Perceptive Software Shows Significant YOY Profit Improvement

From Lexmark's year-end/Q4 2013 report:

For 2013: Perceptive Software revenue was $224 million. Perceptive Software revenue, excluding acquisition-related adjustments of $16 million, was a record $239 million and grew 48% compared to 2012.

For Q4 2013: Perceptive Software revenue growth of 60% in quarter (70% non-GAAP, 15% organic growth), 43% in full year (48% non-GAAP).

From transcript of conference call (on SeekingAlpha.com):

"We delivered strong year-to-year improvement in Perceptive Software's profitability for the quarter and the year, and we expect continued Perceptive Software operating margin expansion in 2014 and beyond."

"Perceptive Software, delivered significant year-to-year improvement in profitability this quarter, up $9 million, driven by the 2 factors we've been focused on. First, we delivered solid Perceptive Software growth year-to-year, including good license revenue growth. Second, with the actions we started to take last year, we've been able to reduce Perceptive Software's organic cost and expense growth without negatively impacting revenue growth. And for the full year 2014, we expect to achieve double-digit software revenue growth and remain committed to delivering a positive and expanded software operating income margin."

FY2013:
"Perceptive Software had a slight operating loss of $2 million, an improvement of $23 million versus 2012. We expect continued substantial improvement in Perceptive Software operating income in 2014."

For 2014: "Perceptive will grow a bit faster than 15%, MPS a little less than that."

Spigraph Acquires Dicom-Initial Thoughts

In what is being billed as a merger of Europe's top two value-added distributors (VAD) in the document capture space, Spigraph has acquired Dicom. Spigraph, based in France was founded in 1997 and has been expanding rapidly in recent years after taking on some venture capital in 2011. Dicom, which was founded in 1991, acquired the ISV Kofax in 1999 and then was spun off by Kofax in 2011.

When we talked last year with Dicom executives last year in the wake of the appointment of former software executive Rudolf Gessinger as chairman, they positioned a then recent announcement of a partnership between Kofax and Spigraph as non-threatening to Dicom's business. The Dicom execs positioned ALOS (which had been acquired by Spigraph and expanded at VAD's presence significantly in Dicom stronghold's Switzerland and Germany) as primarily in the systems integration business and Spigraph as stronger as a VAD in geographical regions like France, where Dicom was not particularly strong.

This absence of overlap was reenforced in a quote from Joe Froning, CEO of Dicom International, which appeared in the recent press release announcing the merger with Spigraph, "Even though our two companies have been working on the same markets until now, the geographical and functional areas that have overlapped are minimal," he said. "This merger therefore represents a uniting of our respective forces."

Froning will stay with the company as Senior Vice President of Dicom/Spigraph Distribution.Wayne Davey, previously CEO of Spigraph, becomes CEO of the group. The group’s head office will be at Spigraph’s headquarters in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier.

The press release lists the combined company's turnover as €130 million, or approximately $175 million. In its final full fiscal year as part of Kofax (ended June 30, 2010), Kofax reported $125 million was generated from its hardware distribution business. When Spigraph acquired Swiss-German document imaging systems integration specialist ALOS in 2011, the combined entity's revenue was listed at over $65 million. So, there has apparently been erosion in revenue in the past couple years, which is not surprising considering the state of the scanner market today, which is how VADs have historically generated the majority of their revenue.

As prices and margins continue to drop on scanners and related service contracts, VADs, especially in more mature markets like North America and Western Europe, have had to look to new avenues to generate revenue. (Although VADs in emerging markets like the Middle East, such as Forefront Technologies seem to still be growing at a healthy rate.) Gessinger's software background is what made him attractive to the Dicom board, which brought him in. And, Spigraph, through its acquisition of ALOS, has a systems integration practice that helps further diversify that its offerings, which is a good thing.

Between the two organizations, Spigraph and Dicom will now cover a good portion of EMEA, including both mature and developing countries, with a single entity, that offers a combination of document capture-related hardware and software sales, support, and professional services. This variety and geographical infrastructure, along with the resources of a 400-person entity, should make the organization a more valuable asset to resellers and end users, as well as create more profits, than either company would be able achieve on its own.

DIR to Partner with Xamcor

You may have seen this press release that moved across the wire last week. From the article that appears in this week's premium DIR, "Xamcor [is] a leading M&A firm focused on the Information Management industry. DIR Editor Ralph Gammon will be providing content for the Xamcor Web site, including regular columns, executive interviews, and commentary on news releases.

