly impractical to enforce that all departments, knowledge workers and workgroup teams to use the same set of document systems that has worked in the past. More and more departments are finding ways to bypass IT by using Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 4 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications that knowingly violate internal corporate policies, and then asking for forgiveness later. IT Departments need to adapt to systems that give them the flexibility to maintain control over corporate content while not preventing the business from moving to keep pace with the market. Vuzit DocumentsasaService (SM) The Vuzit Documents-as-a-Service approach provides a fresh perspective on old problems using game changing technologies. Documents-as-a-Service requires that systems support a variety of file types, documents are available on-demand, documents can be accessed in a number of presentation platforms and devices, and with a unified interface for interacting with information and services. Applications built on DaaS can be easily switched from on-premises to "in the cloud" deployments. Furthermore, these applications are file-type and device agnostic such that documents, spreadsheets, and CAD drawings can be accessed on any device. Documents-as-a-Service supports proprietary file types, software applications, and hardware, but its interoperability is enabled by a heavy emphasis on web services and standards that are now the preferred "interoperability glue" today. Web services, open source web standards, and web browser technology have reached a point where the web browser is the ideal and expected interface for most applications and workflows. Applications built on DaaS take advantage of recent technological advances to integrate documents and associated workflows completely into the web browser experience. Since Documents-as-a-Service is built on standards, then it's easier for different applications to interact with one another. Creating "Enterprise Mash-ups" is much simpler with applications built on open web standards than proprietary formats and protocols such as Flash or Java. The additional benefit of DaaS approaches is that they expect modern web browsers and don't require any additional software or browser plug-ins. DocumentsasaService (SM) in ECM Many experts use the phrase Enterprise 2.0 when referring to applying Web 2.0 approaches to Enterprise organizations and their associated systems. The Documents-as-a-Service approach is compatible with this new way of thinking about documents and search in that it encompasses Enterprise social documents, workgroup collaboration, web services, syndication, web widgets, mash-ups, and open standards. Furthermore, a Documents-as-a-Service architecture doesn't limit the Enterprise to cloud offerings, so they can continue to utilize on their trusted on-premise infrastructure. Documents-as-a-Service successfully addresses several key issues such as: · Security. We have reached new frontiers for security with web services and standards. This is in stark contrast to proprietary applications and protocols present in legacy systems from the past decade. The markets are demanding more interoperability, and at an affordable price point, so naturally open protocols, standards, and open source software are penetrating further into ECM deployments. The security paradigms in the Documents-as-a-Service framework involve the same problems, but the implementations have their differences. Authentication, authorization, access-control, data retention, revocation, and auditing can still be achieved with these new technologies hence organizations can still obtain SAS-70 Type I and II, Sarbanes Oxley (SOX), and HIPAA compliance statements from accredited organizations. 5 Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 · Email. Enterprise email systems are expensive to maintain and they consume significant IT staff time and resources. The Documents-as-a-Service methodology addresses many problems with corporate email systems. Documents-as-a-Service integrates with these systems directly by removing email attachments (i.e. "scrubbing") and inserting URL references in the body of the message to a document in the repository. This approach prevents documents from being archived in a recipient's local or remote server systems, doesn't require cumbersome DRM technology, and doesn't require either party to install any software. Since attachments remain stored in the repository they receive the same benefits of archiving, search, tracking, access-control, and revocation. DRM. Documents-as-a-Service represents a paradigm shift in how Digital Rights Management (DRM) and access-control are deployed. Documents-as-a-Service typically sends all document content over the network "on-demand", so unlike file-based technologies, the recipient doesn't have physical access to the document until after they have been authenticated and authorized. The brute-force cracking of sensitive content, which is common in file-based approaches, isn't even possible in Documents-as-a-Service. Enterprise organizations have been demanding alternatives to DRM technology since it's riddled in usability and hacking problems, and DaaS is poised as a powerful alternative. Web Services. The Documents-as-a-Service architecture relies heavily on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), HTTPS, and Representational State Transfer (RESTful) web services. These have become the bread and butter of web services today, and are the keystone of interoperability in the DaaS methodology. This enables a document repository to remain separately managed with a breadth of interfaces that make it easy to build into all existing