wipro benchmark report

EMC® Captiva

® vs. the Competition

Wipro Benchmark Report

Sponsored by: EMC Corporation

October 2010

EMC® Captiva® Intelligent Enterprise Capture Solution

Contents

Executive Summary ............................................................................................... 3

Introduction............................................................................................................. 4

Goal of Evaluation ................................................................................................. 5

Basis for Comparison ............................................................................................. 6

Evaluation Results ................................................................................................. 8

Performance ..................................................................................................... 8

Administration ................................................................................................... 14

Usability (operator experience) ......................................................................... 22

Scalability .......................................................................................................... 23

Modularity and Interoperability .......................................................................... 25

Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 28

Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................. 29

About Wipro Product Strategy and Architecture Practice ....................................... 30

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EMC® Captiva® Enterprise Capture Solution

Executive Summary Intelligent enterprise capture is a critical component to enterprise content management. As such, the market for document capture solutions has evolved from basic scanning and imaging to advanced document capture – automated document classification and data extraction; each of the competitive solutions in the market continues to bring an ever-growing inventory of new features and functionality to the table. What really distinguishes one solution from another are the benefits that do not appear in the specifications list or on the price tag. Across all industries and business functions, the factors that determine the fit of a document capture solution for a business are how it aligns with the goals and direction of IT, how it fits into the business capture flow, and how long it will remain relevant and provide return on investment as the business changes to adapt to changing market conditions. As today’s marketplace becomes increasingly digital and data-driven, web-oriented, and globally distributed, the EMC® Captiva® intelligent enterprise capture solution will continue to pull further ahead of its competition. Captiva achieves this because it is built on modern, modular architecture that can adapt to evolving IT infrastructure conditions, and because it can meet the demands of the business capture requirements with scalability and flexibility that is unmatched by the competition.

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Introduction Capture solutions need to be able to perform capture quickly and efficiently in order to keep pace in today’s unforgiving marketplace. As businesses gather more data and more information, paper and filing cabinets have been replaced by digital content stored in content repositories. While the amount of digital content that must be managed continues to grow, businesses are simultaneously experiencing tremendous pressure to optimize document capture processes and minimize operational costs. As a result, competitive capture solutions today must be able to meet the demanding requirements for automating the capture of document and data, such as automatic classification of documents and extraction of free-form data for use by downstream business applications. Regardless of whether data is being captured for archiving or for transactional purposes, capture solutions today must be able to quickly and efficiently perform these tasks in order to remain competitive. For an enterprise capture solution to remain relevant in today’s IT environments, that solution must be flexible and modular in its design to be able to communicate with other applications and systems within service-oriented and web-based IT infrastructures. As more businesses begin to collect, integrate, manage, and share data with new techniques such as service-oriented architectures (SOA) and web services, capture applications that are built upon a monolithic, single-tier architecture will quickly become obsolete. A capture solution needs to also support virtualization enabling organizations to take advantage of better IT resource efficiency and availability. In order for an enterprise capture solution to remain relevant within the business process flow, that capture solution must be able to scale to the workload of both high-volume central capture centers and globally distributed networks of capture clients. As the ease with which businesses are able to communicate and share information increases, business that seek to extend the use of capture flow – via the web – to a globally distributed network of capture clients and other stakeholders will require a highly configurable and scalable capture solution to meet business requirements. The results are faster, more dynamic responsiveness to ever-changing business needs.

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Goal of Evaluation EMC® commissioned Wipro to perform a lab-based competitive benchmarking of the EMC® Captiva® intelligent enterprise capture solution along with the equivalent product suite of a leading competitor. The objective was to assess and compare the ability of each capture solution to meet the requirements of today’s business and IT environments. The components evaluated for EMC Captiva include:

EMC® Captiva® InputAccel® 6.0.1

EMC Captiva InputAccel is the heart of the EMC Captiva capture platform. EMC Captiva InputAccel is involved in each step of the capture process, from the time information is captured to the time it is exported to backend systems. For more information on EMC Captiva InputAccel, visit: http://www.emc.com/products/detail/software/inputaccel.htm

EMC® Captiva® Dispatcher® 6.0.1 EMC Captiva Dispatcher is a powerful tool designed to automatically classify documents and extract data as part of the capture flow. For more information on EMC Captiva Dispatcher, visit: http://www.emc.com/products/detail/software/dispatcher.htm

EMC® Captiva® eInput® 2.0

EMC Captiva eInput is a web-based distributed capture client that is used to scan, import files, and index documents from distributed locations. For more information on EMC Captiva eInput, visit: http://www.emc.com/products/detail/software/einput.htm

EMC Captiva and the competitive solution were deployed in environments of varying complexity and tested on the entire ownership experience, from unpacking and installation to client usability for system operators and system manageability for administrators. Both solutions were then carefully evaluated on the basis of overall performance, manageability, usability, scalability and modularity.