"[I am] looking forward to helping Xamcor accomplish its mission of helping companies looking to be acquired receive maximum value for their entities, and, for those acquiring, finding good fits for their strategic plans. Xamcor was founded in 2012 by experienced ECM industry professionals Paul Carman and Harvey Spencer, along with Ike Fattal, who has a strong background in finance, deal structuring, and M&A."

I think that is all going to be fun, but, also check this out, which Xamcor apparently got with the issuing of the press release - yes, that's the Xamcor logo posted on a sign at Times Square. Cool.

From this Week's DIR: ECM as a Service and Enterprise Archiving

Here's a couple quotes that were thought were pretty cool from stories appearing in this week's premium edition of DIR:

From our story on the evolution of mobile scanner manufacturer Document Capture Technologies (DCT) towards more of a cloud-based services strategy: "“Basically, the goal is to take all the features of ECM and expose them as APIs that application developers can consume like any other service. This will change the economics of how ECM is delivered. Users will be able to pay as they go and add services.”

- Karl Etzel, COO, DCT

From a story on EMC's new InfoArchive enterprise archiving system: "Putting e-mail content in one silo and database content into another does not enable organizations to get their arms around all their information very effectively. InfoArchive represents a single unified archive that can support any unstructured content source and structured data source in one place. It’s a game changer in terms of providing full visibility into all information. It will enable next-generation solutions that are not isolated to leveraging one type of data.”

- David Mennie, EMC, IIG

Cool Stitching Feature in Kodak Alaris-HTI EOB Offering

Yesterday, Kodak Alaris announced it has teamed up with HTI Healthcare to offer an explanation of benefit (EOB) solution. The solution basically involves healthcare providers and third-party bill payers utilizing Kodak scanners and Capture Pro Software to feed HTI's system--which is a cloud-based EOB processing service. HTI then returns relevant extracted data to the providers and billers, along with - get this - "fully indexed patient claim 'stitched' images—a single image showing only the needed patient claim record, including all required EOB header information to identify the payer. Stitched images are a vast improvement over the outdated redaction process that left large gaps in the content of the document." We thought that was pretty cool. Bottom line is that it's good to see continued improvements in the evolving paper EOB processing market. 

Panasonic introduces new Departmental models

Panasonic flies under the radar a lot in the document scanner market, but they continue to come out with some impressive new technology. Check out these new departmental models (80 and 100 ppm, list price  $5,195, and $6,195) that were introduced this week.

An impressive list of features in the press release:

• ToughFeed: Stapled Document Detection, Ultrasonic Double-Feed Detection, Intelligent Feed Control and High Quality Feed Rollers ensure a smooth supply of paper into the scanner for efficient scanning.
• Mechanical Deskew: Physically adjusts and corrects the skew of documents before scanning by the paper feed mechanism to reduce the need for rescans.
• Paper Ejection Control: Paper exit roller reduces the speed of ejected paper and aligns it to prevent paper jams or the loss of originals.
• Hardware Image Processing: Performs image enhancements and prevents scanning speed degradation by maintaining workflow efficiency at 300 and 200 dpi
•  Auto-Preview / Auto-Rescan: Automatically produces nine different versions of a scanned document and displays them as thumbnails. Users select the most suitable image with a single click with no time loss. Similarly, users can adjust the quality of an image via the thumbnails without having to rescan the original thereby saving time and improving productivity.
•  Notification Function: Automatically detects problems with scanned images including binary/color, binary image, blank page and unique page detection using four notification functions and displays warning icons using Panasonic Image Capture Plus software.
• Additional productivity features include Automatic Glass Cleaning, Self Cleaning Ionizer, and One Touch Scanning for up to 100 programmable scanning workflows.
• The new models include Panasonic’s proprietary Active Double-Feed Roller Prevention, LED scanning illumination, Advanced Image Processing, and Image Capture Plus technologies (easy-to-use data formats, automatic image orientation and OCR Zone function).

Websocket to Replace NPAPI for Chrome Scanning

DynamSoft, the developer of the Dynamic Web TWAIN SDK for embedding scanning capabilities in Web-based applications, is in the process of developing a WebSocket solution to enable its customers' applications to continue to work with Chrome browsers. DynamSoft was forced to go this route due to Google choosing to no longer support NPAPI in its latest Chrome browser versions.

