DocuWare Reports Strong 2010

The DocuWare Group, a German-based ISV with a strong North American presence, recently announced a 19% growth in revenue for 2010. The brought the company, which specializes in document image management applications to 14.3 million Euros on annual revenue, the equivalent of more than $21 million. Almost all its sales come through a reseller channel, which had an estimated income of 66 million Euro, or $98 million related to DocuWare sales.

DocuWare Corp., the company's U.S.-based subsidiary reported 19.5% growth, after leading the company with 14% growth in 2009. In 2010, smaller subsidiaries in Latin America and the U.K. reported higher growth rates than the U.S., with growth also coming in EMEA and German-speaking markets.

In the U.S. market, DocuWare was a pioneer in selling document imaging solutions through the digital copier channel and continues to have success in that segment. The company also continues to invest in its technology, especially in its Web client. Work on a SaaS version is also well underway.

Imaging ISVs Report Strong Quarters

Kofax and Snowbound Software, two developers of document imaging-related software, have announced strong quarters for the first three months of 2011. Kofax, which specializes in document capture software, reported that revenue was in-line with projections of 14% growth for its fiscal 2011, which ends June 30. Snowbound, which markets imaging SDKs and viewers, reported record quarterly sales that were 10% higher that sales in Q1 2010.

Document Image Management Market Study

I'm not exactly sure who these guys are, or how they conducted their research, but I thought it was pretty cool that someone tried to size the document image management market. This comment in the press release announcing the report struck me as a bit odd:  "witnessing relatively slow growth rate of 12 percent in comparison to the overall document management systems market." Personally, I don't think 12% is that slow. I'm not exactly sure what they're comparing our market to, if that's slow.

Does anyone have additional info on the quality of this report?

Lexmark-Perceptive Develop MFP Integration

Lexmark and Perceptive Software have announced that Perceptive's imaging and workflow software has been integrated with Lexmark's embedded Solutions Framework (eSF).  This makes sense, of course, as Lexmark, a multi-billion dollar vendor of printers and MFPs, acquired Perceptive in May. At the time, there was really no partnership between the two companies or integration between their products.

Lexmark's announced strategy has been to pretty much let Perceptive continue to run its exiting business, while trying to expand it by taking advantage of some of Lexmark's channels. This new integration, which enables Lexmark users to access Perceptive applications through their MFP touchscreens, would certainly be a nod toward the growth element of that strategy.

Laserfiche suing SAP

This is kind of cool. Long Beach, CA-based document imaging ISV is taking on SAP over the use of its "Run Smarter" slogan. According to a complaint filed by Lasefriche, Laserfiche is the owner of the U.S. Trademark for "Run Smarter" and has been using it in its materials since 2004. According to Laserfiche, SAP has been recently using the phrase in ads "too numerous to list." Here's one example, we found online.

The complaint says that SAP knew the phrase as trademarked by Laserfiche, but used it anyway. It what seems somewhat of a stretch, Laserfiche contents that SAP is trying to deceive customers into believing its software is associated with Laserfiche's. I'm not saying Laserfiche doesn't have great software, but it seems to me that Laserfiche might benefit more by being associated with SAP than vice-versa. Laserfiche does express concern that non-working SAP implementations could damage its image, which does seem valid.

Laserfiche would like some money, as well as attorney and legal fees from SAP. They also want SAP to cease and desist and deliver up any materials using the trademarked phrase for destruction.
Sounds like fun.

Keys to SaaS success

Had an interesting conversation with Juergen Biffar, co-founder and technical guru at German imaging and DM specialist DocuWare the other day. His company has just committed $1 million Euros, in addition to its regular R&D budget, over two years to development of Web-based technologies. Half of this money is committed to SaaS development, which Biffar views as an important method of delivering software in the future. He is taking the attitude that SaaS competition is going to come from start-ups and other people, like Google even, who are not in the DM industry today.

He said one of DocuWare's board members commented that it has been said that it is impossible for a vendor of traditional software to make the successful transition to SaaS, to which Biffar replied that he plans to be part of the first one. Our discussion led to trying to come up with successful SaaS ventures aside from Salesforce.com. Of course, companies like Digitech and Filebound have had some success in our industry, and we recently talked with a Web-capture ISV, CAPSYS, that said about half its new sales are SaaS-oriented. Anyhow, going over my notes led me to a Google search on "SaaS success stories," which yielded this article detailing one analyst's ideas on why traditional software vendors have trouble succeeding at SaaS and what they need to do. I thought it might prove useful to some of my readers.

Happy trails.
Ralph

SharePoint Conference continued

Had to chance to attend a session yesterday given by the KnowledgeLake CTO and another KLake developer. They discussed some of the details behind SharePoint's improved document management features. A lot of scalability and search issues have certainly been addressed, as well as some records management stuff.We'll get into details in our newsletter, but suffice to say that with a few tools added on SharePoint can do a better job of image management than it historically has. Of course there is still no viewer and we're not sure the out-of-the-box workflow is quite there....

