DocuSign on Tuesday announced DocuSign Spring 10, an updated release of its electronic signature software that now includes support for the iPhone and iPad, two-factor biometric authentication, and additional capabilities for agents.
The new services are complimentary until Oct. 1 for those with existing DocuSign Standard and Enterprise license plans. After that, Standard users must upgrade; pricing for that upgrade was not disclosed.
DocuSign announced the new software as part of its ESIGN customer summit here. The company asked President Bill Clinton to speak about his work with electronic signatures in conjunction with his foundation’s charity work, while Salesforce.com also announced that it had made a strategic investment into DocuSign alongside an existing investment by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
We’ve come a long way from my parents’ generation, where a fax would have been welcome technology for them, said Gary Thomas, the 2011 vice-president elect of the NAR.
DocuSign also released the results of a Harris poll which found that 36 percent of users would eliminate paper altogether if they could, and 63 percent said they would work entirely on a computer if possible. The company claimed that it serves more than 70 percent of the software as services market, with 80 million signature events each year.
New features of the Spring revision include the ability to either white out or initial small changes via a digital signature, and send the changes to the other recipients to approve. The lines of a digital form can also be managed via the signer to turn into text, multi-line, checkbox, or digital fields; the document can also be configured to allow only a signatory with the correct tile to sign. The software also includes the ability for an agent, such as a real estate agent, to maintain an agent role and manage the transaction.
Tom Gonser, the founder and chief strategy officer of DocuSign, noted that many real estate transactions include a lot of quick, small changes executed back and forth, such as the closing date. Before, that would require the parties to baby-sit a fax machine. With DocuSign, that can be done via e-mail and on the road. Everything is neat, secure, and above all else, it’s really fast, he said.
Salesforce also said that the DocuSign technology is now integrated into Chatter, its business-focused Facebook equivalent. When an employee viewed a sales document, for example, that information could be published on Chatter.
Likewise, Box.net also announced that the service would be available to its customers. “We’re really excited to integrate with new technologies that can be integrated into our customer segment and into new segments as well,” Aaron Levie, the chief executive and co-founder, told attendees.
Through the OpenBox platform, users can right-click on a document stored on Box.net and integrate it with the DocuSign platform.
Finally, DocuSign also announced that the DocuSign product has been optimized for mobile platforms, specifically the Apple iPhone and iPad. DocuSign said that users of either can also snap a picture of a form and switch it to a digital form. The new iPad app will be released next week, Gonser said.
According to Gonser, the future of electronic signatures includes the confluence of the document and the actual transaction itself, which he said still remained as two separate entities. The digital signature will also become the most important element of an individual’s online identity, he said.
Former president Bill Clinton, whose foundation works with developing countries, appeared as a part of a celebration of the Electronic Signatures in Global National Commerce (ESIGN) Act, which he signed ten years ago. That act paved the way for DocuSign’s existence, Gonser noted.
Interestingly, while acknowledging the importance of the act, Clinton said that his work focused more in actual paper contracts than electronic versions. Signing an initial agreement with a partner with a developing country, for example, typically requires a signed paper document. Signatures are done the old-fashioned way for ceremonial purposes, he said.
But the actual follow-up business, such as an agreement with a drug company to bring vaccines to a region, often requires a digital signature to facilitate the contract across multiple continents, Clinton said.
Less than one-tenth of one percent of eBay transactions are fraudulent, Clinton said, saying that he wasn’t worried about the security of a typical commercial transaction. But one of the things we’ve learned from history is that trust is the basis of all commerce. The more trust there is, the more there is reduced conflict, he added.
Source:-http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2365899,00.asp