From a recent article provided by DynamSoft to DIR: "Google’s decision to no longer support NPAPI required a quick address by Dynamsoft. As a result, we at Dynamsoft have concluded we will leverage the WebSocket protocol to enable document scanning in newer non-NPAPI Chrome browser versions. The WebSocket protocol is part of HTML5 and the latest versions of Chrome support HTML5."

Read a full explanation of DynamSoft's WebSocket strategy for creating browser-based scanning.

DIR Top Stories of 2013: 7 thru 10

Here are the final three of our top 10 Document Imaging stories for 2013 as covered in DIR. (Here are links to posts on our top, second, and third, as well as fourth through sixth top stories):


7. Captricity Secures Round of Financing: Berkeley, CA-based ISV that specializes in automating data entry leveraging crowdsourcing, announced a $2.4 million round of financing led by The Social+Capital Partnership, a Palo Alto-based group founded by former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya.

8. Kofax Hires New CMO; Former Kofax CMO Joins ReadSoft: Okay, it wasn't quite that cut and dried, but these hirings happened within about a month of each other. Former FileNet and Pagasystems executive Grant Johnson joined Kofax in October in the wake of the resignation of Martyn Christian. Then a month later, Andrew Pery, who worked as Kofax CMO from 2006-2010, joined ReadSoft full-time after working there as a consultant for almost a year. Additionally, in 2013, former ReadSoft Marketing Manager Alayne Pregeant joined TIS.

9. BancTec Lands Its Largest Scanner Deal Ever: This was a cool story as the Dallas-based imaging hardware, software, and service provider sold more than 30 high-volume scanners, through a reseller partner, to a Japanese shared services center. The kicker is that the center was opened in the Fukushima Prefecture, where a partial nuclear meltdown occurred in 2011, in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami.

10. TWAIN Working Group Launches Driverless Scanning Initiative:  Pam Doyle, Chair: "We are working on changing the conversation and taking out native drivers. We want to make the conversation occur directly between an application and a scanner. This will eliminate the need to develop drivers for multiple platforms.”

 

Top DIR Stories 4 thru 6: A Pair of Acquisitions & Flesh Eating Bacteria

Top DIR stories of 2013, numbers 4 through 6:

4. Hyland Acquires AnyDoc Software: Hyland, a BPM and ECM specialist with strong document imaging technology, had been developing its own advanced capture technology. It decided to ramp up its development efforts with the acquisition of forms processing industry pioneer AnyDoc. "We’ve been really pleased with the progress of our capture product," said Bill Priemer, long time Hyland sales exec who was promoted to CEO in 2013 with the retirement of A.J. Hyland. "But, we only had three years of development in advanced capture, which, by industry standards, gives us an application that is considered rather basic."

5. JBIG2 Compression Causes Major Headache for Xerox: The implementation of this advanced compression technology in Xerox's MFPs caused quite a stir when a German computer scientist found that it had altered the numbers on several blue prints he was scanning. One journalist went so far as to compare a “document-altering scanner” to “flesh-eating bacteria." This was probably an exaggeration, and the character changes apparently occurred only when more aggressive compression settings were turned on with smaller font and "stressed" documents. Nonetheless, Xerox eventually pulled non-lossless JBIG2 compression from its devices - kind of a bummer because the technology really has some tremendous document compression potential and is still utilized by many organizations through software implementations.

6. DocuWare acquires Westbrook: Westbrook was apparently up for sale due to some financials obligations by its principal owner - Allen & Co. Like AnyDoc, Westbrook was a pioneer in the document imaging industry, but had fallen on some tougher times recently. It did, however, maintain a strong relationship with Ricoh -  a partnership that was orginally formed with IKON more than 10 years ago. This relationship was very attractive to DocuWare, which has had much success in recent years through partnerships with MFP dealers, but did not have a formal relationship with Ricoh. Westbrook is currently operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of DocuWare.

Top DIR Story #3 of 2013: Another Strong AIIM Conference

Here's our third top story of the year for 2013 (DIR's Top and second top stories from 2013): 

3. Strong AIIM Conference - For the second year in a row, AIIM pulled off a very strong event. It drew more than 600 attendees and 30 exhibitors to the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans - representing a 50% growth over the previous year, when the initial event was held. Yes, there was an AIIM show for decades previously, but that show was sold by the trade organization in 2002 and was eventually re-branded as info360 in 2012, as AIIM pulled its branding. Along with its branding, AIIM also pulled its annual awards dinner - and all the executive power that it draws - and moved the gala to the site of its own re-booted conference.

