American Document Management a Host.Net customer profile
I had the opportunity to communicate with Karen Unger of American Document Management. Lenny Chesal, of Host.net in Boca Raton, FL, introduced us. Thanks, Lenny! I though you might enjoy reading what she had to say.
Please introduce your organization and your role there.
American Document Management is a service provider to the legal and financial services industries, specializing in organizing, storing and on-line retrieval of electronic and scanned paper documents. The largest part of our business deals with electronic discovery and litigation support, with forms processing and data management following close behind. I am the founder and President/CEO. We have been in business for 19 years, since before the internet became so prevalent.What are you doing that required this technology or approach?
The internet and email have increased electronic exchange of documents exponentially since we began the business. In the late 1990's, our clients began to tell us that they wanted to be able to access their documents from anywhere -- home, a hotel room, a courtroom, overseas, or from any office within their building.We now provide instant access to millions of pages of scanned hard copy documents, as well as many terabytes (and beyond for some clients) of electronic files. The electronic files include email, attachments, native files in many forms (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, accounting files, executable files, hidden/deleted files, large drawings, files from cameras and cell phones, etc.)
These are organized in a variety of ways, according to the client's needs. Some show the "thread" or trail that a group of emails will take between correspondents. Others are just organized according to subject, date, topic and/or custodian. All are available 24 hours a day, from anywhere a user can get on the internet. The system utilizes many hardware and software components of security and encryption to protect the users' data.
What did you consider before making a selection?
This is a multi-faceted question. Before we choose a retrieval system (we offer two, plus some customized solutions), we considered its sophistication, ability to handle very large volumes, customer service, reputation.Another aspect of this question involves the data center we use. It doesn't matter how sophisticated you are, if your data isn't secure and available to the end users / clients. Originally, we housed the data in our own server room. Many years ago, that became a problem when our landlord hired someone to repave the parking lot, and the worker cut 2400 lines of phone cable.
We had only one telecommunications method, and we down for 18 hours. We moved to a data center the next day. Our current data center was chosen after careful consideration regarding security, physical structure, their relationship with multiple teleco companies, backup generator and power, and customer service.