At linuxday.at (27 Nov. 2010 in Dornbirn, Austria)

Pfaffhausen, 19 November : we are very happy to give advance notice of the ArchivistaBox 64Bit. You can witness the ArchivistaBox 64Bit live in action for the first time at this year's linuxday.at in Dornbirn.

New ArchivistaBox: that's why we switched to 64 bit

The ArchivistaBox has been on the market for more than 5 years now. The solution back then was developed using 32-bit technology. From 2005 to 2010, we continued to develop our product. During the last few months, it seemed that things were quieting down around the ArchivistaBox. It also appeared that we would invest a large amount of resources in ArchivistaVM. Yes, there was even feedback from customers who were worried about the continued development of the ArchivistaBox as a DMS product and afraid that we were focusing solely on virtualization. Such assumptions are incorrect.

Quite the contrary, in fact. All of the work we have invested in development during the last few months was ultimately for the new ArchivistaBox 64Bit. But why do we need a new ArchivistaBox? Is the current solution not good enough? Of course, we could continue to develop the current ArchivistaBox for at least a few more years. Viewed this way, there was no pressing reason to port the ArchivistaBox from 32 to 64 bit. But with the current 32-bit solution, we can address a maximum of 4 GB main memory (RAM). Corresponding DIMMs can already be bought extremely cheaply today, and in one or two years we will likely not see anything other than at least 8GB RAM. And that's where the problem starts. We would then have to use special hardware to be able to even install our current 32-bit ArchivistaBox.

Our customers always receive the latest ArchivistaBox

Our experience during the last 15 to 20 years has shown that a hardware platform must be completely rebuilt after approx. 5 years. We have done well so far with this ‘5-year plan’. And for our customers this means that we address problems in good time and present a solution without the end client having to worry about it. We offer the latest updated solution to all our customers free of charge as part of the maintenance contract.

Now, there are a number of old ArchivistaBox systems that currently run on 32-bit hardware. An update cannot be performed in these cases because of the hardware. In such cases, customers will receive new hardware from us (at no extra expense to them). This allows us to continue to support currently operating solutions for some time (up to a few years even), but convert to the 64-bit solution when the opportunity presents itself. We think that the timing of the switch is of little importance to our customers. At the end of the day, all DMS customers want to operate one DMS at least and get rid of the mounds of paper. We would like to present a few examples based on real-life scenarios:

The corresponding folders contain approx. 200,000 pages. The customer has captured all of these with an ArchivistaBox Pilatus. In the final phase, about three times that amount will be archived.

What does the new ArchivistaBox 64Bit offer?

The new ArchivistaBox 64Bit mainly offers the same convenience as the current ArchivistaBox. This sounds trite, but it isn't. Software is to a large degree subject to an ‘aging process’. I would like to give an example of this. The current ArchivistaBox works with a LiveCD. The installation is performed from this. This approach was relatively new in 2005, but today it is often seen. But a LiveCD also has disadvantages. Initially, it takes a long time until the installation can be started and the installation itself takes significantly longer than with a pure setup program. Of course, 30 minutes (that's how long the installation of the current solution takes) is not an unacceptably long time. But, if we can accomplish an installation in 2 to 3 minutes, why shouldn't we? That's why we have fitted the ArchivistaBox 64Bit with an entirely new installer.

In addition, we’ve combined the ArchivistaVM solution with the ArchivistaBox. This may not be obvious at first glance, but almost all services and components are already operated virtually nowadays. In other words, virtualization has become ubiquitous. Thanks to ArchivistaVM, this is also extremely easy and completely integrated within the solution. How much sense does virtualization now make in reality in our DMS system?

On this, too, I'd like to cite an example. ArchivistaBox has a function for creating self-supporting archives. Until now, such archives had to be deployed on their own server. Now self-supporting archives can be directly tested and shipped virtually. Another example: the customer wants to check the backup. Until now, we needed a separate ArchivistaBox for this. Now the backup test can be performed directly on the ArchivistaBox in a virtual instance.

In addition, the ArchivistaBox 64Bit will contain a number of new features, both big and small. Prepare to be surprised. Or come along to this year's linuxday.at in Dornbirn, Austria. As always, the event offers many interesting projects and lectures.

Lecture at linuxday.at on 27 Nov. 2010 in Dornbirn, Austria

Next Saturday, we will present the new ArchivistaBox 64Bit for the first time. There will be a script for the lecture about this, which, of course, will also be available here. Anyone who visits us at linuxday.at in Dornbirn will receive a USB stick with the ArchivistaBox 64Bit. Everyone else will have to wait until we release ArchivistaBox 64Bit for download.