Gary Reasons of DocSoft visited SYS-CON headquarters for an exclusive SYS-CON.TV interview to talk about one ofthe latest product releases from DocSoft, element, an XML search platform and an appliance that you can use to search XML data.

SYS-CON.TV: Welcome to SYS-CON.TV. We’re joined today by Gary Reasons, who’s a senior program manager for DocSoft. Hello and welcome.

GARY: Thanks.

SYS-CON.TV: You stopped by today to enlighten us about a new product you are releasing, but first tell us a little bit about your company.

GARY: DocSoft is a company that was started in 1999 and is based in Oklahoma City. Primarily we are a software development company – customized software. We do a lot of work with the U.S. government; we do a lot of customized projects for the government and we’re XML experts, that’s kind of our niche. We’re .NET experts as well. We do a lot of good things but right now we’re concentrating on XML because it’s an interesting platform.

SYS-CON.TV: That relates to the product that you have coming out. When is it going to be out and what is it called? Tell us a little bit about that.

GARY: The product that we’re working on right now is called element; we feel element is going to be the next generation of search tools. It is an XML search platform and an appliance. It’s going to be a search appliance that you can use to search XML data and it will be available, hopefully, in the first quarter of 2006.

SYS-CON.TV: What makes element different from other search products that are out there?

GARY: element is really the first search appliance that is going to be able to search structured data, which is XML data. It can be from a PDF file, Microsoft Office products, HTML; there’s a lot of different types of data that it will be able to search. What we utilize is smart searching, contact searching. There are certain tags and elements or elements that are behind the data for most anything companies may have in their repository and we do smart searching so it returns a lot more quality answers instead of large amounts of answers – it’s a smart search.

SYS-CON.TV: How is this contact searching better than a basic keyword search?

GARY: It allows you to get to the data that you’re looking for a lot faster. Instead of putting in a simple keyword search where you might get 10 million responses, by having the schema that is behind XML data already producing pretty much a context type of a search – you can use simple keywords in the searches as well, but it’s already relevant to the data so we return more quality answers instead of quantity.

SYS-CON.TV: You’re utilizing the schemas to do this?

GARY: Yes, we definitely utilize schemas and with our product it’s a plug-and-play type of appliance. When you plug it in you’re going to be able to use it right away. We actually have a wizard that you can utilize to define your schemas as you go into it and you can customize these or you can even upload the schemas you may have for your repository, type of documents, and it allows you to get started very quickly, so once you plug it in you’ll be able to go with it.

SYS-CON.TV: What type of people would be able to go with it? Who would be using this product?

GARY:  We look at this as an opportunity to reach a real broad market because we have a lot of different companies that we feel are moving toward it, for instance, the U.S. government. The U.S. government is mandating that their platform is going to take all their data to an XML platform because they realize there’s contact searching capabilities, so you will be able to find data that’s important to you. For example, the military and medical services, the medical industry – things that you’re doing with all the data that’s in the medical business. Also, perhaps, the insurance industry – so much data is there and you can get contact searching to be able to find certain things very quickly. The legal industry – you take law and judicial review and all the different kinds of information that they’re trying to find there. Those are just three or four things but we really feel that it’s going to be applicable to just about any large enterprise.

SYS-CON.TV: These are the possible applications of element. Do you foresee any others, any other long-term, more broad range applications in the future?

GARY: I think right now the XML platform is just now being utilized fully, and so by being on the growth curve, so to speak, of the XML searching ability, we’ll be positioned quite well. We’re the first company to have this appliance available to the public and we feel that it’s going to be a real growth force, maybe 10 percent of the people who are actually utilizing the search capability for XML data now. We feel that there is a very, very large growth curve, and, for instance, if you take a Google search, Google does not support XML data, so right now we’re far ahead of that.

SYS-CON.TV: Once again, when is the product going to be coming out?

GARY: We hope to have Windows 2003 certification by January of ’06 and hopefully have our product to market by the first quarter of ’06, so quite an ambitious timetable and we’re doing real well with it. If you want to take a test run on it just go to our Web site; it’s http://www.whatthexml.com/.

SYS-CON.TV: XML?

GARY:  Or DocSoft Company. Here, we’re going to give you a pen.

SYS-CON.TV: Thank you. It’s so large you can find it when you’re looking for it.

GARY: That’s right, we’re the big pen guys and you can remember to find us and you can take a test drive on the product at our Web site, http://www.whatthexml.com/, and have some fun with it. We have some other great products as well. One of our popular software development products is wordplay. It converts standard documents, Word documents, to XML platform so there are a lot of companies that are converting their data to XML because they realize there’s potential for it.

SYS-CON.TV: You actually know quite a bit about converting also because you played for the Giants and you’re actively involved in sports broadcasting.

GARY: Yes, I played with the N.Y. Giants for about eight years and had a lot of fun, a lot of success there. SYS-CON is in New Jersey; this is close to where I used to live, so it was fun to come back up here and see you all. I do work in television, cover college football. That’s kind of my moonlighting job but we’re trying to work hard with the software industry.

SYS-CON.TV: We’re glad you stopped by to enlighten us about it. Thank you very much, Gary Reasons, for stopping by.

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