"Today, the information industry is experiencing a transformation
as our view of information management changes radically from an isolated
task to one that cuts across all dimensions of an organization. With
the ability to capture, store, retrieve, and distribute vast amounts
of information from individual to individual and workgroup to workgroup,
we are pushing the envelope of existing computing infrastructures
and challenging current models of information processing. The result
is a paradigm shift away from information systems as an isolated discrete
discipline and to information systems as a fundamental component of
every business and social institution.
This transformation is accompanied by new metaphors and new problems.
The most powerful of these metaphors is that of the electronic document.
Brought into the limelight by technologies such as imaging, the electronic
document is fast becoming a rich new data type that can take on virtually
any form, from text to image, video to virtual reality. From the user's
perspective the electronic document is more than just a new approach
to managing information, it is the embodiment of personalized information
systems, since it represent a user's own proprietary knowledge-base.
Documents, from electronic publishing to multimedia, have elevated
the intimacy between man and machine.
In this new paradigm information technology is not only a means of
achieving organizational strength, but a means to empower individuals.
Advances in user interfaces coupled with the enormous decrease in
the cost of desktop and portable computing have created end users
with a wealth of information and computing power at their fingertips.
For the enterprise, this means managing widely distributed and heterogeneous
document-based information systems that must not only continue to
provide individual value, but somehow preserve the value of the entire
information base across user communities, in spite of enormous diversity.
Accomplishing this will require that organizations re-evaluate their
current information systems and business processes. Business process
redesign that focuses on empowering the user by exploiting the properties
of the electronic document will create a new information management
environment.
This new environment, creates a "Single Point of Access,"
which focuses on a user-centric information system that provides access
to all information within one interface - an interface that will ultimately
make pale the contemporary two dimensional displays and window-based
metaphors we use today.
The full impact that Single Point of Access will have on today's
organizations is virtually impossible to predict. Benefits and drawbacks
will arise that cannot be appreciated in the context of current technologies
and applications. We can none-the-less speculate as to the changes
that will result from this new vantage point and begin to lay the
foundation for the technologies, and more importantly the methodologies,
we will need in order to prepare ourselves and our organizations for
the transformation to come."
