New hardware to be specified
The next area is hardware which you require the supplier to provide as part of the solution or at least to specify. The two main areas here are the server or servers which the solution will run on and any specialist scanning hardware required.
Servers and storage subsystems
The servers will be standard servers but it is useful to ask the suppliers to specify them and particularly for the preferred supplier to specify the server/s as part of the specification exercise. Your education organisation can then purchase the hardware if that is more cost effective.
This also applies to the storage subsystem required to manage the content and document files and the metadata. You may wish to use an existing corporate storage solution or you may wish to use a dedicated solution for EDRM. It is well worth asking the suppliers for their recommended storage solutions.
The suppliers should be asked to specify the servers and storage solutions based on the volumetrics provided; the resilience requirements and the performance requirements as detailed below. You will then have a baseline against which they can be modified at the specification stage if new facts come to light.
If it is the policy of your ICT department that mission critical corporate applications should run on a particular range of supplier hardware or on specific operating system software then these requirements should be specified here.
Scanners
You need to specify your scanner requirements here based on your overall document capture subsystem requirements as specified above in the functional requirements section.
You would normally expect to set up a single A3 scanner as part of the model office and to set up a local scanning and document capture subsystem for the pilot. You have a choice of rotary or flatbed and colour or black and white. You need to agree the daily throughput requirements and you also need to specify one or more PCs with a high resolution screen for controlling the scanner; quality checking; indexing and saving. If you have low volume throughput you can carry out all these functions on one PC. As the volumes increase you will need more than one PC to conduct those tasks.
For the roll outs you need to include indicative scanner requirements again based on your overall document capture subsystem requirements as specified above in the functional requirements section. If you have opted for a centralised solution then you will want to specify two or more scanners to provide resilience rather than one high volume scanner so that if one goes down you have a back-up. You may be able to specify one rotary and one flatbed scanner with the rotary designed for speed and the flatbed designed to cater for mixed document sizes and multi-page documents plus damaged documents.
If you need a large format scanner you need to decide whether you need an A2, A1 or A0 scanner and again whether colour or black and white.