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Basis for Comparison EMC Captiva and the competitive software suite were each installed and deployed on the same hardware in an identical environment (setup conditions referred to hereafter as Model Test Bed 1)1, and were given identical batches of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured documents2 for processing. The performance of the two solutions for each test case was evaluated on the basis of the following attributes:

Performance

Importing and enhancement Classification and indexing Extraction and validation End-to-end document processing

Administration (manageability)

Ease of management, granularity of control, and customizability of options related to the following:

Installation (including usefulness and completeness of manuals and support resources) and deployment

Configuration and process development Batch management Security and permissions Reporting

Usability (operator experience)

Flexibility and customizability of user interface Ease of training software (classification/indexing) and manually keying

information

1 Model Test Bed 1 was set up with the following specifications: Single-server environment with rack mounted

Xeon Quad core server, 2.2 GHz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 146 GB SAS HDD running Windows server 2003 Enterprise SP2. Clients set up on a desktop PC with a Pentium-4 processor, 1.8GHz, 1 GB RAM, running Windows XP Professional SP2.

2 For more information on the types of documents used, refer to Appendix 1.

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Scalability Ease of balancing workload (daily, seasonal) Effectiveness in distributed capture environments

Modularity and Interoperability

Flexibility and adequacy of architecture design Interoperability with third party applications

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Evaluation Results EMC Captiva and the competitive solution were evaluated in a lab environment on the basis of overall performance, manageability, usability, scalability, and modularity. As shown in Table 1, EMC Captiva outperformed its competitor in nearly all comparison categories:

Table 1: Overall Evaluation Results

Legend: √ Denotes advantage = Denotes equivalence

EMC® Captiva® Competitive

Software

Performance √

Administration (manageability) √

Usability (operator experience) = =

Scalability √

Modularity and Interoperability √

Performance

For performance testing, both capture solutions were set up and tested within Model Test Bed 1. Both solutions were given identical batches of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured documents3 for processing. Solutions were then evaluated on the basis of processing speed, efficiency, flexibility, and functionality offered for each step in the capture flow. The overall results are depicted in Table 2:

Table 2: Performance Results



Software

Performance √

Importing and enhancement √

3 For more information on the types of documents used, refer to Appendix 1.

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Classification and indexing √

Extraction and validation = =

End-to-end document processing

√

Importing and Enhancement

As shown in Figure 1, EMC Captiva InputAccel was able to import images into the capture system 1.5 times faster than the competitive solution4.

Figure 1: Comparison of image import rate (pages per hour) using EMC® Captiva®

InputAccel®

As images are imported into the capture system, EMC Captiva enhances those images in a separate image enhancement module, which offers approximately forty different enhancement filter options. The competitive solution enhances images within the scan module (rather than in a separate module following scan and import), which has approximately fifteen options for enhancing images within the scan module. The competitive solution provides an additional, easy to integrate image enhancement module which can be bought at nominal extra cost. If integrated with the overall solution, the competitor solution

4 For the purposes of this testing, all pages that were processed were already scanned and saved as images

that were imported from a network folder. This test case was executed within Model Test Bed 1. A batch of 507 pages was used for this test case. This batch consisted of structured documents (field risk audit forms, application forms for telephone service, and hand-written credit card applications), semi-structured documents (invoices), and unstructured documents (pages from a manual and hand written order forms).

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provides additional image enhancement options that go beyond those provided by EMC Captiva. Therefore, while at the base level EMC Captiva and the competitive solution have roughly equivalent image enhancement capabilities, the competitor has a slight advantage when the additional image enhancement module is integrated with the capture system.

Table 3: Summary of Import and Enhancement Advantages

Basis for Comparison

Winner Explanation

Import Speed EMC Captiva InputAccel

InputAccel imported images from a network folder into the capture system 1.5 times faster than the competitive solution.

Enhancement Capabilities

Competitor Though at the base level, both solutions have roughly equivalent image enhancement capabilities, the competitor has an additional module that improves image capture and reduces re-scan requirements.

Classification and Indexing

In production, EMC Captiva Dispatcher has an automatic classification feature that saves a significant amount of time relative to the competitive solution for graphical classification. Averaged across three test trials, EMC Captiva Dispatcher was able to classify documents at more than six times the rate of the competitive software5:

5 This test case was executed within Model Test Bed 1. A batch of 3,000 pages was used for this test case.

This batch consisted of structured documents (field risk audit forms, application forms for telephone service, and hand-written credit card applications), semi-structured documents (invoices), and unstructured documents (pages from a manual, hand written order forms).

