As a software engineer, I am constantly on the hunt for the latest and greatest technology that can improve IntraLinks' business offerings, productivity or technical edge. Whenever I or my team finds something that we think is good to incorporate into a product we will try to develop a Proof of Concept (POC) using this new technology. As developers, however, we often encounter hurdles in the initial phase of implementing a prototype.

One of the main issues many engineers encounter in development is the lack of physical resources required to implement prototypes. Most software developers have powerful PCs that they use for both development as well as daily office tasks like email, documentation, internet browsing, etc. These daily tasks take up nearly all of the computing resources on their desktop, so in order for developers to implement prototypes or POCs they need to purchase hardware to increase their computing resources. In most businesses, ordering new hardware requires an approval and order process which can take weeks to complete. That's just too long of a wait for developers to get started on their new projects!

As a business professional, I fend off hundreds of emails in a day with various weapons of choice like my BlackBerry or my company laptop. (One recent report estimates the average person sends and receives 133 email messages a day!) Yet just when I think I'm winning the "Battle of the (email) Bulge" by diligently responding, filing, and deleting, I realize mine is a pyrrhic victory. The corporate paper trail I deal with extends well beyond email, piling up in reams of documents that clutter our desks, filing cabinets, faxes, and printers.

The real war against document proliferation is going on right in front of us: on the desktop (the physical one, not the virtual one). A recent study by the Association for Information and Image Management (AAIM) shows that the average professional photocopies a single document 19 times. Multiply that by the estimated 4 trillion paper documents in the U.S. that are growing at a rate of 22% per year and you have quite a pile of paper to manage.