Compared to some of the 'bigger name' players in the market it might seem to the uninitiated that Filestream aren't a serious competitor - but that would be to seriously underestimate the work that has been put into the Wokingham-based company's product.
On the contrary in fact, it is fair to say that File Stream 5 compares extremely favourably with DM solutions at 4 or 5 times the price, as long-standing enterprise users including global names such as BNP Paribas and Scania can testify.
The company also has a long and successful partnership with PFU (EMEA). Integrations with both their highly successful ScanSnap and Fujitsu scanner ranges ensure FileStream customers can leverage the benefits of integration with the global leaders - another sign that the company's offerings are most definitely 'up to the job'. And with the newest version, things have got a whole lot better.
Filestream's latest product File Stream 5 is a cloud-based (with an on-premise option for those who prefer it), 100% zero footprint solution that offers the same intuitive and simple interface to users on Windows, Apple or Android platforms. Role-based access control (RBAC) is built in at no extra cost. As well as being fully pen tested, all File Stream documents are fully encrypted to the AES-256 standard required for GDPR and other security compliance requirements.
The company has been careful to make the product as flexible as possible so that potential users can use the functionality they need without paying for elements they don't. Take OCR as an example: users can use Tesseract OCR which is ideal for large volumes that require powerful 'workhorse' processing, or opt for Azure's own OCR offering if they require a 'smarter' tool for more unstructured documents.
Coming very soon is a massively configurable dashboard interface which will make this already highly flexible and powerful offering even more user-friendly and easy to manage.
Crucially, File Stream is offered on a concurrent licensing basis (which is not the case with a surprising number of competitive offerings) which makes it very attractive from a management perspective: any (authorised, as mentioned above) user can use the system at any time, up to the maximum number, rather than being limited to specific named users. This point alone is proving a major selling point to many potential customers who recognise the value of this approach.
We would expect this latest version of File Stream to appeal to SMEs who might previously have thought DM solutions out of their reach in terms of cost and management commitment, as well as the larger enterprises who already know and appreciate the product itself. Their win in last year's DM Awards (Low Code DM Product of the Year) is another sign of Filestream's growing presence in the market.
In these times of remote and hybrid working it is refreshing to see a software company offering such a high level of functionality with realistic and affordable pricing - so that quality document management can be accessed by all. As the company themselves explain, their product may not be the best known in its market (at the moment, at least), but it has a large and very happy customer base who - unusually for this sector - 'never leave' once they realise just how good a product File Stream is.
More info: www.filestreamsystems.co.uk