Document Imaging Report Blog

We recently posted a new section on ourWeb site, focusing on some of the SOA initiatives now so prevelant in the ECM industry. We recently posted white papers from both Kofax and Captiva that discuss each company's capture-based SOA strategy. Some interesting reading.

Looks like data entry software pioneer Lynn Blodgett is in as CEO of ACS.

Dr Johannes Scholtes, president of document search and retrieval specialist ZyLAB, sent us a link tothis article yesterday. It's written by Kevin Roden of Iron Mountain. It covers a lot of the issues we covered back in January when we spoke with Information Nation Warrior author Randy Kahn, but it serves as a good reminder that these new discovery procedures, that first the first time explicitly take into account electronic information, are on the way.

Ralph

Did I miss something here?

This is from arecent eWeek article on the Oralce/Stellent deal: "Oracle, on this front, is playing a bit of a catch-up game. SAP has had an ECM suite for some time." What suite is that?

Sue Clarke, a senior analyst with the Butler Group, of Butler Direct, based in Hull, England, seems to validate the existance of an SAP ECM suite: "For years SAP has benefited from the lack of ECM functionality from Oracle as it has its own capabilities," Clarke says in the article.

However, she goes on to say she believes the Stellent buy is just one more merger amongst others on the horizon—and that SAP needs to act accordingly to keep up. "In view of the fact that it is unlikely that any of the independent pure-play ECM vendors will survive intact much further into the future … if SAP wishes to regain the initiative over Oracle it needs to become a major ECM player, which can only be achieved through acquisition."

Oh. Does that mean Open Text or may Seperion?

Ralph

The proxy statement has been posted online. In 2005, the combined company had some $30.4 million in revenue ($24 million of which can be attributed to Parascript's operations) with an operating income of $5.6 million, which was negated by $11.5 million in interest expense. The deal is supposed to close sometime early next year. From the best we can tell, the deal values the combined company at somewhere north of $140 million. This is based on investor Plainfield OffShore Holdings receiving 23% of the company in exchange a $35 million investment in 21.9 million shares of Mitek common stock at a conversion price of $1.60 per shares. Of course, Plainfield also get $55 million in senior secured debt in the terms of the deal, so while that number of shares may have a $140 million valuation to Plainfeld, it probably does not truly relfect the open market valuation of the combined company, which will be known as Parascript. Does that make sense?

Ralph

So, it appearsPaperClip isselling out to a company that distributes nutritional supplements in China. I'll need to follow-up on this one, but this could be yet another sign of the growing interesting of document management technology in the emerging Chinese market. But then again... well, we'll see.

Yet another in the litany of eventsthat make me think our industry could have come up with a better solution for voting. Personally, I was a big fan of theVoteFiler system introduced a year and a half ago by Comfidex, which is a spin off from document imaging super systems specialist R2K, but haven't heard that it's gained much traction since its initial introduction. I guess their in a very tough market controlled by politicos - but when all is said and done, paper ballots a much cleaner than touchscreens.

It seems the much anticipated Office 2007 suite is one step closer to becoming a reality. From our perspective, the fun thing about Office 2007 is that, when coupled with SharePoint, for the first time, you can achieve some real document management functionality right out of the box with Microsoft products. Of course, it won't get you very far, but it's enough to get users started and introduced to the concept of ECM, which is where Microsoft's partners can take over.

We always thought this wasa potentially great service offered by this German-U.S. conglomoratethat also plays in the traditional document imaging industry with its docStar product line, where former Captiva VP Blaine Owens now works. Authentidate itself has some technology similar to the Fujitsu stuff we highlighted last issue-to ensure that a scanned or other type of electronic document is not altered after a specified date and time. Authentidate also has this stuff, which they have tried unsuccessfully for the most part to market through the USPS. Any ideas on why this doesn't catch on? The ROI seems like a slam dunk.