LuraTech wishes you and your family a very happy holiday season!

Webinar: PDF/A for Scanned Documents

Join LuraTech President Mark McKinney for Informational Discussion Hosted by PDF/A Competence Center

Businesses and government agencies of all types regularly scan documents to PDF for creation of electronic documents and records. But what happens when these organizations need to ensure the accessibility of these documents well into the future?

That’s where PDF/A comes in. PDF/A was built on the widely accepted PDF file format to establish an international standard for preserving the visual appearance of electronic documents, independent of the tools and systems used for creating, storing or accessing the files. PDF/A is especially beneficial for organizations that scan large amount of records since it:

Maintains static visual representation of the original scanned documents;
Allows OCR results to be embedded, thus creating full-text searchable PDF files; and
Greatly reduces storage/bandwidth costs by allowing state-of-the art compression techniques.

Because it is an ISO standard (ISO 19005-1), PDF/A has become a vital tool for public or private organizations that must archive electronic files and ensure that they can be accurately reproduced and accessed, regardless of the software or hardware used.

You can learn more about PDF/A by attending a free webinar, hosted by the PDF/A Competence Center, which will be led by LuraTech President Mark McKinney.

During the webinar Mark will:

Briefly explain the PDF/A file format;
Review PDF/A features that support scanned documents and meet your organization’s archive goals; and
Discuss how to implement PDF/A within your scan workflow.

LuraTech is one of the leading providers of PDF/A solutions. LuraTech’s LuraDocument® PDF/A products enable you to create and validate PDF/A documents, and offer a rich set of features, including integrated workflow capabilities, the most accurate OCR results, full text searchability and digital signature. With LuraTech’s PDF/A solutions, you can not only create PDF/A compliant documents for long-term archival, but also you can save on storage costs by reducing your file sizes by up to 100 times for color documents and 10 times for black and white.

The webinar is FREE, and it's easy to participate.

20 January
11 – 11:45 AM German Time
Carsten Heiermann and Armin Ortmann (in German)
Sign up here!

21 January
11 – 11:45 AM German Time
Carsten Hiermann and Armin Ortmann (in English)
Sign up here!

22 January
10 – 10:45 AM PST, 1 – 1:45 PM ET
Mark McKinney and Armin Ortmann (in English)
Sign up here!

Registrants will receive an e-mail with information about how to join the webinar.

NOTE: Please open ports 80, 443 and 8200 for ensured access. For further information, please click here.

LuraTech Enhances PDF Compressor with Intelligent Job List Processing Capabilities

V5.2 Relies on Multi-Core Processing to Optimize Efficiency

LuraTech has upgraded its LuraDocument® PDF Compressor to make batch processing much more efficient during Job List Processing mode by optimizing multiple CPU usage.

Job List Processing is unique feature of the PDF Compressor that allows you to programmatically trigger the PDF Compressor as a synchronized step within your document workflow. Now with version 5.2, Job List Processing will automatically start once any of the CPU’s become available.

Version 5.2 also enables you to configure the software so a job does not stop if a critical error – such as when an input folder does not exist or an output folder cannot be created – occurs. Instead, the PDF Compressor goes idle and tries to start the job after a few minutes. This option is supported on both normal jobs and when using hot folders. Additionally, this new version includes improvements to external OCR result output and can allow digital signatures to be applied across a batch of documents.

“Automatic job list processing and better handling of erros gives you more stability, minimizing the number of manual interactions you need with the system and lowering the total cost of ownership of PDF Compressor,” said Mark McKinney, LuraTech’s president. “With these upgrades and multi-core processor support, we’re providing creative workflow solutions that ensure the multiple job lists can be handled when processors are available.”

The upgraded PDF Compressor also is the first version of the software to officially support the Windows Vista operating system.

To try a demo of these new features or download the new version, click here.

gloStream Prescribes LuraTech to Doctors with a Need for Speed

PDF Software Development Kit Improves Accessibility of Electronic Medical Records and Minimizes Storage Requirements

Many medical practices – from small primary care offices to large specialty groups – are embracing the use of electronic medical records to improve efficiency and ensure accessibility to patient information whether in the office, at the hospital or taking after-hours calls. But that efficiency can grind to a halt if patients have large medical files, which encompass megabits of storage and take several minutes to download.

gloStream Inc., a Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based provider of electronic medical record and practice management solutions, was seeking a way for the physicians it serves to more efficiently access patients’ electronic records over the local network in the office or via the Internet when working remotely. Additionally, gloStream wanted to give its customers a solution with which they could scan existing paper records to create comprehensive files while minimizing digital storage and back-up costs for maintaining patient records.

To accomplish those goals, gloStream is offering its customers LuraTech’s LuraDocument® PDF Software Development Kit (SDK) as a tool for scanning paper records – such as appointment notes, prescriptions and reports from other medical professionals. With this unique application of the PDF SDK, the medical practices can create PDF files that are small enough to quickly access via the web or e-mail, and can greatly reduce storage requirements.