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Figure 2: Comparison of document classification rate

(pages per hour) using EMC® Captiva® Dispatcher®

As batches complete classification, batches in the competitive solution are sent through to the classification review module even if all the images in that batch are correctly classified. The operator then has to pass the properly classified batch on to the next module. EMC Captiva Dispatcher does not send all images to the classification review module; only those that were not correctly classified get passed through this module. This saves time and simplifies the indexing operator’s requirements.

Table 4: Summary of Classification and Document Review Advantages


Winner Explanation

Speed of Classification

EMC Captiva Dispatcher

Auto-classification capability makes Dispatcher six times faster than the competitor solution.

Document Review Efficiency

EMC Captiva Dispatcher

Unlike the competitive solution, in the default process, Dispatcher saves time by sending only batches with incorrectly classified images to the classification edit module.

6

This test case was executed within Model Test Bed 1. A batch of 3,000 pages was used for this test case. This batch consisted of structured documents (field risk audit forms, application forms for telephone service, and hand-written credit card applications), semi-structured documents (invoices), and unstructured documents (pages from a manual, hand written order forms).

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Extraction and Validation Averaged across three test trials, EMC Captiva Dispatcher performed zonal extraction eight times faster than the competitive solution, and it performed full page extraction 1.7 times faster than the competitive solution6:

Figure 3: Comparison of data extraction rate (pages per hour) for full page and zonal capture using EMC® Captiva® Dispatcher®

After extraction, both solutions release data to their respective validation modules where data is both manually and automatically validated. During validation, however, the competitive solution has two advantages over the EMC Captiva solution. First, both Captiva and the competitive solution allow administrators to “mask” certain types of data to prevent confidential data (i.e. complete order forms containing name, billing address, and credit card number) from being exposed in full to the same validating operator, which improves data confidentiality and security. However, the competitive solution allows administrators to assign different validating operator profiles to a specific field (name or credit card number), making it possible to systematically mask certain fields based on user profile information. This makes data masking more orderly and manageable using the competitive solution. Second, the validation module in the competitive solution is customizable; the location of text boxes can be dragged and dropped, panels can be hidden, and the font type and font size can be changed. EMC Captiva Dispatcher does not yet offer this level of customization within the validation module.

6

This test case was executed within Model Test Bed 1. A batch of 3,000 pages was used for this test case. This batch consisted of structured documents (field risk audit forms, application forms for telephone service, and hand-written credit card applications), semi-structured documents (invoices), and unstructured documents (pages from a manual, hand written order forms).

Table 5: Summary of Extraction and Validation Advantages


Winner Explanation

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Table 5: Summary of Extraction and Validation Advantages


Winner Explanation

Speed of Extraction EMC Captiva Dispatcher

Dispatcher performed zonal extraction7 8 times faster than the competitive solution, and it performed full page extraction8 1.7 times faster.

Validation Capabilities and Flexibility

Competitive Solution

The competitive solution enables masking of data to improve data confidentiality, and its validation interface is customizable.

End-to-end Document Processing

Averaged across three trials, the EMC Captiva solution (consisting of EMC Captiva InputAccel and EMC Captiva Dispatcher) completed end-to-end zonal capture 2.7 times faster than the competitor. When performing full page capture, the same EMC Captiva solution proved to be 2.6 times faster than the competitor9:

Figure 4: Comparison of end-to-end document capture speed for full page and zonal capture using EMC® Captiva® Dispatcher®

7 Zonal extraction is a process by which the capture application reads specifically zoned text from a scanned image. The

end user identifies and draws a "zone" on a sample image to be recognized. Once the zone has been established on the sample image, this zone will be applied to each image processed so that the data can be extracted from the image file and converted to an ASCII format. 8 Full-page extraction is the process of reading text from the entire page, without prior zoning. In effect, the entire page is

treated as a single zone. 9 For end-to-end performance testing, EMC® Captiva® and the competitive software were both tested within Model Test

Bed 1. The end to end performance testing included all steps in a document capture process - scan, classification, recognition, validation, and export. Times were measured from the beginning of image import through the completion of export. A batch of 3,000 pages was used for this test case, consisting of structured documents (field risk audit forms, application forms for telephone service, and hand-written credit card applications), semi-structured documents (invoices), and unstructured documents (pages from a manual, hand written order forms).

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As a result of this difference in processing throughput, businesses using the competitive solution would require more than twice the hardware capacity than what they would need using the EMC Captiva solution to process at the same rate as EMC Captiva.

Table 6: Summary of End-to-End Processing Advantages


Winner Explanation

End-to-end processing speed

EMC Captiva

The EMC Captiva solution completed zonal and full page document processing 2.7 and 2.6 times faster than the competitive solution, respectively.