The session I presented on Imaging-enabling MOSS was a bit disappointing in the attendance. Of course, they moved the room following all eCopy's marketing efforts...anyhow, it sounds like some people are just starting to do basic document image and retrieval - at least our panel members from Nike and Arizona State were, but I still haven't seen much high-volume transaction content management in SharePoint.

Consumers Favor Going Green

Interesting results of a survey on consumers perceptions of "going green"mainly dealing with their printing habits. One of the things that makes the press release so interesting is the fact that it is sponsored by Lexmark but seems to encourage less printing. I guess that gives it credibility, because it's probably not in Lexmark's interest to encourage less printing. Clearly, there is a consumer interest in doing less printing, which bodes well for the document imaging industry. We're assuming of course that this desire go "go greener" spills over into the corporate world, where imaging vendors have always made their money. Of course, in the corporate world, ROI typically trumps environmental concerns, but introducing environmental concerns as a factor when an imaging system is on the table can't hurt.

Ralph

Deflation, Hyperinflation and Cloud Computing

Here's a link to a interesting article from the Motley Fool about the risk of hyperinflation in the U.S. economy and which types of companies are in the best position to survive even double-digit inflation, which seems to be a real possibility as the U.S. government debt/deficit increases. Hint: it seems to be companies that can fairly comfortably cover their debt with their profits.

Also, here's a link to the great Michael Lewis article on Iceland's hyperinflation, which is referenced in the the Motley fool article.

Interestingly, the Motley Fool article also talks about deflation the negative effects it can have on an economy. I know I've mentioned a few times that the document imaging industry is no stranger to a form of deflation, especially when it comes to hardware. It's no big secret that users are getting way more bang for their buck from scanners than they were 10, 5, and even two years ago. Fortunately, overall scan volumes have continued to increase, which means more scanners are being sold and keeps the demand reasonable for higher-volume production models. But, with some of this IDR (intelligent document recognition) technology starting to come downstream, we really have to be careful not to let our margins disappear, in what has historically been a good B2B market.

I also wanted to highlight this interesting press release from A/P document imaging specialist VersionOne Software. I couldn't find a link, so I've pasted the entire release below. But, it basically talks about the some of the uncertainty and mystery surrounding the term "cloud computing." It's a term that people have started to throw around as a future trend for our industry and others, but it still seems to be a ways off before the rubber hits the road, as a lot of IT professionals still apparently don't even know what "cloud computing" means, much less do they plan on investing in it.

Here's the release, which details some of the results of VersionOne's survey on cloud computing:

The findings of a survey by document management software company, Version One (www.versionone.co.uk), has revealed that 41% of senior IT professionals admit that they “don’t know” what cloud computing is. Version One carried out the research with 60 senior IT professionals (IT directors and managers) across a range of UK public and private sector organisations. This research follows-on from a similar survey carried-out by Version One which highlights that two-thirds of UK senior finance professionals (finance directors and managers) are confused about cloud computing.

Of the remaining 59% of IT professionals who profess to know what cloud computing is, 17% of these understand cloud computing to be internet-based computing while 11% believe it is a combination of internet-based computing, software as a service (SAAS), software on demand, an outsourced or managed service and a hosted software service. The remaining respondents understand cloud computing to be a mixture of the above.

Despite cloud computing being in the media spotlight, only a minority of respondents (5%) say that they use it “a lot” and less than a quarter of those surveyed (19%) reveal that they only use cloud computing sparingly. Almost half of respondents (47%) admit that their company doesn’t use cloud computing with the remaining 29% conceding that they “don’t know” whether their organisation uses it or not.

Julian Buck, General Manager of Version One, says, “Although this is only a small survey of IT professionals, the results are nonetheless very alarming, especially as IT professionals are the very people that need to understand cloud computing so that they can explain its benefits to management.”

Buck continues, “It is clear from the survey results that there are a number of contrasting views as to what cloud computing really is, which is hardly surprising in light of the many different cloud computing definitions in the public arena. For instance, Wikipedia defines it as ‘Internet-based computing’ while Gartner refers to it ‘as a service’ using Internet technologies. IT expert, John Willis, writing in his cloud blog says that ‘virtualisation is the secret sauce of a cloud’ and provides different levels of cloud computing. With so many definitions circulating, clarity is urgently needed.”

Only 2% of respondents say that their company is “definitely” going to invest in cloud computing within the next twelve months whilst 30% state that their organisations “may” invest in this technology. 45% admit that they “don’t know” whether their organisations will be investing in it or not with the remaining 23% stating that they currently have no investment plans. For those who definitely or maybe have plans to invest in cloud computing, some of the key business drivers cited include reduction in overheads and paper, ease of use, cost savings and the ability to provide collaborative tools for teaching and learning.

Buck adds, “If organisations are going to embrace cloud computing in the future it’s essential that a single, simplified explanation is adopted by everyone. Failure to cut through the confusion could result in organisations rejecting this technology and missing out on the benefits it provides.”

U.K. imaging acquisition

Version One, one of the leaders in the imaging software market in the U.K. has been acquired by what looks like a large accounting/ERP software firm.