In the mid 1990's, most people thought of PDF (if they'd heard of it at all) as a convenient way for publishers to communicate with printers.
Appligent, Inc. and Document Solutions, Inc. (DSI), the firms whose merger created Appligent Document Solutions in 2008, have each led the document management industry with technology and service innovations since the very beginning of PDF.
The two companies shared a similar vision: a focus on leveraging the capabilities of electronic document technology to meet the needs of electronic document, publishing and business-process applications.
With our broad Company History of innovation, reputation for excellence, and legacy as the most experienced software and services provider in the PDF technology business, Appligent Document Solutions is the enterprise-class choice for PDF technology solutions to document management problems.
A History of Innovation
- 1993, Adobe Systems releases PDF 1.0
- 1993, CTO Mark Gavin, CTO builds a PDF parser to extract document structure information from PDF files for the US FDA.
- 1993, With funding from Adobe Ventures, Mr. Gavin was one of three founders of Electronic Submission Publishing Systems (ESPS) now known as Liquent Inc. He created Liquent's CoreDossier; a PDF based publishing application of submissions to regulatory agencies. Liquent was acquired by Thomson in 2004.
- 1994, Mr. Gavin developed a stand-alone PDF viewer for presentation to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to prove PDF files can be viewed without using any Adobe technology.
- 1996, Duff Johnson founds Document Solutions, Inc., the world's first electronic document service bureau dedicated to PDF technology. The company designs and produces one of the world's first interactive CD-ROMs using all-PDF technology.
- 1997, Under Mr. Gavin's leadership Appligent begins its transition to a commercial software company with the release of its first commercial products: TimedOut, DateD and Redax.
- 1997, Mr. Gavin created the Acrobat portion of Authentica's Secure Documents for PDF, currently the most secure PDF security technology available. Authentica was acquired by EMC in 2006. The Authentica product has been renamed Documentum IRM (Information Rights Management).
- 1997, Document Solutions introduced the often-imitated MultiResolution process, a breakthrough in high-fidelity conversion of legacy content.
- 1998, Appligent is the first vendor to release server-based PDF applications: AppendPDF, StampPDF Batch and FDFMerge.
- 1998, Document Solutions executes the first large-scale AcroForms implementation, with 30,000 forms made interactive for a major insurance carrier.
- 2001, Document Solutions is the first company in the world to offer Section 508 compliance services for PDF content.
- 2002, Appligent was first to market with its SecurSign application, capable of digitally signing PDF files using a technique compatible with the Adobe Digital Signature Mechanism.
- 2008, The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Appligent a patent for the Redaction of PDF documents. See U.S. Patent No. 7,428,701: Method, system and computer program for redaction of material from documents.
- 2009, Appligent Document Solutions was first to market electronic document harmonization software for PDF files.