Overall Processing Capabilities

EMC Captiva

EMC Captiva InputAccel enables businesses to maximize hardware utilization.

Administration

Both EMC Captiva and the competitive software were set up within Model Test Bed 1 and evaluated on the basis of overall ease of management, granularity of control, and customizability of options during installation, configuration and deployment. Security and permissions for various roles, as well as reporting capabilities of both solutions, were also examined. The overall results are depicted in Table 7:

Table 7: Administration Results

Legend: √ Denotes advantage = Denotes equivalence EMC® Captiva®

Competitive Software

Administration √

Installation (includes manuals and support resources) and deployment

√

Configuration, and process development √

Batch management √

Security and permissions √

Reporting = =

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Installation and Deployment

Installation

EMC Captiva products were able to be installed with fewer complications than the competitive products. Installation in a single server environment is self-explanatory; even a new user would have little need for the installation manual because the installer is intuitive and gives guidance. For an InputAccel multi-server installation environment where two or more servers operated as one system together, the manuals provide sufficient information to complete the installation. The manuals provided with EMC Captiva were very thorough and easy to follow. The competitive solution was much more challenging to install than EMC Captiva in both single-server and multi-server environments. Single-server installation was challenging because the installation process was not intuitive. The installation engineers had to refer to the manual for installation support. In addition, the installation engineers also needed the help of the customer support team to complete the installation. The competitor has also developed an MSI Installer for installation in Windows environments. However, the documentation provided for using the MSI Installer is limited and is focused more on the options available rather than on the steps involved in the installation. Further, the installation using the MSI installer pauses for a period of about twenty minutes towards the very end of the installation to make updates in the registry. As this is not documented as a known occurrence, engineers may tend to get confused about the status of the installation during this long wait period. EMC Captiva offers two options for multi-server operations – the ScaleServer environment for high performance and high throughput applications, and the clustered environment for high criticality applications that require high availability and data redundancy. EMC Captiva InputAccel is easy to install and configure for the ScaleServer environment. To install a group of servers in the ScaleServer environment, the user just needs to install individual InputAccel Servers and then add them as a group in the administrator console. The installation of EMC Captiva in a clustered environment is well defined and documented in the installation manual. The manual provides detailed steps for installing and configuring both individual InputAccel servers and ScaleServer groups in a high availability and failover clustered environment. In contrast, the competitor solution provides a single option for multi-server operations which requires installation in the complex clustered environment. Setting up a Microsoft cluster is a complex process that requires the help of a highly skilled Microsoft Windows administrator. Therefore, businesses using the competitor solution will necessarily incur additional costs of clustering for multi-server operations, even for applications that do not require high levels of data redundancy.

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Further, the competitor’s manual contains just two pages of information on clustering with information restricted to installing the software on a shared drive. Receiving additional installation support requires the purchase of professional support at extra cost. This potentially means that any business using the competitive solution that wishes to utilize multiple servers will face additional costs to install the solution.

Deployment

EMC Captiva offers a set of powerful tools for remotely deploying an enterprise capture set up for many geographically distributed locations. Using the Microsoft ClickOnce® deployment feature helps the user customize the deployment of modules. Using this feature, administrators can remotely deploy the ScanPlus®, ReScan Plus®, and IndexPlus® modules to distributed locations with ease. The competitive solution also has remote deployment features; however custom deployment of modules is not possible – all modules must be installed at the same time. Further, the administrator needs to explicitly update the Windows host file for the modules to work. Additionally, EMC Captiva also provides facilities for automatic updates which are not available in the competitive solution.

Table 8: Summary of Key Installation and Deployment Advantages


Winner Explanation

Intuitiveness of Installation Process

EMC Captiva

Both single- and multi-server installation is self-explanatory and can be completed with very little help from manuals or support resources.

Sufficiency of Manual EMC Captiva

Manual is more thorough and easier to follow. Competitive solution manual is inadequate and installation requires additional support resources (some of which come at an extra cost).

Deployment EMC Captiva

EMC Captiva ClickOnce allows customized deployment of modules, remote deployment and provides automatic update features

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Configuration, and Process Development

EMC Captiva and the competitive solution both offer unique configuration and deployment benefits.

Configuration

The EMC Captiva solution has two key advantages when it comes to project setup that gives it an edge over the competitive solution. First, EMC Captiva Dispatcher’s project development environment is able to recognize similar characteristics within a batch of documents during graphical (image-based) classification and organize them into batch classes without manual intervention. The competitive solution requires the project designer to select samples and manually train the system to classify documents based on the characteristics of these samples. This is particularly advantageous in the initial phases of the project as it reduces the time and effort required for the initial operations to begin.

