Nationwide represented service providers for scanning & co. with long-standing history of Hamburg, the 14.07.11 day after tomorrow commits the service provider ALPHA COM be 35th anniversary. This nationwide represented the group is one of the most experienced providers in document management and can look back on an eventful time. In 1976, one suspected anything the huge storage capacity of today’s hard disks or USB sticks. Magnetic tapes in plate size acted as a storage medium, which company filed the data from mainframes. A cheaper and more convenient alternative promised the new COM method. The computer output on microfilm provided content such as correspondence with customers or invoices on microfiche or microfilm, you quickly could be accessed via reader.
The technology at the time was ground-breaking and there were only a few COM provider. With us there was”gold rush, Thomas Fuchs remembers. He belongs to the staff of the first hour at the former alphCOM society for microfilming mbH, which was founded on July 16, 1976 in Hamburg. She went on group COM in the today’s ALPHA, which covers various areas in the DMS environment. 50 customers In the summer 35 years ago about 15 employees with two COM systems which ran in three-shift operation started with start. Daily received tapes from approximately 50 customers. The heart of the COM machines was a so-called core with copper wires threaded by hand.
At that time modern abacus saved just 192 kilobytes (kB) and cost a small fortune. Today document management systems and server environments have displaced almost the microfilm, which changed the core business of the service provider. Now it converts information of any kind in the desired format, so that customers can work as universally digital. The applications range from the electronic Inbox via the digital archiving to the automated processing of incoming invoices. The requirements increased continuously since ancient times of COM. Today, the technology is secondary. The customers want Solutions”, explains Jorg Bothmann, long-time managing director of ALPHA COM Germany GmbH. Correspondingly wide is the Group and offers not only the classical services around the scanning, but also individual software development, process consultancy and software as a service (SaS) and data center operation. With about 600 employees at ten nationwide locations, ALPHA COM is one of the largest service providers around the document. The customer base includes about 3,000 companies and institutions of every size and industry. The market has become significantly less clear in 35 years and others because of the fall in the price of storage and software”, says Jorg Bothmann. At the same time the customer wishes are complex, not every provider can meet. It remains exciting.”