Kofax Partners with Pegaystems

Irvine, CA-based document capture software leader Kofax has signed a "technology and marketing alliance" with Pegasystems, a leading BPM software provider. I view BPM as the next generation of automated workflow, a pillar on which the document imaging industry was founded. BPM brings non-document related processes into the automation picture, taking what we've known as workflow to the next level. Kofax's capture technology can be used to pull paper documents, as well as e-mails and other electronic documents, into BPM applications.

As I've said before, I think IDR (intelligent document recognition)-driven capture and BPM are the two hottest potential growth areas related to our space - as SharePoint squeezes the repository and search and retrieval players - so I applaud this alliance between two leaders in their respective spaces.

EMC Partners with Box

Probably should have seen this coming, ever since former EMC Chief Marketing Officer Whitney Tidmarsh was named the general manager at Box.Net. Last week, at EMC World, EMC and Box.Net announced a partnership. According to the press release, "EMC is working with Box to deliver integrated content management in the cloud."

I think this paragraph from the press release best describes what the partnership could accomplish: "The Post PC era gives birth to the 'new user,' who interacts with information from a variety of sources, across a multitude of devices, and considers Microsoft applications as part of the experience, not the driver. Integrating Box's cloud layer and user-friendly interface with EMC Documentum delivers the new mobile and external collaboration capabilities required for businesses to make better, faster decisions. These cloud-enabled joint solutions strike the right balance in giving users easy-to-use tools for accessing information regardless of device, with the control IT expects for capturing, managing, processing and preserving content."

Basically, at the AIIM show this year, where Box made a big splash, it received high marks for its user interface, but the ECM-savvy AIIM crowd was not at all impressed with Box's traditional content management capabilities. Hence, the marriage with Documentum. Good stuff I think.

PBMS Partners With EMC Captiva

Pitney Bowes Management Services (PBMS) has signed a deal to utilize EMC's Captiva software for both its on-premise and hosted document capture solutions. PBMS is the $1.2 billion outsourcing arm of Pitney Bowes, Inc. It focuses on mailroom and document services for large, Global 1000 organizations.

Last year, we did an article (go to page 7) on PBMS's partnership with Omtool to increase its breadth of on-premise capture offerings. At the time, PBMS, which certainly does a lot of work around outgoing mail was focused on expanding its presence in records management and document processing. The partnership with EMC appears to be another move in that direction.

Hyland and PFU Introduce ECM Kiosk

Hyland Software, developers of the OnBase ECM suite and PFU, a subsidiary of Fujitsu have come up with a self-service kiosk to enable access to document managed in OnBase in customer service applications. There's a couple of video links at the bottom of the page. The one I watched on healthcare showed the kiosk being used in a doctor's office. Think of self-check-in at the airport. Similar application. Except that in addition to checking in, you can also complete forms and make payments (I guess you can make payments at the airport too.)

Cool thing is that Hyland's OnBase workflow can probably be used to route the forms when they're completed and also provide you with access to a whole assortment of documents that you have rights or a need to see. Hyland also has all sorts of HIPAA controls that it can set up around this. There are also government and higher education versions of the kiosk as well.

PFU is a leader in the kiosk market in other parts of the world.. Hyland actually has a great deal of experience working with another Fujitsu subsidiary, scanner vendor Fujitsu Computer Products of America. They have done an embedded integration involving a Fujitsu network scanner. This would seem to build on that.

Microsoft SharePoint gets a lot of credit for bringing ECM to the masses, but this kiosk is a great way to bring ECM use, at least, to the masses. And with touchscreens getting ever more popular thanks to cell phones and now the red-hot sales of the iPad, the time for ECM access through kiosks has probably come.

Kodak Software Announcements

Nothing too significant, but Kodak has honored its partner BCS Systems for an integration it has done with Kodak's Scan Station network scanner. We're not sure who BCS is, but they apparently develop something called iConnect, which would appear to be competitive with network scanning software products from vendors like eCopy (now owned by Nuance) and Notable Solutions (Nsi), which also has partnership with Kodak surrounding the Scan Station. From the release, the only iConnect back-end integration we gather that is currently available is SharePoint, which, of course, isn't a bad place to start.

Also, Kodak announced a free module for connecting its Capture Pro software with the FileBound document management system. The focus seems to be on the SaaS version of FileBound, which makes sense. When uses purchase a scanner and some capture software like Capture Pro along with it, a SaaS DM integration offers them an easy, low-effort/cost start-up destination for the files they are capturing. So, it gives them the chance to start utilizing capture without making a big ECM investment at the same time.

ReadSoft and KnowledgeLake Announce Partnership

Two companies that have been fairly busy on the partnership front, have gotten together. Transactional content management (TCM)/imaging for SharePoint specialist KnowledgeLake has announced a partnership with invoice capture leader ReadSoft. Not sure of all the details yet, but it adds some serious invoice capture technology to KnowledgeLake's portfolio. KnowledgeLake recently announced a partnership with Global 360 that will beef up its BPM capabilities, so all the pieces are being put in place for SharePoint-based invoice processing applications. ReadSoft U.S., which recently formalized a reseller strategy after years of focusing primarily on direct sales (and with Kofax's increasing focus on direct sales, you might say they are attempting to seize an opportunity), has also recently done partnerships with Hyland Software and Altec.

Visioneer-BBH Scanners Announce Partnership

Visioneer and Bowe Bell + Howell Scanners have announced a development agreement, which will lead to products early next year. The companies aren't commenting specifically on products yet, but with BBH specializing in the higher end of the market and Visioneer in the distributed side, it definitely makes for some intirguing possibilities. BBH also seems very interested in leveraging Visioneer's OneTouch scanning interface and toolkit for application integration, as well as its Xerox OEM channel. If you take these two companies product lines and channels and combine them together, you have something that can go toe-to-toe against heavyweights FCPA and Kodak. They are also both very close partners with Kofax.