San Diego, Calif.-based Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) designs, develops, manufactures, and markets high-performance optical networks that enable the transport of voice and data over the fiber-optics networks. Combining Documentum with Brava! has dramatically increased document management efficiency for the company.

AMCC’s Documentum platform is enhanced with Informative Graphics&singlequot; Brava! product, which allows users to view, edit, collaborate on, and print drawings and documents without the need of a native application. Brava! allows users to view any type of file format including 2D and 3D CAD model files. Its simple interface is a server-based product, and so eliminates the need to install a program on every user desktop. The technology can accommodate hundreds of concurrent users without the need for additional servers. Informative Graphics configured Brava! to suit the AMCC Documentum user environment.

Nadine Siddell, program analyst at AMCC, says one of the reasons her company purchased Documentum was to establish a single repository for all of the company&singlequot;s documents and to be able to manage the documents globally. "Using Brava! within the Documentum platform, we realized the advantages of implementing technology that would allow us to perform automated approvals. Having both tools allows us to facilitate the automated creation and editing of documents.” In addition to the obvious advantages of consolidation and automation, documents edited within the Documentum system have the same look and feel and identical formats no matter what division creates them.

Brava! add-on to Documentum

AMCC employees use PCs as well as UNIX workstations. Siddell says, "One of the key benefits that we realized in using Brava! was that it suits a multi-platform environment and it allowed us to do review and approval electronically via redlining." Brava! allows users to publish drawings and images in native file formats for viewing and to exchange ideas by overlaying markups without requiring the same hardware platform, native software application or browser.

"We use Brava! for redlining Documentum documents," says Siddell. "When a document goes through approval, users can perform online redlining and make online annotations. Prior to the new system, when a change needed to be made, users printed out the hardcopy document, noted the change on paper, and returned it to the document control group. The onus was on the document control group to manage all the paper documents and the engineering changes. With the new system in place, the individual users are going to be responsible for making those changes electronically."

Siddell says that AMCC&singlequot;s Documentum users will realize several advantages using Brava! with the documents and platform including:

• Enhanced online communication and collaboration among all design team members regardless of location.
• Elimination of hardcopies, copying, and reproduction efforts associated with the traditional methodologies.
• Organization, management, and proliferation of project documents via Web access -
• Accessibility to multiple software formats including popular CAD applications.
• Reduce project costs and minimize delays of project by viewing and redlining the documents or drawings in a browser quickly without any s/w installed on the user&singlequot;s desktop.