LuraTech’s PDF SDK is capable of delivering PDF files – in color or black and white – that are dramatically compressed, but maintain the look and feel of the original document. LuraDocument offers the industry’s best balance of compression, performance and image quality, enabling gloStream to deliver a cost-effective solution that gives its customers faster access to digital documents and minimizes storage expenses.

“Our users say that every second counts,” said Gregg Hammerman, gloStream’s director of product and business development. “LuraTech’s compression solution helps our system run faster, which is quite meaningful to our customers.”

Hammerman believes that the need for compression solutions like the PDF SDK will continue to grow as more medical practices move to electronic medical records systems. He said there are approximately 215,000 medical practices in the United States, but less than 15 percent currently uses electronic medical records systems.

Condecco and LuraTech Partner on PDF/A Solution

condecco Digital Business GmbH is now offering an OEM version of LuraTech’s LuraDocument® PDF Compressor. Branded as the condecco LT pdf compressor, our technology has been integrated into condecco’s scanning and indexing solution, enabling customers to archive digitized documents in ISO-standard PDF/A format.

The LuraDocument PDF Compressor offers a cost-effective tool for generating compressed black and white or color PDF/A documents, which remain true to the original and readable long into the future. PDF/A also results in small file sizes to optimize storage and accessibility.

condecco offers its LT pdf compressor to all customers in the retail, industrial, service, administration, banking, savings and loan, and financial service sectors with their own DMS, archive and workflow systems or those who use central archives, such as the OSPlus archive of Finanz Informatik, the Sparkasse financial group. In early 2008, the IT provider for Finanz Informatik announced its support of PDF/A, enabling Sparkasse savings banks to benefit from the archiving format.

Advantages of PDF/A

Companies, administrative agencies and financial institutions are obligated to maintain documents, such as applications, forms, contracts or reports, for several years. Because the volume of data continuously grows, they must consider storage requirements and ensure fast access to the electronic documents. The use of PDF/A helps in this effort, ensuring that documents can be read long into the future and require comparatively little storage space for archiving in either black and white or color.

As an ISO standard, PDF/A ensures long-term readability of the documents regardless of the application software and operating system in which they were originally produced. Additionally, PDF/A files are comparatively small, minimizing storage needs for archiving high-quality digital documents in black and white or color that are small enough to be sent as e-mail attachments.

With the condecco LT pdf compressor, condecco provides its customers with two solutions for efficient capture and conversion of their documents. One path is integration with the OSPlus archive data entry solution. This enables Sparkasse savings and loan institutions to digitize their multi-page documents and archive them as PDF/A files in the central OSPlus archive of Finanz Informatik. condecco also has integrated the condecco LT pdf compressor in various scanning and indexing solutions, such as d.capture.

Events

Webinars with the PDF/A Competence Center

20 January
11 – 11:45 AM German Time
Carsten Heiermann and Armin Ortmann (in German)
Sign up here!

21 January
11 – 11:45 AM German Time 
Carsten Hiermann and Armin Ortmann (in English)
Sign up here!

22 January
10 – 10:45 AM PST, 1 – 1:45 PM ET 
Mark McKinney and Armin Ortmann (in English)
Sign up here!

eGovernment Conference 
Berlin, Germany 
11 - 12 February 2009

Carsten Heiermann will take part in the panel discussion on behalf of the PDF/A Competence Center

CeBIT
Hannover, Germany 
3 - 9 March 2009

New Customers

Americas

Armcor
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

Aviacode
LuraDocument PDF .NET SDK

Bristol-Meyers Squib
LuraWave LWF C-SDK .Net

Continental Data Graphics
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

LabTrack
Partner selling the LuraDocument PDF/A Printer

International

Bavarian State Library
LuraDocument Validator

Bernschein Document Solutions
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

BM Consultants, Netherlands
Partner selling the LuraDocument PDF Compressor

City of Cologne
Additional CPU Cores for the LuraDocument PDF Compressor

City of Stuttgart (Partner AFI)
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

Datev eG
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

Image Solutions, France
LuraWave Image Content Server – Enterprise

Kanton Police of Switzerland (Partner Viseco)
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

Meiller Car Production
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

Rhein Mosel Werkstatt
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

Scanpoint
LuraDocument PDF Compressor and Cartridges

Stöckle 3D Management
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

Swisscom, Switzerland (Partner Interact)
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

Wüstenrot Datenservice (Partner Business-Imaging Solutions & Services)
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

YemenLNG
LuraDocument PDF Compressor

Approximately 20 German savings banks have ordered the LuraDocument PDF Compressor. These customers include: Heilbronn, Kleve and Waldeck-Frankenberg.