FileNet Corp, Costa Mesa, California is the gran’daddy of optical disk-based electronic filing systems – its large-scale, multi-workstation systems are sold in Europe by major investor Olivetti SpA – and it intends to maintain its leadership in installed distributed image processing systems with a plunge down to the low end of the market. It has just announced a new Entry Level Configuration that supports all its software applications, including the proprietary WorkFloR software that is designed for heavy paper users seeking productivity gains by automating their paper flow. Priced at $195,000, the ELC can be expanded into larger configurations as user needs grow; it will be available in the third quarter of 1987. FileNet’s ELC records document-images on 12 write-once optical disks. Each disk can store up to 2.6Gb of information or about 50,000 document images. All FileNet systems capture, index, store, display and print digitised document-images. When integrated workstations are added to the system, ELC uses FileNet’s proprietary Work-FloR software automatically to route incoming images from workstation to workstation. While Wang, Eastman Kodak and others have recently announced their first optical disk products in the burgeoning image processing industry, the ELC is FileNet’s third major new product in the last six months. Since its first product announcement was made in October 1984, FileNet reckons that it has led the industry in installing document-image processing systems in production applications around the world.
