zapnote ZapThink ZapNote XML DOCUMENT WORD Briefing Date: February 8, 2002 Analyst: Ronald Schmelzer

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1 zapthink zapnote ZapThink ZapNote Doc. ID: ZTZN D Released: Feb 18, 2002 HYPER YPERVISION AUTOMATING VALID XML DOCUMENT D CREATION WITHIN MICROSOFT WORD ORD Briefing Date: February 8, 2002 Analyst: Ronald Schmelzer Abstract Many of the documents of value created within an organization come from those that work directly with customers or end users. These nontechnical document authors prefer to use common word processing tools to meet their needs, but they lose many of the features and capabilities that XML can offer organizations. Thus, the challenge is allowing users to create documents that take advantage of XML without requiring them to use a new, unfamiliar tool set. HyperVision has created the WorX suite of products to meet the need of document authors to create XML-enabled documents within the Microsoft Word environment. The system enables Word users to create XML documents by automating text markup and guiding markup decisions, making suggestions based on context. All Contents Copyright ZapThink, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. ZapThink disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. ZapThink shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are trademarked by their respective owners and ZapThink makes no claims to these names. ZapThink, LLC! 11 Willow Street, Suite 200! Waltham, MA 02453! (781) !

2 Enabling XML Document Creation in the Microsoft Word Environment One of the biggest challenges in getting value out of XML documents is the difficulty in enabling document creators to author XML-based documents. Many of these document creators are familiar with word processing and WYSIWYG authoring environments such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Quark, FrameMaker, and even PDF-creation utilities. However, these same users are not technical enough to work within native XML-creation document environments. These environments are not only too complex for these creators, but they also require the user to learn a new set of document authoring tools and insert this within an already time-compressed business process. So, who are we talking about here as far as document creators? Many of the documents of value created within an organization come from those that work directly with customers or end users. This includes lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, insurance brokers, and financial industry workers. These workers are responsible for creating the meat and potatoes of their industry, but they are not technical document creators. Lawyers bill by the hour, and the last thing they want to do is waste time learning a new document creation tool. While they prefer to use common word processing tools to meet their needs, they lose many of the features and capabilities that XML can offer organizations. Namely, XML offers an organization the ability to reuse content, enforce document validity, provides a means for content management, and enables document searching. Clearly, plain old Word documents provide unstructured text that cannot take advantage of any of these capabilities. Typically, content authoring is decentralized and inefficient, with authors unable to cooperate effectively for multi-author document creation. Content is often re-created, resulting in redundancy, lowered productivity and inefficiency. XML is required to componentize text into chunks that can be validated, assembled, stored, and searched in a standardized manner. Thus, the challenge lies in allowing users to create documents that take advantage of XML without requiring them to use a new, unfamiliar tool set. This challenge can be reasonably solved by providing the power of XML creation within their existing tool suite, in a manner that is transparent to the user. Along this vein, a number of companies are approaching this problem by providing XML plug-ins to popular word processing applications, such as Microsoft Word. These plug-ins would allow central document administrators and editors to push to end users a set of valid document templates that users can use in their normal manner, but end up creating valid XML documents along with the normal word processing document. The application of this is quite clear. For those industries where standardized documents are needed, but the end users are not technically skilled, this XML in-situ creation capability TAKE CREDIT FOR READING ZAP APTHINK RESEARCH ESEARCH! Thank you for reading ZapThink research! ZapThink is an IT market intelligence firm that provides trusted advice and critical insight into XML, Web Services, and Service Orientation. We provide our target audience of IT vendors, service providers and end-users a clear roadmap for standards-based, loosely coupled distributed computing a vision of IT meeting the needs of the agile business. Earn rewards for reading ZapThink research! Visit and enter the code HYPWORD. We ll reward you with ZapCredits that you can use to obtain free research, ZapGear, and more! For more information about ZapThink products and services, please call us at , or drop us an at info@zapthink.com. Copyright 2001, ZapThink, LLC 2