The second key configuration advantage for EMC Captiva is that the competitive solution uses eighteen types of locators to find and extract data from document zones; an administrator using the competitive solution will spend a significant amount of time learning how each of these locators work in order to make a project file in which all the templates are defined and made ready for extraction. EMC Captiva Dispatcher, however, uses drag-and-drop setup of zones instead of locators. To make a project file in EMC Captiva Dispatcher, the administrator simply identifies field properties and zonal locations for each field. Because of these two key features, customers are able to reach the production stage faster when setting up a capture project with Captiva Dispatcher than with those of the competitive solution.

Process Development EMC Captiva InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer provides easy-to-use and productivity-enhancing features unmatched by the competitive solution. The required Captiva modules in a process can be dragged from a palette and dropped into a capture process flow. This drag and drop functionality provides a very intuitive interface when compared to the dialog box display and drop method of creating processes in the competitor solution. From our testing, we found that it is easier to implement conditional logic in EMC Captiva using the decision and jump flow controls provided by the Captiva InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer. Developing such logic in the competitor solution requires a large amount of complex code to be scripted to create workflow agents which, in turn, can handle conditional logic. In the case of EMC Captiva, all the code is automatically generated by the tool itself, thereby reducing the number of errors and increasing the efficiency of the code. Furthermore, it is easier to introduce custom steps in the process using the capabilities of the CaptureFlow Designer when compared to the competitor solution. Overall, EMC Captiva requires much lesser manual intervention for developing capture flow processes when compared to the competitor software.

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Table 9: Summary of Key Advantages for Configuration, Process Development


Winner Explanation

Configuration EMC Captiva

EMC Captiva Dispatcher uses graphical (image-based) classification to organize documents into logical document classes. It also has an intuitive drag and drop GUI for configuration of data extraction zones which shortens time to production

Process Development EMC Captiva

Simple easy to use drag-and-drop method for creating both simple and complex capture processes which can handle conditional workflows. Code required to develop customization is self generated by the tool increasing efficiency and reducing development time

Batch Management

Batch Creation

EMC Captiva offers intuitive and completely automatable steps to create batches from different data sources such as scanned images, FAX, and files from local or network folders, emails, or those imported from other software or digital devices. The competitive solution also provides for batch creation from multiple sources. In direct contrast to the competitor product, EMC Captiva also allows for more than one source of batch creation to be included into a single process flow. This is realized using the capabilities of the powerful multi-directory watch module and input sources such as the InputAccel scan module or the eInput web client. In summary, EMC Captiva offers superior batch creation capabilities from multiple sources when compared to its competition.

Managing Versioning and Updates

EMC Captiva InputAccel offers batch versioning and update properties which help better adherence to standards and best practices. For example, the competitor solution allows administrators to update the properties of the original process with a new one without giving the modified process a new name. EMC Captiva InputAccel, on the other hand, does not allow the administrator to make changes to the process and save it with the same name. Instead, the system prompts the administrator to alter the name of the modified process. This helps implement better traceability and naming convention best practices.

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Managing Batch Processing

Both EMC Captiva and the competitor solution possess batch splitting and routing capabilities, which allow the user to split a batch and then route parts of the batch to different steps in the document capture process. Both EMC Captiva and the competitor solution allow for documents to be reorganized without needing them to be rescanned. Once the documents are reorganized, the documents will be processed from the point where the processing had stopped before reorganizing the documents. In all such cases where reorganizing of documents is required, the processing restarts from the point where it has stopped in the case of both EMC Captiva and the competitor solution. The EMC Captiva InputAccel administrative console provides the flexibility to give the administrator much more granular control over how documents move through the capture flow compared to the competitor. When configuring a process flow, the administrator is able to set eight trigger levels ranging from zero (release once page is complete) to seven (release once batch is complete) that dictate how content is released into the next module in the capture flow. Therefore, particular documents and pages can be moved to the next step in the process flow even as the rest of the batch remains in a previous step.

In contrast, the competitor’s software will move the images to the next module in the process only after the entire batch has completed the previous step unless custom code is developed to split the batch and move the documents to the next step in the capture process. This trigger level feature in EMC Captiva InputAccel enables EMC Captiva users to complete the capture process significantly faster and more easily than in the competitive solution. EMC Captiva also provides the administrator with a view of the status of each page throughout the capture flow process compared to a collective status at the module level in the competitor solution. Further, EMC Captiva also allows the administrator to view the status of split batches, which the competitor solution does not provide. In summary, EMC Captiva provides administrators with powerful tools that provide greater visibility, flexibility and control across the capture process. This helps simplify the process of managing and administering batch operations, leading to reduced time to market and increase greater operational efficiencies.

