Second Opinions

Upgrading from SoftSolutions on Novell

By Guy Wiggins

MY recommendation: Take a look at three systems: Worldox 2000, iManage and GroupWise 5.5. Deciding on which system to use requires some in-depth testing, a close examination of your budget and an understanding of where the firm's technology strategy is headed in the next three to five years.

Each of the document management systems uses very different architectures. GroupWise 5.5 is currently a proprietary database and GroupWise 5.5 itself is very heavily integrated with Novell's Netware and NDS (directory) services. For a Novell shop such as yourself, this presents a number of advantages. It is very easy to administer users centrally using NDS and workstations can be automatically managed and updated using Zenworks.

GroupWise 5.5 is the only system on the market that integrates e-mail, document management, calendaring and scheduling in one easy to use system. Because your firm already uses GroupWise, the learning curve would be minimal and the firm would literally have to spend nothing on software (and for a firm your size, that's a significant chunk of change -- easily hundreds of thousands of dollars.)

On top of that advantage, GroupWise is the only system that provides users with access to documents via a Web browser at no additional cost. (Both Worldox and iManage charge thousands of dollars.)

GroupWise also excels at making document libraries from different offices easily available and searchable. Finally, Group-Wise 5.5 has improved SoftSolutions conversion utilities available for free as part of the package that do a good job of converting the SoftSolutions datasets so conversion should be pretty straightforward.

Annoying Flaws

That said, there are some annoying flaws in GroupWise's implementation of DMS services. The most annoying (because it would be so easy to fix) is the fact that custom profile tables such as Client and Matter do not have an easy look-up feature to allow users to find a code with a key stroke or two. This means that if your Client/Matter tables in SoftSolutions are very long, the user has to scroll with mouse to pick the proper code -- a very tedious process.

Also,your documents in GroupWise are not stored in their native format but in a "blob" database where they are encrypted and compressed. If your GroupWise server goes down or the database gets corrupted, your users can't access their documents unless you have setup "local echoing." This means you have to build-in very reliable redundant systems and disaster recovery into your planning. Echoing works, but while it works it tends to hang the workstation for five seconds or so, an annoyance.

That said, I know of several large law firms that have used GroupWise DMS successfully. One large firm in the Midwest has more than 1 million documents stored in its GroupWise system.

Finally, just to make things even more confusing, Novell has announced that they are completely redesigning their next version of GroupWise around XML and open Internet standards to make it truly platform-independent and easy to integrate with other programs. Codenamed BulletProof, it is due out by year end. It is not at all clear how the DMS system is going to change in this next version.

iManage or Worldox

If the firm decides not to go with GroupWise for DMS services, then Imanage or Worldox should be closely looked at. Both are excellent products that approach managing documents from a very different perspective.

Worldox is very easy to install and maintain and uses a distributed approach that guarantees your users will always have access to their documents. Of all the systems I consult on, Worldox is the easiest to administer and maintain and can easily run on your existing Novell network. If your IT staff is small and overextended, this is a significant added bonus. Worldox is the only system that combines a file manager with a DMS, which means that users can always access their documents even when the indexer is down.

And Worldox has excellent "mirroring" capabilities built in so that even if the entire network were to go down, users would still be able to easily work off-line. For my Worldox clients, this redundancy and excellent design means they have never suffered from down time. In fact, I've had clients not notice for days that their indexing server was down!

Worldox uses a proprietary database and the acclaimed ISYS full text searching engine. Searches are extremely fast -- even with hundreds of thousands of documents on the network.

The cost for Worldox is a reasonable $360 per seat plus $60 per seat for a yearly mandatory maintenance agreement. There is no additional charge for server software.

Worldox also offers Worldox/Web --a separate add-on that makes any document in the Worldox database available over the Web.

iManage

Imanage is an excellent product that has had excellent results in some of the biggest law firms in the country. It runs on Windows NT servers and requires a SQL database and separate server to manage and search for documents. Imanage has a number of cutting edge products such as InfoLink that allows access to documents via the Web as well as superb integration with Novell GroupWise via the iManage GroupWise Module. This module allows you to seamlessly integrate iManage's DMS services into GroupWise, providing a powerful collaborative tool that works in a way you are already familiar with. (The same is available for Microsoft's Outlook.)

It offers a free native conversion tool for SoftSolutions (designed by former SoftSolutions engineers) that by all accounts does an excellent job of converting SoftSolutions databases.

This power, however, will cost you. The firm will need to purchase separate Windows NT servers and MS SQL 7, a separate server module to run the software on the server and most importantly, the firm should have a trained database administrator on staff who can maintain the SQL database and produce reports from it.

If your firm is willing to pay for these extra costs, then iManage will be good choice. Some of the largest law firms in the country have switched to iManage and have been very happy with the product.

Stategize

Whatever you do, you should decide first on the general strategic technology direction of your law firm. Buying and implementing a DMS is a significant project and one that your firm will want to live with for the next five years or so.

My last word of advice to build a test local area network (LAN) and test each system before making your final decision.

Given the importance of managing documents in a law firm, due diligence in a decision of this kind is essential.

New York attorney Guy Stuart Wiggins is chairman of LexTech Inc., a legal technology consulting firm, based in New York City.