Aia Software extends its support for Open Source
Nijmegen, 2 december 2004 - Aia Software, supplier of the document management software ITP, announces that some of the new extensions to its ITP portfolio will be developed as Open Source. This will enable its clients to enhance and modify the software whilst allowing these changes to subsequently become available to all interested parties. The Aia Software ITP solutions already support Open Source software such as OpenOffice.org. Now Aia will introduce ITP software components in an Open Source licensing model. Besides the 'closed source' ITP version, Aia's strategy is expected to eventually result in an Open Source ITP entry level solution.
Aia's first Open Source component will be the Work-in-progress module of its correspondence application. This function enables a user to find the status of an ITP created document including the way in which it should be post-processed. Every industry has its own specific requirements in this area and this is one of the main reasons for adopting the Open Source approach. Aia is currently progressing a number of pilot projects in the Public Sector. This sector was a deliberate choice as over 200 local government bodies in the Netherlands are already using ITP. The Dutch public sector is particularly interested in the development of OpenOffice.org and Open source software. Depending upon the results of these pilot projects, version 1.0 of this software could be available as early as the first quarter of 2005.
Leon Pillich, CEO of Aia Software and responsible for product development: "Being professional developers we are software specialists, but so are our clients. There are many ideas in the document management arena that cannot be implemented all at the same time. Open Source is a very good platform for the development of software where everybody will be able to benefit from each others knowledge and experiences; we expect that many of our clients will take advantage of this new possibility. One of our first initiatives in this area has been a very positive one. Together with Pink Roccade Civility we have been offering our software in such a way that our clients have a choice of integrating it with either OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Word."