Batch Class Updates

Both EMC Captiva InputAccel and the competitive solution provide ways to change batch class properties dynamically during progress of the process. This feature is better implemented in the competitive solution as it does not require the batch to be rescanned for the changed properties to take effect, whereas EMC Captiva requires the documents to be rescanned. It is also easier to deploy a process in the competitor solution by using a simple right click operation on the batch class. EMC Captiva, on the other hand, requires a more detailed process for deploying workflow processes.

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Table 10: Summary of Key Advantages for Batch Management


Winner Explanation

Batch Creation EMC Captiva

Batch creation can be completely automated. More than one source of batch creation can be included in a single flow

Management of Batch Performance Rules

EMC Captiva

Modified processes must be re-named, enabling administrators to easily trace back to previous versions.

Management of Batch Processing

EMC Captiva

Having granular control of how data passes between modules streamlines capture. The ability to set trigger levels helps modify documents

Batch class updates Competitive Solution

Competitive solution does not require a batch to be redeployed for changed batch class properties to take effect

Security and Permissions

Administrators using EMC Captiva InputAccel can assign a user to a specific module and specify different roles for the user within that module. This allows the administrator to provide the user with permissions to carry out only the specific set of operations required for the role, restricting access to all other operations. The competitive solution only provides capabilities to allow access to particular modules to users. This ability to restrict user permissions based on role is critical for organizations dealing with sensitive customer information. EMC Captiva InputAccel provides more secure management of user permissions than its competitor. EMC Captiva InputAccel user access integrates with Active Directory10, which enables single sign on (SSO) 11 through PC login to access the client. The competitive solution has an independent user management system in which administrators can alter user permissions independent of the company’s Active Directory security policies.

10 Active Directory is Microsoft’s LDAP server.

11 EMC Captiva InputAccel 6.0 supports single sign on as implemented by Microsoft.

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This can result in inconsistencies between Active Directory and the competitive solution’s user management roles and permissions, which creates potential security gaps. Because most organizations today are migrating towards an SSO environment to simplify user management and improve security, user access features like those found in the EMC Captiva InputAccel module will be necessary to ensure compliance with an SSO-based user management system.

Table 11: Summary of Key Security and Permissions Advantages


Winner Explanation

Management of User Permissions

EMC Captiva

Granular permissions management helps protect sensitive customer information

Security of User Permissions

EMC Captiva

User access tightly integrated with Active Directory, enabling compliance with SSO initiatives

Reporting

Both EMC Captiva InputAccel and the competitive solution possess comprehensive reporting capabilities, including detailed processing reports with granular information on process statistics, module performance and operator performance. Both solutions also enable the customer to create custom reports based on specific needs. However, because EMC Captiva enables administrators to manage multiple servers as one unified system, EMC Captiva InputAccel can produce reports with data from multiple servers, and multiple lines of business, as well. The competitive solution is only able to produce reports for individual servers. EMC Captiva also provides users with the status of individual pages, documents, and batches. Reports on the status of split batches can also be generated using EMC Captiva. The competitor solution, in comparison, only provides status reports at the module level and does not provide status reports for split batches.

Table 12: Summary of Key Reporting Advantages


Winner Explanation

Reporting Capabilities EMC Captiva

Captiva can produce reports with data from multiple servers, unlike the competitive solution. It can generate reports at the individual page, document, batch, and split batch level.

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Usability (operator experience) Overall, EMC Captiva allows administrators to better optimize the capture process flow for a more convenient user experience than the competitive solution. Both solutions allow for customization of the user interface within specific modules. In order to the facilitate easier training of the software, the competitive solution provides an operator-administrator feedback loop for modifying project files during production that is not yet available in EMC Captiva. These results are depicted in Table 13:

Table 13: Usability Results



Software

Usability (operator experience) = =

Customizability of user interface = =

Ease of training software/ manually keying information √

Customizability and Flexibility of User Interface

Both EMC Captiva and the competitive solution allow administrators and users to customize various aspects of the user interface to mask unnecessary components and simplify the layout of the interface based on the specific needs of the user. In EMC Captiva, users can resize, relocate, and hide task panels within the scan and index modules based on their unique capture requirements. The competitive solution allows for customization of the validation module for things like text box location, font size, and labels. These features can improve the speed and ease with which documents are processed.

Table 15: Summary of Key Advantages for User Interface Customizability


Winner Explanation

User Interface Customizability

Equal EMC Captiva offers customization of the scan and index interface. The competitor has more customizable validation interface.

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Ease of Training Software and Manually Keying Information

The competitive solution has a document learning module that allows manual keying operators to mark up documents with the required process modification required during production and share these marked documents with the system administrator. This feature provides an advantage whenever a new type of document enters the capture flow that does not fit into the existing project file; the operator’s insight enables the administrator to make modifications to the existing project file to accommodate the new type of document. This feature provides an operator-administrator feedback loop that is not yet available in EMC Captiva products.

