InfoPrint Designer on Windows 7? DocPath Says It Can Do It

Published: July 10, 2012

by Alex Woodie

DocPath has been ramping up its campaign to convince disgruntled users of IBM's InfoPrint Designer software to sign up with DocPath as a way to keep their IBM i-resident document management environment relevant. Its latest tactic involves Windows 7, which DocPath says it can support with its solution for InfoPrint Designer users.

DocPath first landed on the IT Jungle radar earlier this year, when the Spanish company made an appearance at the COMMON conference in Southern California. Company representatives at the show were adamant that it would aggressively pursue what it considers a sizable continent of InfoPrint Designer users who are unhappy with IBM's lack of investment in the software.

DocPath says IBM has failed to keep InfoPrint Designer relevant. The company says the product hasn't been kept current in several categories, including support for additional output formats; support for additional print and distribution features; interaction between IBM i and Windows; support for multiple languages; and the user interface. InfoPrint Designer hasn't been updated in almost eight years, according to IBM's InfoPrint Designer Web page.

DocPath's answer to the InfoPrint Designer dilemma is a product it calls the DocPath Boulder suite. (Boulder, Colorado, of course, was the location of IBM's once proud, but now-defunct, printing products operation. IBM sold its InfoPrint line of printers to Ricoh, but held onto the IBM i and mainframe print software products, including Print Service Facility [PSF/400] and InfoPrint Designer.)

The key capability that DocPath offers in its Boulder suite is the capability to import Advanced Function Print (AFP) objects, and convert them into another format for use within the Boulder document management suite. AFP is the high-end document format that all documents are stored in with InfoPrint Designer.

Now, the company is touting the capability to support Windows 7 as another benefit of moving to DocPath. The company says migrating from InfoPrint Designer to the Boulder suite "ensures continuity of existing processes and provides users with the possibility to operate on Windows 7."

DocPath was founded in 1992 by Julio Olivares, and is based in Madrid. The company has a U.S. office in Atlanta, Georgia, thanks to its 2008 acquisition of IBM i document management software developer Resolutions. The company says it has more than 50,000 installations around the world, including companies such as BBVA, Santander, Groupama, Liberty, Mapfre Group, DHL, and Danone.

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