Re: Manuals on CD-ROM

[Margaret Packman <mpackman -at- CISCO -dot- COM>]

At 12:21 PM 1/24/96, Garret Romaine wrote:
>LURK MODE OFF:

>Kent wrote:

>>Our company is investigating the possibility of distributing our manuals
>>on CD-ROM, possibly as an adjunct to paper distribution or possibly (to
>>my dismay) as a replacement for the paper distribution.

>Ah, the '90s. How many times can *you* change skill sets?

>Kent, check out Cisco Systems of Menlo Park, CA. They made a nice
>presentation at the 1995 STC Conference in Washington, D.C. that went over
>very well. Cisco manages to release every current document on a CD-ROM every
>month to a set of subscribers under a program called UniverCD. They also
>charge about $2,000 per year for the service. While you may not be that
>ambitious, or even capable of charging that much, you'll be interested in
>the how they're  packaging their documents with a reader and getting it out
>to the world.

>Cisco uses KnowledgeSet Retrieval System of Sunnyvale, CA. for their
>publishing tool.
>IBM makes a tool called BookManager (bookmgr -at- vnet -dot- ibm -dot- com).
>There's lots more;  maybe someone else on the list knows a couple, or has
>better experience than mine?

>As far as pros and cons, we haven't taken this route yet, but it looks like
>we may someday. Save a tree, use beach sand, as my manager expressed it.

>Garret Romaine
>gromaine -at- radisys -dot- com
>   - Endeavor to perservere


Cisco is actually based in San Jose (I know--picky, picky). Some of the
details have changed since last year's STC Conference presentation, but
Cisco does, indeed, release documents on CD-ROM monthly. You can check out
the CD web site at:

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/home/home.htm


There is now a second CD-ROM which includes information on the CiscoPro
product line at:

http://www.cisco.com/cpropub/univercd/home/home.htm






>(<
Ms Packman
Documentation Goddess, DNRC
Holder of Past Knowledge
"Alpha's just another word for nothin' left to lose;
Beta's not much better, but it's free."