Table 16: Summary of Key Advantages for Ease of Training Software and Manually Keying Information


Winner Explanation

Ease of Training Software

Competitor Competitive solution enables operators to share insights with administrators during production on how to modify project files to accommodate new document types.

Scalability

EMC Captiva outperforms the competitive solution in every aspect of scalability. The functionality granted by the EMC Captiva ScaleServer configuration is unmatched. Running EMC Captiva in the ScaleServer environment offers the administrator an almost infinite number of ways to fine-tune the configuration of the servers to rapidly respond to fluctuations in workload and optimize load balancing. This includes the ability to rapidly add servers in response to the workload, the ability to share software licenses between pools of servers, and the ability to handle wide fluctuations in workload by providing attended and unattended clients with connections to this pool of servers. The overall results from scalability testing are depicted in Table 17:

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Table 17: Scalability Results



Software

Scalability √

Ability to balance workload √

Effectiveness in distributed capture environments √

Workload Balancing The EMC Captiva ScaleServer environment is unique in that capture clients and servers are loosely coupled; clients can communicate with all the servers in the network at once. The impact of this client-server relationship was assessed in the controlled lab environment by simulating a business situation in which extra processing capacity is required for a short period of time to handle a sudden peak in workload12. In the ScaleServer environment, EMC Captiva was able to rapidly initiate servers on the fly and distribute workload across servers to accommodate the peak in workload volume.

What makes EMC Captiva so valuable is the speed and ease with which these new servers can be initiated; it takes just 20 to 30 seconds to initiate and configure a server to take on additional workload. With the competitive solution, although it is possible to configure additional servers to share workload, the workload balancing must be done when the process is defined; it cannot be done on the fly. Businesses using the competitive solution would have to add the new server to the cluster, re-boot the entire cluster, and modify and deploy the process to include the new server in the workload distribution. In order to optimize utilization of all the hardware at its disposal, organizations with daily or seasonal variation in processing loads would benefit substantially from the EMC Captiva solution.

Table 18: Summary of Key Advantages for Workload Balancing


Winner Explanation

Ability to Scale to Accommodate Changing Workload

EMC Captiva

EMC Captiva can run in a ScaleServer environment, which makes it possible to initiate servers on the fly to balance load.

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Load balancing was simulated by rapidly switching from 200 documents to 10,000 documents.

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Handling Large-Scale Distributed Capture Networks

Using the EMC Captiva InputAccel web-based administration console, all servers in a multi-server environment can be managed as one unified system from a single console. For large organizations with document and enterprise content management infrastructure installed over many geographically distributed locations, this feature gives EMC Captiva InputAccel a significant advantage over its competitor; from a single console, administrators can monitor capture processes, review batch errors, alter user permissions, and request custom reports from anywhere in the world. In the competitive solution, each server has its own unique administration console and reporting module, making it necessary to monitor processes, manage batches, and create reports for each server individually. As a result, administrators lack the power to quickly and easily view and manage enterprise-wide system performance and produce aggregated reports. This difference amounts to a much more holistic perspective on the enterprise-wide capture process for administrators using EMC Captiva InputAccel. EMC Captiva also includes in its solution suite a web-based capture client called EMC Captiva eInput that enables EMC Captiva customers to fully leverage the benefits of this web-based administration capability in distributed capture networks.

Table 19: Summary of Key Advantages for Handling Distributed Capture Networks


Winner Explanation

Efficacy in Distributed Capture Networks

EMC Captiva

Captiva’s Web-based administration console enables unified server management from any location.

Modularity and Interoperability

Unlike its competitor, EMC Captiva is built on very modern multi-tier, client-server architecture, which gives EMC Captiva customers greater agility and flexibility compared to the competitive solution. EMC Captiva also has better integration capabilities with external applications and third party products. The overall results of this comparison are depicted in Table 20:

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Table 20: Modularity and Interoperability Results



Software

Modularity and Interoperability √

Flexibility and adequacy of architecture √

Integration with third party applications √

Flexibility and Adequacy of Architecture

EMC Captiva is built on very modern multi-tier, client-server architecture that is highly conducive to web-based services and deployment in service-oriented architecture (SOA) environments. This multi-tier architecture allows for easy deployment and management of EMC Captiva in large-scale distributed capture environments. In contrast, the competitive solution has evolved from a monolithic, legacy architecture to a rudimentary client-server architecture. Most components, including the distributed capture components are based on a single tier thick client architecture. This architecture is more suited to the needs of small and medium sized businesses rather than enterprises and makes it difficult to implement, manage, and exploit the competitor solution in distributed capture environments. This difference is critical in today’s IT environment; traditional client-server configurations like that of the competitive solution will be rapidly outgrown by organizations that are migrating toward service-oriented IT infrastructures and web-based portals to carry out business activities. Unlike the competitive solution, EMC Captiva will remain relevant and continue to provide return on investment as IT evolves and finds new ways to manage and share information.