The new AIIM Conference is not as ambitious in scope as the event that eventually became info360, but the new event has sold out both years (there are no "Show only passes), and AIIM is planning an even bigger conference for this year in Orlando, April 1-3. The plan is for the event to remain a hotel-hosted educational focused conference, but its success seems to have been enough to put the failing info360 event out of business - as the 2013 version of that event was cancelled.

We'll look forward to seeing quite a few of year in Orlando in a few months.

Second Top Story of 2013: ABBYY Beats Nuance in Court

In a case that went on for more than five years, ABBYY finally prevailed in a lawsuit related to OCR patent infringement. The case was heard over two weeks in August in a federal court in San Francisco. ABBYY was awarded a "clean sweep," in the words of its general counsel. "The jury found no infringement on any of Nuance's patent or trade dress claims."

Nuance had been seeking $107 million from ABBYY and its customer Lexmark. Nuance's claims were related to OCR patents that were filed for in the late 1980s and early 1990s and granted in the 1990s and and early 2000s. The case started with six patents in question, but was narrowed down to three by the time it came to trial - two of which Nuance had picked up in its 2000 acquisition of Caere.

ABBYY's defense was "non-infringement." The patents had been through a reexamination, so arguing
that they were invalid was not an option,” said LeighAnn Weiland, VO and general counsel for ABBYY USA.“If you look at ABBYY’s methods as compared to the very simplified processes in the patents that Nuance is alleging we violated, it’s very clear that ABBYY is not infringing. What Nuance has patented is analogous to building a bicycle, while we are building jet airplanes.”

There are not that many developers of OCR technology left on the market, but ABBYY's win was certainly a victory for those that are left, as well as end users - including those who utilize Google's Open Source OCR. Had Nuance won, we're assuming it would have gone after patent licensing agreements with everyone else in the market. And while Nuance still could go after patent infringement by other vendors (whose development methods presumably differ from ABBYY's), ABBYY is their biggest and most direct competitor, and this loss will certainly take the wind out of Nuance's sails - in addition to money out of its pockets that could be used for further litigation.

It's probably worth noting that Nuance's legal team for the case included outside counsel from Morrison & Foerster LLP, the same firm that represented Apple in its patent suit against Samsung. “We were up against the best of Silicon Valley,” said an elated Weiland. “It’s quite gratifying that our team could work like a little machine to convince a jury of what we believe are the actual facts of the case."

The verdict brought to an end an important case that we had been covering since 2008.

Sale of Kodak DI - Top Story of 2013

I apologize for being a few days late with this but I was busy enjoying holidays with my family, as well as dealing with living in the snowiest city in the U.S. so far this year: and yes, it is certainly coming down as I write the first draft of this post on Thursday evening (We're at 70 inches and counting- more than twice as much snowfall as Anchorage Alaska!). Anyhow, in between holiday cheer and bouts of flu and cold, I've been going over my annual article index for 2013, which will get published along with my 2014 predictions next week.

Going over the index is a great way to review the top stories and events of the previous year, which is inevitably leads to a top 10 list or something like that. For 2013, it seemed there were certainly two stories that stood out above all others, and maybe eight more that I thought were fairly significant.Today I'll share with you my top story in the document imaging industry from 2013 and follow up shortly with number 2, and the rest thereafter.

Without further ado, here is a summary of the top story we covered in DIR in 2013:

1. Kodak Document Imaging is acquired by the Kodak U.K. Pension Plan (KPP).

In a deal that was announced in May 2013, one of the leading players in our market was sold to an organization that is roughly the equivalent of an equity investor, but with a longer-term vision. Not coincidentally, KPP, which operates independently of Eastman Kodak, also happened to be Eastman Kodak's largest unsecured creditor. KPP agreed to pay Eastman Kodak $650 million in cash and non-cash considerations for DI and Kodak Personalized Imaging (PI), which combined generated $1.46 billion worth of profitable revenue in 2012. As part of the deal, Eastman Kodak was also relieved of $2.8 billion in claims that KPP had made against the bankrupt organization. So, in all Eastman Kodak received a potential net $3.45 billion for the two businesses, which KPP renamed Kodak Alaris, when the sale was completed in early September.

