This chapter describes the Snowbound corporate overview. The chapter contains the following topics:
‘‘Supported Operating Systems and Specifications’’
‘‘Custom Application Development Services’’
Snowbound Software develops technology that companies depend on every day to conduct business across the enterprise. We make vital functions including viewing, converting, and manipulating documents and images easy. Our powerful web viewers, smarter developer toolkits, and rapid conversion applications empower companies to take their imaging capabilities to new heights.
Snowbound Software is comprised of dedicated and experienced professionals who understand the vital role imaging technology plays in a company’s ability to conduct business daily across the enterprise. Founded in 1996 by seasoned individuals with over 20 years experience in the imaging industry, they had a mission to provide technology that would exceed the needs of customers in performance, quality, and service.
Today as we continue to deliver solutions that help our customers succeed, we have become the most trusted and reputable name in the industry. Thousands of developers around the world rely on our proven technology to easily incorporate expert imaging capabilities into their application.
Our focus is to provide powerful, flexible, and reliable technology that delivers:
Performance at the highest level
In-depth support for the popular computing platforms
Crucial features and functions that our customers require
High-quality products that surpass extensive testing
Responsive customer support (We provide full documentation, samples, and a technical support staff that is easily reachable by phone,1 fax, or e-mail)
To request additional demonstrations and evaluations, or for more information about our company, please visit our web site at www.snowbound.com. You may also contact us directly.
The following section describes the advantages of the Snowbound family of products.
Our powerful technology was created specifically to make it easier for companies to enhance their ECM systems/products with powerful imaging through improving crucial imaging capabilities that increase their capabilities and efficiency. We improve the ability of our customers to display vital documents and images while removing the burden of understanding and supporting complex and arcane document and image formats.
Our experts keep up-to-date with both document and image handling requirements as well as continuously changing industry trends to ensure that you can incorporate the most current imaging technology available.
Our products are easy to learn, integrate, and use. Snowbound’s smarter developer tools, powerful web viewers, and rapid batch conversion applications are designed for fast and easy integration and implementation. They provide you with expert imaging capabilities and functions that result in complete and polished solutions.
Our product families are scalable and flexible, supporting the Windows® including .NET and the Java™ platforms, as well as UNIX®. In addition, in order to better meet your needs, we have designed our products to be easily configured as well as readily customizable. Snowbound excels in providing quick and economical solutions for your special needs.
Our Snowbound products have been created with over twelve years of development and testing, are integrated into hundreds of applications, and are being used in the field by millions of end users.
Our customers include Allstate, America Online, Bank of America, Carreker, Choicepoint, eCopy, Delta Airline, Eastman Kodak, EMC Documentum, FileNet (IBM), GE Healthcare, Hewlett-Packard, Hyland Software, IBM, Iron Mountain, McKesson, Paine Webber, Sun Trust, United Online, United States Patent and Trademark Office, United States Postal Service, Wachovia Corporation, Xerox, and many others.
We provide a variety of comprehensive support and maintenance programs that provide you with reliable industry-leading support and expert resources.
Snowbound Software’s award-winning family of RasterMaster imaging toolkits and libraries lead the industry in performance and reliability. RasterMaster, The Smarter Imaging SDK, is built on over 20 years of imaging expertise that you are developing with the most up-to-date imaging tools in the industry.
RasterMaster is available for multiple platforms: Java, Windows, .NET, and UNIX.
RasterMaster for Windows is the most powerful imaging toolkit in the industry. RasterMaster will empower you to develop an application or solution featuring expert imaging capabilities. It is available as either DLL, ActiveX, or .NET. Refer to the Snowbound RasterMaster™ Imaging SDK ActiveX Programmer’s Reference Manual, the Snowbound RasterMaster™ Imaging SDK Dynamic Link Library (DLL) Programmer’s Reference Manual, or the Snowbound RasterMaster™ Imaging SDK .NET Programmer’s Reference Manual for more information.
Features
High speed raster image compression, encryption, and decompression support - whole image or line by line.
High end document imaging functions: anti-aliasing, automatic deskewing, despeckling, Cornerstone support, and more.
High-performance display functions including automatic aspect ratio correction, gamma correction, palette selection, display compensation, dithering, zooming, and automatic scroll bars.
Image processing functions including resizing, sharpening, brightness, and contrast.
Integrated TWAIN scanner support.
Wide selection of color conversion functions.
Fast image printing with automatic or manually selectable dithering.
Options
ABIC image compression, decompression, display, printing, and much more.
PDF image display, manipulation, and conversion.
PCL (HP Printer format) import and support for PCL reading, decompression, and saving.
Annotation and redlining capabilities which allow multiple annotation layers, redaction, resizing linked with the underlying image, object annotations, and rotation and annotation data.