Table 21: Summary of Key Architecture Advantages


Winner Explanation

Architecture EMC Captiva

Captiva’s modern client-server architecture provides greater longevity and ROI opportunity relative to the competitor.

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Interoperability with Applications and Third Party Products

EMC Captiva InputAccel provides API level integration for third party applications, and provides direct API to API level integration with major ECM repositories. The competitive solution, on the other hand, integrates with third party products using release scripts. This integration using release scripts can severely affect system performance in the event of a network failure. This may include incorrect processing of documents or a suspension of the process by over twenty minutes. No such performance issues were noticed with EMC Captiva during the testing.

Additionally, the competitive solution has some known defects regarding integration with some of the major third party ECM products such as Documentum 6.5, SharePoint 2007 and 2010, IBM Content Manager 8.2 and FileNet Content Manager 4.5. These defects range from simple ones such as an inability to support certain folder names to more serious ones such as a lack of support for certain item types, inaccurate page counts, and an inability to select documents or folder classes. These defects, that limit the use of ECM products in conjunction with the competitor product have been documented in the release notes of the competitor software. Further, EMC Captiva also offers PDF versioning capabilities which are not present in the competitor solution. EMC Captiva InputAccel also supports web services-based integration with third applications; web services can be used to call third party applications externally, and external applications can call EMC Captiva InputAccel as well. The architectural advantages of EMC Captiva and its service oriented architecture and client scripting features make EMC Captiva more interoperable within a web services infrastructure when compared to competition.

Table 22: Summary of Key Interoperability Advantages


Winner Explanation

API Integration EMC Captiva

EMC Captiva provides direct API to API integration which does not cause performance or integration challenges with third party applications, and supports web services-based integration.

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Conclusion A side-by-side, lab-based benchmarking of the EMC Captiva intelligent enterprise capture solution and a leading competitor found that EMC Captiva was superior on the basis of performance, manageability, scalability, and modularity. EMC Captiva achieves this because it is built on modern, modular architecture that can adapt to evolving IT infrastructure conditions, and because it can meet the demands of the business capture flow with scalability and flexibility that is unmatched by the competition. As today’s marketplace becomes increasingly digital and data-driven, web-oriented, and globally distributed, the EMC Captiva enterprise capture solution will continue to pull further ahead of its competition.

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Appendix 1

Description of documents used for testing:

Structured documents:

Field risk audit forms (5000 different documents with 2 pages each)

Application forms for telephone service (11 different forms, each having 3 pages)

Hand-written credit card applications (one page only)

Semi-structured documents:

Scanned images of invoices (15 different invoices – 1 page each, duplicated to create 1000 documents)

Unstructured documents:

Computer printed letters

Pages from a manual

Hand-written order forms (3 different types, duplicated to create 1000 documents)

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About Wipro Product Strategy Group The Wipro Product Strategy Group (PSG) (formerly the Product Strategy and Architecture (PSA)) practice is a division of Wipro Technologies, a global technology services division of Wipro Ltd. (NYSE-WIT). Wipro PSG practice has more than 12 years experience in researching, analyzing, and documenting the business value of technology solutions. Wipro PSG practice helps enterprises and technology vendors develop innovative and effective product and IT strategies that enable them to expand market opportunities, extend competitive advantage and economize business operations.

In addition to providing consulting services to technology vendors, PSG consultants and technologists work with global enterprises and service providers in architecting and implementing large-scale systems. This practical, hands-on experience gives Wipro PSG practice consultants and technical architects first-hand knowledge that informs their business analysis work.

For more information, contact [email protected] or visit http://www.wipro.com/services/pes/services/product-strategy-consulting.htm

About Wipro Business Technology Services Portals and Content Management Practice

As part of Wipro’s Business Technology Services (BTS) group, the Portals and Content Management (PCM) Practice is a focused technology group providing services, solutions, and innovative delivery models and thought leadership to our customers in the Enterprise Portals, Contents Management, Collaboration, ecommerce, Usability and Web 2.0 spaces across various industries. Wipro’s PCM solutions and services have enabled clients to develop newer business models, improve interaction with customers and employees, ensure risk management and compliance, realize green business goals, increase revenue, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce operational expenses. For more information, contact [email protected] or visit http://www.wipro.com/services/bts/pacm/index.htm

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mailto:[email protected]

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