BigHand has today announced its plan for the convergence of the BigHand and nFlow technologies. A new converged product; BigHand v4, will be launched on Nov 4th 2010 at the BigHand Annual User Conference and will combine the best features of both technologies in a new BigHand product. BigHand v4 will enable all customers within the BigHand Group to access an unrivalled voice productivity toolkit and will enhance their document production and mobile efficiency even further.
 
Rob Lancashire, BigHand Managing Director for UK Legal & Professional Services commented: “Since the acquisition of nFlow I have spoken with customers about the best way forward and there has been overwhelming support for the convergence of the product streams as it offers both nFlow & BigHand customers the best of both worlds. Equally we acknowledge a customer desire for flexibility and a caveat to the convergence plan is that we intend to allow firms to do this at their own speed and not be forced to upgrade by any set deadline. I believe the plan we have in place delivers BigHand and nFlow end-users a combination of product improvements and technical consistency, and is a result of engaging quickly and directly with the customer base post-acquisition. We will continue to evolve the plan to ensure a seamless migration path to the converged version, and an upgrade that delivers significant value.”
 
Asif Ali, BigHand Head of Products, commented: “The BigHand Group is committed to the long term support of users on current versions 4 and 5 of the nFlow system, including the nFlow mobility apps, and there are no plans to discontinue either product. As testament to our support, BigHand’s Analytics package comprising a suite of Crystal reports will be integrated with nFlow software, and be made available this summer. However, following the next service release for nFlow v5, nFlow development resource will then be concentrated on the converged product which will effectively become the next major release for the nFlow product stream. This will also mean that a number of the innovative nFlow functions will be available to BigHand users as part of their upgrade to BigHand v4.’’
 
BigHand will honour all existing nFlow Annual Maintenance and Support contracts for all firms including those wanting to migrate to BigHand v3.4 or future v4 products. Furthermore, the migration will replicate the existing nFlow configuration as closely as possible making the process simple and straightforward, but give access to significantly enhanced mobility, workflow and voice-to-text functionality including:
 
·         BigHand for BlackBerry v4

·         BigHand for iPhone

·         BigHand Integration with Microsoft Office

·         Email Notification + Document Return

·         Advanced Reporting + Analytics

·         Server-based Speech Recognition

Existing BigHand v3 users will be able to seamlessly upgrade to BigHand v4 as per their standard process to date and with little or no change to their existing infrastructure or system set-up. More information is available at a series of breakfast briefings being held at the following locations:
 
Fri 18th June                 8am-10am         Birmingham
Tues 22nd June             8am-10am         Manchester
Weds 23rd June             8am-10am         Liverpool
Thurs 24th June             8am-10am         Leeds
Fri 25th June                 8am-10am         Newcastle
Thurs 1st July                8am-10am         Edinburgh
Fri 2nd July                   8am-10am         Glasgow
Tues 20th July               8am-10am         London
 
For further information or to register for one of the briefings, contact jo.beckwith@bighand.com