RasterMaster for .NET is a feature-rich, easy-to-use, robust imaging toolkit. It provides powerful and mature raster image display and manipulation capabilities, enabling the application developer to easily add such capabilities into his or her application. Refer to the Snowbound RasterMaster™ Imaging SDK for .NET Programmer’s Reference Manual for more information.
Snowbound Software’s RasterMaster for .NET SDK and its library:
Are designed to fully integrate with Microsoft’s Visual Studio .NET tools providing managed code capability.
Incorporates an intuitive wizard to help you develop your application.
Supports over 100 document and image formats including TIFF, JPEG, MS Word, PDF, ABIC, MO:DCA and PCL, among others.
Provides over 140 expert imaging features and functions including: viewing, conversion, manipulation, annotation, printing, and saving.
Provides drag and drop functionality for object oriented development.
Delivers enhanced performance and speed for your application.
The Plus product is the entry level imaging tool that supports most common image formats.
The Extended product offers more formats and features. It contains all of the functions and formats of the Plus product, plus:
IBM MO:DCA, PT:OCA, IOCA, AFP support.
Internal support for storing and saving 32-bit CMYK, alpha channel, and 16-bit grayscale images.
Ability to convert CMYK to RGB or RGB to CMYK images.
Optimized display of CMYK images.
Color separation and combining of planes to and from CMYK and RGB.
DICOM format reading.
PDF saving.
Window-leveling for 8 and 16-bit grayscale.
Scitex format reading and writing.
4-bit color TIFF support.
The RasterMaster™ Imaging SDK for the Java Platform is written in 100% Java, permitting true cross-platform and Internet imaging of formats such as TIFF, JPEG, MO:DCA, DICOM and more. Refer to the Snowbound RasterMaster™ Imaging SDK for Java Programmer’s Reference Manual for more information.
Snowbound Software’s RasterMaster for the Java™ Platform and its library:
Supports both SWING and AWT components.
Provides high-performance and impressive speed for your application.
Supports over 40 document and image formats including TIFF, JPEG, MS Word, PDF, ABIC, and MO:DCA.
Delivers expert imaging features and functions including: viewing, conversion, manipulation, annotation, printing, and saving.
SnowView® is a powerful viewing application built using RasterMaster. It enables developers to demonstrate a subset of the functionality without having to download and install the complete library. SnowView has been optimized to view and manipulate various images and documents from multiple sources through the single viewer.
Snowbound Software’s FlexSnap family of Web viewers dramatically improves the speed and efficiency of handling documents and images across your entire organization. FlexSnap enables high-speed viewing of multiple file formats through a standard web browser. It eliminates the need to open multiple programs and applications with its ability to automatically detect and read document and image formats, including: ABIC, PDF, PCL, Group 4, MO:DCA, MS Word, MS Excel, JPEG, TIFF and many more. Refer to the FlexSnap® Web Viewer for the Java™ Platform System Administrator’s Guide for more information.
Our FlexSnap family of viewers and applets will satisfy all of your Web viewing requirements:
FlexSnap®: Applet—Java-based configurable web viewer available in a standard edition (FlexSnap: Applet SE) and an extended edition (FlexSnap: Applet XE).
FlexSnap®: HTML—Pure HTML web viewer with Java servlet.
FlexSnap®: SI—Java-based Web imaging applet with server integration.
FlexSnap®: SI for Webtop™—Java-based Web imaging applet with server integration configured to integrate specifically with Documentum® Webtop™.
Companies worldwide depend on the FlexSnap family of Web viewers to:
Increase productivity and reduce training—Enhance your standard browser to open multiple document and image formats through a single universal viewer.
Meet business needs across the enterprise and user permission levels—Easily configure viewer interface to enable/disable user functions.
Focus development resources and improve time-to-market—Incorporate pre-configured viewing applications ready-to-go with expert imaging capabilities.
Leverage our imaging expertise—Rely on our dedicated and experienced internal development and support teams to solve your problems and answer your questions.
Ensure compatibility—Built on Java technology, our viewers offer true cross platform support.
Simplify the upgrading process—Easily update your viewers from a centralized web server without any installation process.
FlexSnap: Applet is a truly flexible imaging applet that enables users to view, manipulate, convert, and annotate single or multi-page documents and images right in a Web browser.
FlexSnap: Applet operates seamlessly on any Java platform. It requires no installation and can operate as either a floating applet window with a drop down menu or a fixed applet embedded within an HTML page. FlexSnap Applet is available in both a standard edition and extended edition:
FlexSnap®: Applet SE – The newest edition to our web viewer family is the Standard Edition of our Java applet. Applet SE delivers:
High-speed viewing and annotation support for basic image formats including: TIFF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, PCX, NCR, PCL, DCX, DIB, ASCII, CALS, EPS Preview, EXIF, FileNet, and GIF.
Thumbnail selection.
