IBM Brings i5/OS Forms Package to U.S.

Published: November 21, 2006

by Alex Woodie

There's a new electronic document management software package in town, and it's being sold by none other than IBM. The product, called Coginord Mapping Suite, was developed in France specifically for OS/400, and today it's helping users with all types of servers break the reliance on pre-printed forms and distribute business correspondence electronically. Bill Shaffer, IBM's System i print guru, sees the product picking up where Infoprint Manager and Designer leave off, and says it will capture a big share of the U.S. market.

Coginord Mapping Suite was introduced by its developer, the French software company Coginord, around the turn of the century, and today enjoys an installed base of about 1,500 customers--primarily European companies, and primarily OS/400 shops, with a smattering of AIX users. IBM, recognizing that it needed additional electronic document design and distribution capabilities to sell to its System i customers in the Americas, decided to introduce the product to its reseller channels in the Western Hemisphere, which it did in June. IBM officially announced the availability of the product in October, and it's currently involved in education and training activities for the channel.

So what do System i users get with the Cogniord Mapping Suite? In short, they get support for more types of input, support for more types of output, and better handling of complicated and custom-generated business correspondence than they had with other IBM-supplied document management tools for under $200,000--all from a tool that was initially designed for the OS/400 server, and still bares those roots with a green-screen menu system that should be intuitive for existing iSeries and System i users and operators.

In terms of what's in the package, the Mapping Suite begins with three core, integrated modules, including the Windows-based MapReport graphical design environment that generates new spool files from a wide variety of data inputs including ERP data, XML, and data housed in DB2, Oracle, and SQL Server databases; the host-based MapOffice module, which, during production, connects form overlays with business data and sends them to their destination as Advanced Function Print (AFP) Printer Control Language (PCL), Portable Document Format (PDF), radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, and thermal barcode formats (including those of Zebra, Datamax, Printronix , Toshiba TEC, Intermec, and others); and a second, more advanced Windows development component called MapDraw for designing complex and personalized documents.

On top of these three modules, there are several optional modules, including the MapSend component for e-mailing generated documents from the production environment as PDFs; the MapOut module for indexing, archiving, and retrieving generated documents; the MapWeb component for accessing documents over the Web; and the MapCom module for delivering output via third-party e-mail and fax servers. There is also a print management piece called the Mapping Output Manager, but this component only supports Windows, Unix, and Linux. On the System i, the Mapping Suite relies on the platform's superior and native print management components, Print Services Facility (PSF/400) and Host Print Transform. Supported production systems include i5/OS, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, and Windows.

Benefits of Mapping Suite

According to Shaffer, the Boulder, Colorado-based IBM product manager for System i output solutions, the Coginord Mapping Suite brings users a medium- to high-end document design and distribution tool with a lot more flexibility and capabilities than Infoprint Designer, the low-end i5/OS document design utility IBM introduced several years ago, alongside Infoprint Server (which is complementary in some ways to Mapping Suite, he says).

"The reason for Mapping Suite being here is that there are System i customers where Infoprint Designer was not a good fit," Shaffer says. "Infoprint Designer is a low-cost document design tool, and it's a very integrated tool" with i5/OS. "Where it falls short is in several areas. Customers may want to get data from other sources other than the print file, such as a database or XML, or to design a new form from scratch. That's where Mapping Suite comes in. . . . Also Infoprint Designer is only AFP. It can go to IPDS or PCL printers, but not thermal or dot matrix printers. There are more output options with Mapping Suite."

Mapping Suite also offers better handling of complex documents compared to Infoprint Designer, Shaffer says. For example, Infoprint Designer had a hard time keeping up with System i shops that wanted to customize their business correspondence with graphical elements, such as graphical pie charts or specific images. "It's kind of awkward to do with Designer but easy to do with Mapping Suite," Shaffer says. "We felt there was a gap above Infoprint Designer in terms of what System i customers needed."

With that said, Shaffer doesn't see Infoprint Designer going away any time soon. The product's close integration with i5/OS makes it the go-to choice for System i customers with simple electronic document needs, he says. "If you're an iSeries customer and you're looking for a basic design tool, there's no reason to look to the Mapping Suite," he says.

In terms of Infoprint Server, the Mapping Suite doesn't really compete with it, and in fact the two products can be hooked up to function as a unit, Shaffer says. Infoprint Manager's function "is the distillation of iSeries output to PDF," he says. "The installed base for Infoprint Server is orders of magnitude higher than for Infoprint Designer. It's more of a standard System i utility, and I see that as continuing."

PCL Support is Key

Another strength that Mapping Suite brings to IBM is native OS/400 support for PCL. "Mapping Suite provides support for both AFP and PCL, the two major business print data streams," Shaffer says. "We have a lot invested in AFP and IPDS . . . and were looking for a product to support the native architecture of the i platform, which is AFP. But PCL is a force, and we need to be open-minded."

AFP, which was born out of IBM's high-end, proprietary world of SNA (System Network Architecture), SCS (SNA Character Stream), IPDS, (Intelligent Printer Data Stream) and EBCDIC (Extended Binary-Coded Decimal Interchange Code), still dominates at the high end, although the number of printers that use PCL (which lives in the open ASCII world) is far higher.

"Both PCL and AFP are players," Shaffer says, but "as you go up in terms of enterprise and volume, PCL virtually goes away and AFP becomes the standard at the very high end." The fact that Mapping Suite can support both major formats, as well as other important data streams, including the barcode formats and RFID, gives it an edge in the marketplace, Shaffer says.

And while the AFPDS architecture provides benefits that print environments like PCL can't match--such as the "intelligent" two-way connection between i5/OS or z/OS host and IPDS printer that ensures the reliability and integrity of print jobs, and which is really the hallmark of AFPDS--there are some tricks that PCL has that AFP doesn't.

One of these is support for dynamic tables, which makes it easier to change printed elements on the fly. "Dynamic tables are available in PCL, but are not available in AFP," Shaffer says. A user who opens a Mapping Suite design tool will see dynamic tables as an option if they start a PCL project, but they won't see it as an option if they start an AFP project.

Shaffer, who hopes to have a couple of sessions on Mapping Suite ready for the spring COMMON conference in Anaheim, California, sees the product succeeding in the Americas and the U.S. "My guess is it performs well, knowing development team and the success it has had," he says. "I fully expect it to be as successful in the U.S. as it has been in Europe."

Licenses for Mapping Suite are based on the user's print volumes and the number of pages driven through the mapping engine. There are about 20 transaction tiers, ranging from 25,000 pages per year to an unlimited amount, which roughly correspond with fees ranging from $10,000 to $100,000. Additional modules cost extra. The product is being offered through IBM's reseller channel.