ILTA Vendor Watchlist

One of the main reasons I like to attend the ILTA conference is to sit down with the various vendors and figure out what is new, and more importantly what is next. Conferences are a great show case for a vendors current product line, and a great way to attract new customers, but they are also a great way to reach out to existing customers and get a chance to listen to the people who are currently using the products. Just spending a few minutes in the booth talking to the representatives gives you a good sense for where they are heading, and what they think is the next big thing.

I hope that this years conference is no different. I am looking forward to talking with a few vendors in particular.

Autonomy: Obviously there is a lot to talk about with the recent merger and update of the product line. I think more importantly will be a chance to look very closely at 8.5, and discuss what is coming in 9.0. I have been saying for 2 or 3 years now that the idea of a desktop or even Outlook integrated client will not be around forever. Web services, and modern operating systems make the need for a client side program somewhat obsolete. I think we are seeing this with the Fileshare component of 8.5, the ability to simply browse to a folder in the OS and work with Interwoven is a step in the right direction. Really looking forward to seeing what options the future holds.

Workshare: Love them or hate them, they are the leaders in the comparison and document protection space in the legal industry. I have been hearing some interesting things about the work they are doing to pull the job of comparison and metadata extraction off of the client and put it up on the server. I am planning to learn everything I can about the new product offerings, how they work, and what the future holds. I am very curious about where they see collaboration enhancements in their products making a real difference in document collaboration. The bottom line is, we need to get some of our addins out of Outlook, and it looks like Workshare is working in that direction.

Microsoft: I am not sure what kind of presence they will have, but the use of MS tools at the firm is widespread. If they are there I want to take a look at the most recent developments with Office Communicator and Live Meeting. We are starting to use these more and more behind the firewall, and I would really like to see the use expanded. Of course, I will be keeping my eye open for any peaks at Office 2010. The next version of Office could be a real game changer. I think we will be skipping 2007 and waiting for 2010, so finding out what I can is important.

I am going to be reviewing all of the product offerings in three categories, as I like to know what is available.

Document Comparison: The ability to run really amazing redlines is the at the core of the practice for some of our attorneys. What is available? Is the compare feature that is built into Office finally good enough for real time use? What about real time comparison as part of collaboration like Workshare Pro has? This is always an area I like to explore, and it looks like the market has quite a few nice products to investigate now.

PDF Creation: I think this might be the bane of my existence. We have a PDF creation tool on every desktop, but many people need Adobe Pro/Std. What tools are out there? Can we get Adobe Standard style features for less than the cost of an Adobe Standard license? Does it make sense to go a none Adobe route?

Word Marco Packages: We are quite happy with the way Innova is working, but it is a market that deserves some looking into. Each of the vendors has a different UI and a different approach to how the macro suites should work. I am particularly interested in how the vendors are taking advantage of the enhancements in Word 2007 and beyond. Seems that a lot of things that are done via code today now have a place in the application directly ( building blocks for example).

As always, I am going to work on scheduling as many one on one meetings as I can with our core vendors to talk about where things are going. Once the conference schedule is out I will start populating my calendar with meetings, don't want to miss out on any critical sessions.