data. Every action in the system is tracked, and can be reported to demonstrate compliance with a wide variety of regulations. Characteristics In his Computerwoche article, Ulrich Kampffmeyer characterized ECM as: Middleware, eliminating the restrictions of vertical applications and island architecture and transparent to users. ECM offers a third platform, in addition to conventional host and client-server systems. According to Kampffmeyer, enterprise application integration (EAI) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) will play important roles in ECM implementation. Independent services, managing information without regard to the source or the required use and available from a variety of applications. For a given use, only one general service is available; this avoids the expense and maintenance of parallel functions. Standards for interfaces connecting different services will play an important role in ECM implementation. A uniform repository for information, data and document warehouses combining company information. Information lifecycle management will also play an important role in the implementation of ECM. ECM is working properly when it is invisible to users. It supports specialized applications as subordinate services. ECM is a multi-layer model which includes technology for handling, delivering, and managing structured data and unstructured information. It manages the information in a web content management system and archives as a universal repository. Components ECM combines components which can be used as stand-alone systems without being incorporated into an enterprise-wide system. The five ECM components were defined by the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) as: Capture Manage Store Preserve Deliver Capture Capture involves converting information from paper documents into an electronic format by scanning, and collects electronic files and information into a consistent structure for management. Capture technologies also encompass the creation of metadata, describing characteristics of a document for easy location through search technology. A medical chart might include the patient ID, name, date of visit and procedure for medical personnel to locate the chart. Earlier document automation systems photographed documents for storage on microfilm or microfiche. Image scanners make digital copies of paper documents. Documents already in digital form can be copied (or linked to) if they are available online. Automatic or semi-automatic capture can use electronic data interchange (EDI) or XML documents, business and ERP applications, or specialized-application systems as sources. Recognition technologies Recognition technologies to extract information from scanned documents and digital faxes include: Optical character recognition (OCR): Converts images of typeset text into alphanumeric characters Handwriting recognition (HWR): Converts images