3 allows central editors and administrators to enforce document structure while providing flexibility and ease-of-use to document creators. This technique is particularly appropriate for such structured documents as contracts, applications, legal filings, financial documents, and other structured document formats that would benefit from an XML component. The WorX Product Suite HyperVision has created the WorX suite of products to meet the need of document authors to create XML-enabled documents within their normal word processing environments, most notably Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, and XP. The suite is composed of four parts: WorX for Word A plug-in to Microsoft Word that provides an embedded tool for creation of structured XML documents. WorX Information Retriever Allows a user to access and retrieve XML-formatted data and include the information as components within their Word documents. WorX Administrator Provides centralized configuration, control, and deployment of XML DTDs or XDR Schemas. Allows element mappings to Word styles through templates. WorX Application Programming Interface (API): COM based, the API allows developers programmatic access to most functions of WorX and Word, allowing customization of WorX functions for site-specific needs, including links to VBA forms. The WorX technology operates natively within the Microsoft Word environment and doesn t restrict in any manner the full functionality of the Word application. Rather, it provides an embedded approach to creating XML documents while allowing authors to retain their comfort and productivity level within Word. WorX visual icons and displays do not interrupt other word processing tasks, enabling simultaneous creation of non-structured documents. WorX creates a visual editing environment in the document map space through which authors create valid and well-formed XML documents according to administrator-set DTDs and XDR Schemas. In this manner, XML documents are created in-situ as part of the normal document creation process, rather than being converted or transformed after the fact. WorX supports the standard set of Word functions and features including cut, paste, copy, move and delete, as well as multiple selection. WorX validates the XML through DTDs or Schema set up previously by administrators. The system parses the DTDs along with the text itself and creates results that are validated in real-time with trouble spots marked with a red X. Context-sensitive tip messages help authors correct these trouble spots. Users can interact with WorX while connected to the network or while disconnected, working off DTDs and Schema pushed to their machine in earlier sessions by WorX Administrator. The system can also allow collaborative document editing across multiple enterprises and distributed authoring environments. WorX enables users to create XML documents by partially automating text markup through styles and guiding markup decisions with tips driven by context. The product can be customized through the WorX API, providing VB forms and specialized macros and templates that can guide or restrict input or automate certain markup tasks to whatever degree the developer and business conditions require. The product s COM-based API allows integration with applications written in any COM enabled language. The API also provides connectivity to VBA forms, establishing the necessary framework to build processes and implement organizational workflows. The company offers customization and development services using the API directly and through its channel partners. WorX Administrator allows DTDs and XML Schema setup and management for an entire enterprise, while providing functionality for XSLT-based translation to HTML, style mapping, data protection, and support of Word-compatible special content object types such as simple Copyright 2001, ZapThink, LLC 3

4 tables, graphics and URL links. Using the tool, administrators can import, validate, set up and maintain shared DTDs and XDR Schemas as well as documents on a corporate network. The system in effect operates in a client/server model where clients use the authoring component and the server dictates the setup. The actual XML editing operations are controlled by the client-side WorX product, but the Administrator controls the rollout and setup of the source DTDs. The WorX suite is available for Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, or XP running on Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000 Professional and Server, or Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and Server operating systems. The Vertical Approach While the technology is horizontal in nature, applying just as appropriately to the legal industry as the real estate and insurance industries, the nature of the application lends itself to being embedded within vertical solutions. It seems not as likely that insurance agents will purchase the HyperVision system for XML document creation, but rather they will be purchasing the system for use and integration within some larger insurance application, for example. In this regard, the company has built a number of applications focused on specific industries. In particular, the company has built an application to assist in writing lease agreements for real estate companies. This allows the lease process to be greatly accelerated, providing contracts to clients in days, rather than weeks. WorX allows the document creator to build the contract in Word, but take advantage of content reuse, validation, and other features as a result of XML-enablement. In general, the company would do well to look at a vertical approach for embedding and sales of its product. As detailed below, the market for XML creation tools is getting increasingly crowded, and HyperVision s key differentiator is their ability to be embedded in word processing systems, in a transparent nature. However, the side effect of this transparency is that users will not necessarily be aware of HyperVision, and as such it will need to be embedded within a larger, more specific solution. Basically put, lawyers will not buy an XML system, but they will buy a contract system that takes advantage of XML. Customers & Release History The product was first announced in early 2000, and formally released in November 2000 as a full XML authoring solution. The company has seen a high level of response from the legal, real estate, and governmental communities. These users have a lot of non-technical document creators and highly structured document processes, making them a prime market for Word-XML document creation. The system has been adopted in the healthcare market for patient records, insurance for contracts, quotes, and booklets, and real estate for lease creation. Before forming HyperVision, the company s founders consulted on document and content management with the International Monetary Fund, the US General Office of Accounting, the Congressional Joint Committee on Printing, NASA and the US Pharmacopoeia. HyperVision as a company originated out of work for the California Legislative Data Center, where consulting led to development of a WorX for Word prototype. Current HyperVision customers include Harcourt Health Services, the European Court of Justice, General Growth Properties and Clinician Support Technologies. The company also has OEM and distribution relationships with KPMG Consulting, XyEnterprise, RCI, BenefitNation, Mediasystemen, e-doc Architects, and IXIAsoft (as an XML repository). Copyright 2001, ZapThink, LLC 4