Servlet samples for storing annotations and secure file transfer.
Configurable toolbars.
FlexSnap®: Applet XE – The flagship product within our web viewer family is the Extended Edition of our Java applet. Applet XE is a more enhanced version of our imaging applet that provides:
All of the features included in Applet SE.
Additional format support including MO:DCA, AFP, DICOM, MS Word, MS Excel, PDF, and more.
FlexSnap: HTML is a versatile “ultra” thin client that provides fast and convenient access to documents and images stored on a Web server. It re-invents thin-client image viewing and takes it to the next level, achieving unmatched performance, quality, and capabilities.
Delivering unprecedented speed, FlexSnap: HTML provides a secure way to rapidly view documents and images without affecting your local hard drive or system. It is ideal when there are limited bandwidth issues and/or no control over the end user’s environment or applications.
FlexSnap: SI is a sophisticated Web-based retrieval system that provides access to documents and images located on a web server. It is the perfect combination of our FlexSnap: Applet, which provides expert viewing capabilities, with advanced server integration for easy retrieval. It provides sophisticated annotation capabilities and layer control allowing annotations to be associated with a particular image and stored independent of the file back in the database for easy retrieval.
FlexSnap: SI operates seamlessly on any Java platform to provide true cross-platform support and automatically installs on the client side when opened, ensuring quick and easy client software updates. It can be used with any server-based repository or database. It is ready to integrate with multiple industry leading content, document, and asset management systems.
FlexSnap: SI for Webtop is a powerful document and image web viewer with server integration configured to integrate specifically with Webtop, delivering high-speed viewing capabilities for Documentum® Webtop users.
SnowBatch® is a powerful Windows-based conversion application that converts large batches of image or document files from one format to another. Developed from Snowbound’s latest RasterMaster technology, SnowBatch’s built-in functionality and easy-to-use interface makes converting files quick, easy, and accurate. It supports 100+ image formats and may be customized to offer a variety of capabilities. Refer to the Snowbound SnowBatch® Image Converter Programmer’s Reference Manual for more information.
Developed and maintained by our in-house experts, our batch conversion solutions:
Support over 100 formats including AFP, MO:DCA, IOCA, PTOCA, PDF, MS Word, TIFF, JPG, and more.
Provide fast conversion rates.
Available in the following platforms: SnowBatch (Windows only), RasterMaster (Windows, UNIX, .NET, and Java).
Versatile polling capability.
Command line interface to automate the batch process conversion.
Ability to delete files after they have been converted.
Advanced scheduling option.
Ability to designate output extension.
Ability to pull files from directory for conversion.
Snowbound Software supports at a minimum the specifications listed below. In addition to the operating systems and specifications listed, we can support and customize our products to additional operating systems and specifications not listed. To find out whether or not your target environment qualifies, please check with a Snowbound sales representative.
Listed below are the operating systems that are supported by Snowbound Software.
Microsoft Windows 98/2000/NT/ME/XP/Server 2003/XP 64
Hewlett Packard HP-UX 11i
Sun Solaris 10
IBM AIX 5L 5.3
SGI IRIX 6.5
Intel Linux, kernel version 2.4
IBM AS/400, RS/6000, MVS
Listed below are the hardware platforms that are supported by Snowbound Software.
AMD x86 compatible
AMD 64 x86 compatible
IBM RS/6000
HP 9000
SGI
Sun
Intel x86
Listed below are the Java specifications that are supported by Snowbound Software.
Java Server Pages (JSP) 1.2 and higher
JVM 1.1 and higher (no PDF support)
J2EE 1.2 and higher
JRE 1.2 and higher
Listed below are the web browsers that are supported by Snowbound Software.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x and higher
Netscape Navigator 4.x and higher
Mozilla 1.0 and higher
Mozilla Firefox 1.0 and higher
Listed below are the web servers that are supported by Snowbound Software.
Apache 1.3x and higher
IIS 4.x and higher
Listed below are the application servers and containers that are supported by Snowbound Software.
Apache Group Tomcat 3.x and higher
BEA WebLogic 6.0 and higher
Macromedia JRun
New Atlanta ServletExec
Sun Microsystems IPlanet Enterprise
IBM WebSphere 5.0 and higher
BEA WebLogic
Jakarta TomCat 3.x and higher
JBoss 2.2 and higher
JRun 3
Mortbay Jetty 4.x and higher
Listed below are the Documentum Webtop platforms that are supported by Snowbound Software.
Version 5.25 SP3
Version 5.3
Version 5.2
Snowbound offers custom application programming services, such as solutions relating to web imaging, applets, servlets, or any combination. Rather than only providing implementation tools, we also offer development services. This helps with efficiency and speed, which benefits you, the customer. If you would like Snowbound to provide custom application programming services, please contact us directly.
1 Phone response is available for priority support program customers.