document workflows. Documents can be incorporated into mash-ups and hybrid web applications that build documents into other critical business workflows. This includes access to the search engine, content, revision history, and collaborative features that provide an Enterprise social document experience. · · DocumentsasaService (SM) in WCM Documents-as-a-Service in WCM creates a paradigm shift in how documents are accessed online, since documents traditionally don't work well with web browsers. Before DaaS, document creators would either hyperlink directly to a document file, manually convert the content into HTML format which is costly, or rely on proprietary plug-ins that need to be downloaded and maintained. The Documents-as-a-Service approach maximizes all of these opportunities by ensuring content is always accessible in a web browser, on any platform, and with any modern mobile device. Content creators and online marketers can be assured that visitors will always get their message. The Documents-as-a-Service model could be viewed simply as making documents behave like ordinary web content. This allows documents to interoperate with all existing web platforms in ways that were previously unrealizable. This includes web analytics' packages, social media tools, and best practices from search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). To manage the exponential growth of business-critical documents, respond faster to the marketplace, and increase employee productivity, your document management capabilities must address two key areas: Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 6 · Analytics. The Documents-as-a-Service method collects detailed analytics about the usage of documents. For instance, if a company sends a sales prospect a white paper, then the company can judge the interest of that person based on either the number of or type of interactions they had with the document. Interactions might include which pages were reviewed and for how long, what mobile device was used, and what content was zoomed in/out of the document. The Documents-as-a-Service approach not only captures this information, but also makes it available through a Search API that can be leveraged in other applications. Essentially Documents-as-a-Service brings web analytics to documents. Search Engine Integration. Documents have been a "second class citizen" of the internet, and they are mostly incompatible with best practices used in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Documents are rarely used for content marketing due to accessibility issues, but with Documents-as-a-Service marketers can use documents in all types of landing pages. Furthermore, content can be dynamically triggered as a visitor scrolls through specific pages of a document. These touch points can be used to display video, lead capture forms, or other calls to action. Documents-as-a-Service provides web services to get the full text and keywords of documents so you can create better landing pages for documents that are more discoverable by search engines. This approach presents enormous opportunities for documents online that previously didn't exist. · Documents-as-a-Service is revolutionizing document workflows by outsourcing and centralizing a number of critical Enterprise functions. It's a natural evolution that follows from the current trends in a variety of similar industries. It's how documents meet the web by making documents behave like web content. Documents are a horizontal market so it affects ECM, WCM, CMSs, and the workflows that interact with these systems. Gain control of document chaos: the payoff Vuzit's DocuPub Documents-as-a-Service Platform is changing the way documents can be viewed, protected, shared and monitored, in any application, and on multiple devices. The Vuzit DocuPub Platform has a multi-tenant software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based architecture optimized for both cloud computing and enterprise infrastructures. At the heart of the DocuPub Platform is patent-pending technology, submitted in December 2008, for quickly and accurately converting documents to non-downloadable images and serving them up in a web browser. The DocuPub Platform enables customers to share documents in a plug in-free (i.e. without Adobe Flash), web-based document viewer while restricting the editing, printing, forwarding, copying and downloading of over 40 file types. Vuzit provides the tools that facilitate collaboration throughout the document creation, review and editing process. Our software is well-suited to be of service for monitoring and cataloging document control and version updates. Vuzit's DocuPub Platform possesses the capability to connect web forms, video media (i.e. YouTube) and other multimedia content with the document thereby substantially enriching the document viewing experience. No other solution in the market provides this capability. Vuzit has received awards and recognition for its innovative software. Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania recognized Vuzit for its document platform design with the 2008 Emerging Business Award for Most Innovative Product. In 2009, Vuzit was one of 40 companies invited to participate in Early Stage East, a venture capital showcase event, and one of 50 companies invited to Intuit's Entrepreneur Day where partnership opportunities were Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 7 discussed. In addition, Vuzit has been featured in the Philadelphia Business Journal, Technically Philly, TechCrunch and Hacker News on topics ranging from new innovative businesses in the region to SaaS applications and cloud computing. Vuzit offers a state-of-the-art document management system and a methodology for enabling the viewing of documents not created in web pages and requiring the use of an application in the browser. With Vuzit, a plug-in is not necessary to see the document in any web page. As a result, Vuzit is helping organizations eliminate document confusion with an easy-to-use solution that sets the standard for end-to-end document conversion from PDF to an intelligent, electronic document format. Vuzit controls downloading, copying and forwarding documents inside or outside the organization. Vuzit protects and enables secure sharing of information, makes available workgroup collaboration for document interactions and annotations, and provides the document creator with complete control over the document. This allows the creator the ability to recall their document at any time. Vuzit provides a collaborative document annotation environment and intuitive user interface, while integrating with documents, spreadsheets, and other files that reside on the desktop. This includes every day business applications like e-mail, presentations, spreadsheets, complicated financial records and many others. DocuPub is entirely web-based software so it doesn't require any software plug-ins (such as Adobe Flash) or desktop software to function thereby significantly reducing development time and on-going maintenance. Vuzit provides control capabilities so that document creators can be in charge of whether document viewers can allow or prevent the downloading, printing, copying, and forwarding of documents allowing for document flexibility and organization. The Vuzit solution provides many capabilities not available in traditional document design packages: Document Creation · Enables users to quickly create and maintain document templates, define a form's business logic, make changes, and preview documents before they are deployed in the web. Does not require IT or technical skills to create Vuzit documents. Supports 40 document extensions (e.g. doc/x, PDF, xls/x, ppt/x, jpeg, etc.). Provides the ability to share objects (such as desktop presentations, documents, and drawings) online. Documents can move through a defined series of approval stages, with e- mail notification at each step, usually including a URL link back to the document awaiting approval. Allows personal document creation and sharing. Facilitates document annotations and editing from smartphone devices. Offers multilingual document creation and provides language-specific access. Gain insights into who reads what documents, when and how. Data includes: time spent reviewing the document, which pages were viewed, what key words or tags were viewed. Captures IP addresses for geolocation purposes and tracking. Improves lead quality, enhances document quality, and creates document audit trails. Promotes most popular content. · · · · · · Document Analytics · · · · · Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 8 · SEO-enabled Documents · · Enables organizations to intelligently capture information regardless of the user environment - online or offline and internal or external. Provides document security and surveillance capabilities in a web services infrastructure. Uses keywords embedded in the document content to drive website traffic desired for precision marketing actions. Supports all versions of the major web browsers and browser components including Mozilla Firefox 1.5 - 3.0, Internet Explorer 6 7, Apple Safari 3.0 - 3.2 and Adobe Flash 9 10 (required for printing). Includes videos, web forms, social media content, and additional relevant content to compliment documents thereby increasing interactivity and website "stickiness". With Vuzit, a video tutorial can be downloaded within an electronic document. Allows browsers to preview actual content to turn them into buyers. Improves lead generation contact information by providing more valuable content. Preserves native file, original is protected "under glass". Controls, permits and revokes document access. Enables Adobe PDF documents to be converted into Vuzit electronic formats to prevent tampering and hacking. Provides addition of application-specific options, for example, showing a list of documents authored by the selected person(s) or displaying a user profile. Social, Dynamic Documents · · Landing Page Conversation and Optimization Document Protection · · · · · · Document Analytics Vuzit provides enterprise-class document analytics and behavior tracking for your content marketing needs. You can measure the ROI on your content to make more informed decisions. Vuzit provides unprecedented document analytics capabilities that will tell you: · · · · who and when a reader opens your documents what pages of the document they spent the most or least time where in the world your readers are visiting how much time a person spent on each page Vuzit also tracks when a reader downloads the original files, increases the size of the page, or decreases the size of the page. As shown in Figure 1, the Vuzit viewer is always tracking the usage of content in the viewer and requires no additional programming. The analytics information can be retrieved in the Vuzit Dashboard, Microsoft Excel, or using a software program written in the Web Service API. Using the JavaScript API, developers can take advantage of an additional feature where any custom attribute can be attached to each viewer instance (e.g. for tracking the username of each reader). Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 9 Figure 1 Document Analytics Document Search Engine Finding the right information is always a challenge. Vuzit helps with this challenge in a number of ways by enabling document creators to utilize user-generated tags in their document and web publications. This allows the Vuzit search engine to index them to make the relevant materials related to the document retrievable according to creator or enterprise's specific requirements. In addition, Vuzit provides a fast, full text search engine that works the same as Google's search engine to find electronic documents. Sophisticated search solutions analyze content and help guide the searcher to the relevant Vuzit-created documents to assist with business decisions and providing the ability to act swiftly in powerful and meaningful ways. Vuzit enables keywords embedded into the document content to drive website traffic for the business. The primary objective of Vuzit's enterprise search functions is the recorded behavior of your browsers to provide you with important clues about their interests. You can use these clues to determine customers and browsers who have searched the site using the keyword high definition television. Enterprise search marketing is to improve the browser-to-buyer conversion ratio. Vuzit improves the efficiency and effectiveness by which a business can attract, retain, and leverage their most profitable customers. This means popularity of customers who browse through the catalogs and documents will also buy the products and turning non-customers into customers and turning existing customers into better customers. Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 10 Mobile Devices Vuzit is compatible with the iPhone, most BlackBerry devices, and all mobile devices that contain a modern web browser. As shown in Figure 2, the Image API can be used to create simple interfaces, or very rich AJAX-based document viewers. Figure 2 iPhone Display Digital Watermarks It's simple to add text that is displayed on the Vuzit viewer and generated PDF files. This is typically used to identify the end-user that has access to a sensitive document. However, the text you specify in the watermark variable can be any arbitrary text. As shown in Figure 3, Vuzit provides two interfaces for creating document watermarks. The first is to use the JavaScript API that provides control over the viewing interface, as well as when the end-user downloads the document. Vuzit also provides a Web Service API that can be used to directly download the document. Both of these methods require authentication to ensure integrity and non-repudiation against replay attacks. Figure 3 Digital Watermarks Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 11 Vuzit can optionally generate a PDF file when you submit a document. If this option is selected, then the generated PDF file will contain watermarks when using our APIs. Vuzit cannot place watermarks on the original file unless it is a PDF (e.g. Microsoft Word documents). However, Vuzit's extensive APIs make it easy for you to prevent access to the original document, and only making a watermarked PDF file available for download (or none at all). Document Previews Publishers and content creators that sell subscription documents in a retail e-commerce environment can take advantage of the Vuzit Document Previews. This enables a few pages of a document to be previewed in the Vuzit document viewer before allowing access to every page of the document. The complete version of the document can be accessed within the Vuzit document viewer or as a downloadable version of the document. The Document Viewer API is part of the JavaScript API. This feature is useful if you are selling documents online and want to give to prospective buyers a sample of the content. Developer Community At the heart of the Vuzit organization is an experienced development team that appreciates elegant design, minimal code maintenance and ample supporting documentation and tools. The Front-end APIs control the appearance and interaction of the document. The Back-end APIs and client libraries allow you to quickly integrate Vuzit DocuPub Platform into your application or web site. The client libraries are open source, distributed through github, and available in all popular languages such as Java, .NET, PHP, and Ruby. Summary In this paper we introduce Vuzit's DocuPub platform helping organizations connect the right people with the right documents at the right time in a secure environment. Vuzit enables documents to be accessible from multiple devices, providing knowledge workers and workgroups with the ability to author and collaborate on document content from their familiar office applications. As we've discussed, Vuzit improves the web search presence through the use of innovative document search tools that are available from the DocuPub platform. When it comes to enterprise document challenges, Vuzit's capabilities and experience are virtually unparalleled. As a marketplace leader in document management software and solutions, Vuzit offers a broad set of mission-critical solutions that help businesses make better decisions, faster. Vuzit supports the widest array of document extensions in the industry, from Adobe to the broad set of desktop applications. Vuzit solutions also run on a wide variety of server hardware platforms and Internet search engines, providing the greatest degree of choice and flexibility in the industry, letting you create and manage your document environment as you see fit, not as the document publishing vendor dictates. The installation of the Vuzit DaaS platform for electronic document creation and management allows Vuzit to offer the most complete single-vendor end- to-end electronic document and content management solution in the industry. Attention: For more information about assistance with your migration planning, visit the following Web page: http://vuzit.com/help Vuzit.com 609-636-4620 12