5 WorX is priced on a per-seat model with annual maintenance charges. The company charges for their API as well as for tailoring the product. They are also looking at an Application Service Provider (ASP), hosted model for delivery of the application in a vertically focused manner and for batch processing applications. The company sees many trials between 3-10 seats, and in-production between 50 and 100 seats. They have not yet seen a thousand seat installation, so their implementations are mostly a blend of small and medium-sized organizations. Competition & Alternatives The market for XML document creation is quite crowded. In general, the market consists of two major segments: XML document editing environments and embedded XML document creation ( in-situ ) environments. The former market is quite large, and the latter also competes with document conversion utilities. The largest XML document environment creators include structured document creation environments such as those offered by SoftQuad and ArborText, and development environments such as those offered by XML Spy. There really isn t much competition with those markets since they offer a different document creation paradigm and ROI. Basically, if the need is to create documents in the context of Word, HyperVision really only competes with the latter in-situ document creation environments. The only other major competitor in this space is i4i with their Microsoft Wordintegrated XML creation tool. However, the usage model and approach for Word integration differs in many ways. The company also competes with document conversion utilities that convert Word documents to XML format, but these tools have different usage patterns, are not aimed at the original document creator, and can be tricky to implement. As such, HyperVision doesn t experience much competition from this sector. Key Conclusions & Recommendations HyperVision offers a compelling and unique scenario for XML document creation by nontechnical document authors who wish to use Microsoft Word as their primary development environment. Companies looking to enable XML document creation by Word-skilled users should investigate the HyperVision product suite. The competition for XML document creation is intense and it is likely that HyperVision will continue to experience competitive pressure from alternate approaches as well as direct competitors. As such, the company should seek to adopt a more vertically oriented approach that would embed the product within products, solutions, and technologies that solve specific industry needs. Since Word is applied in many different environments by non-technical users, the HyperVision product will need to address these different needs in order to be best adopted. Copyright 2001, ZapThink, LLC 5

6 Profile: HyperVision, Ltd. (February 2002) Date Founded: 1988 Funding: Privately-held CEO / President: Bert Sheingate Employees: 20 Products: WorX Product Suite Address: 230 East Ohio St. Suite 210 Chicago, IL URL: Main Phone: Contacts: Kirstin Rogers krogers@hvltd.com Bert Sheingate bsheingate@hvltd.com Related Research! XML in the Content Lifecycle Report (ZTR-CL100)! Corel ZapNote (ZTZN-0118) -- continued -- Copyright 2001, ZapThink, LLC 6

7 About ZapThink, LLC ZapThink is an IT market intelligence firm that provides trusted advice and critical insight into XML, Web Services, and Service Orientation. We provide our target audience of IT vendors, service providers and end-users a clear roadmap for standards-based, loosely coupled distributed computing a vision of IT meeting the needs of the agile business. ZapThink s role is to help companies understand these IT products and services in the context of SOAs and the vision of Service Orientation. ZapThink provides market intelligence to IT vendors who offer XML and Web Services-based products to help them understand their competitive landscape and how to communicate their value proposition to their customers within the context of Service Orientation, and lay out their product roadmaps for the coming wave of Service Orientation. ZapThink also provides implementation intelligence to IT users who are seeking guidance and clarity into how to assemble the available products and services into a coherent roadmap to Service Orientation. Finally, ZapThink provides demand intelligence to IT vendors and service providers who must understand the needs of IT users as they follow the roadmap to Service Orientation. ZapThink s senior analysts are widely regarded as the go to analysts for XML, Web Services, and SOAs by vendors, end-users, and the press. They are in great demand as speakers, and have presented at conferences and industry events around the world. They are among the most quoted industry analysts in the IT industry. ZapThink was founded in October 2000 and is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. Its customers include Global 1000 firms, public sector organizations around the world, and many emerging businesses. ZapThink Analysts have years of experience in IT as well as research and analysis. Its analysts have previously been with such firms as IDC and ChannelWave, and have sat on the working group committees for standards bodies such as RosettaNet, UDDI, CPExchange, ebxml, EIDX, and CompTIA. Call, , or visit the ZapThink Web site to learn more about how ZapThink can help you to better understand how XML and Web Services impact your business or organization. ZAPTHINK CONTACT: ZapThink, LLC 11 Willow Street, Suite 200 Waltham, MA Phone: +1 (781) Fax: +1 (786) info@zapthink.com Copyright 2001, ZapThink, LLC 7 ZapThink, ZapThink, LLC " LLC 11 Willow " 11 Willow Street, Street, Suite Suite 200 " 200 Waltham, " Waltham, MA MA " " info@zapthink.com " "