This brought to an end a saga which began in early 2012, when after months of rumors, Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy. Originally, DI was positioned as a "core business" that Eastman Kodak would hang on to help fund its emerging "growth businesses." That changed in August when Eastman Kodak realized it needed to sell more assets to pay off its creditors and get them to agree to the terms of its bankruptcy. Per bankruptcy laws, a formal process was put in place for selling DI that included accepting a "stalking horse" bid that would serve as a starting point in an auction.

The stalking horse bid came in April from Japanese manufacturer Brother, which offered $210 million, plus the assumption of $67 million worth unfulfilled service contracts for DI. However, that bid was trumped less than two weeks later by KPP's much higher bid for both DI and PI.

Just a few weeks after the sale to KPP was closed, the recently renamed Kodak Alaris DI put on its second annual Global Directions educational conference, where the keynote was noted author and futurist, and current Google Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil. The event focused on a more software-centric future for Kodak DI. "In five years, we’d like to have at least one third of our revenue coming from software,” said Tony Barbeau, DI VP, products and services. “It could be higher depending on how much investment the organization makes. We could possibly choose to complement our organic growth through acquisition."

Barbeau and most of the Kodak DI management team, including President Dolores Kruchten, stayed on through the acquisition, so we don't expect any major shake-ups in the way DI will be doing business going forward. That said, everyone in the organization seemed relieved and somewhat elated that the sale to KPP was completed. They are looking forward to the opportunity to run free of the burden of their failing parent and the increased nimbleness and aggressiveness their new position should bring. We expect more exciting news from Kodak Alaris DI in 2014, but we're not sure if it can top the exciting events of 2013.

Obamacare - My Experience and why SPA could have saved it!

Okay, so first off, hope everyone here stateside has/had/is having a great T-Giving holiday.

So, far my Holiday shopping has been focused on getting some new health insurance  - taking advantage of the Obamacare plan, which is technically named the Affordable Healthcare Act, or something to that effect. Full disclosure  - I am a Democrat (having switched parties when George W. Bush was first nominated as the Republican presidential candidate) and have voted twice for Mr. Obama as president. I also have a pre-existing medical condition that historically had made it impossible for me to switch insurance and shop for a better policy. As I own my own business and am self-insured, I really have had no leverage and my insurers keep raising my rates and there has been nothing I could do about it. So, I was looking forward to being able to do some comparative shopping through Obamacare.

Yes, I had heard all the nightmare stories about how hard it was to actually get the Affordable Healthcare Act Web site to work properly when signing up. But, I figured some of this had to be exaggerated, right? Media hype. I'm mean I'm fairly technologically savvy and the U.S. federal government invested at least $100 million in the Web site, so it couldn't be that bad, could it? I mean Web sites are somewhat mature technology.

Well, it turns out everything is as bad as advertised. Here's a list of the problems I've encountered so far:
1. Online form was not very intuitive: For example, whenever you change something, it takes you back to that part of the form and doesn't make it clear how you are supposed to skip refilling in the same information in the sections that follow the area that you've changed.
2. I am currently attempting to log-in the Web site right now and can't get in.
3. It took me literally two hours to fill out the unintuitive e-form
4. Received feedback that I would get a tax credit for my wife and I and that the state would have to check on eligibility for kids enrollment in a state-sponsored insurance program.
5. I then realized I needed to change some (I thought fairly minor) info about my current healthcare coverage.
6. Went back online but couldn't get back into my application form to make the change.
7. Went through chat service and phone call to try and make corrections- and while my questions were answered promptly, nothing was accomplished. I was told I'd have to wait for a call back within 2-6 business days before I could make any changes.
8. In the meantime, my application seems to be stuck somewhere in limbo, although it's not really clear where that is.
9. Waited three weeks and never got a call.
10. Got a bill from my current insurer which for reasons (perhaps related to Obamacare?) has increased its premiums 12% across the board.
11. Called the Affordable Healthcare Act customer support number this morning and the rep said they had no record my previous call and that, someone would call me in another 2-5 business days. If I miss that call, I am instructed to call back on the same number I called this morning and only then can they connect me to who I need to talk to.
12. Took me six tries to log onto the Obamacare Web site to double-check the status of my application, which appears to be in the same state I left it before, although for some reason (presumably because someone has to make changes to it, it is listed as "inactive," although it's not exactly clear what that means.
13. Now I guess I wait until next Thursday to hear from someone before calling back. And my deadline for applying for coverage effective Jan. 1 has been extended to Dec. 23. 

It has been my contention since I began this process of applying for healthcare coverage through Obamacare, that the on-ramp is clearly something that could have been better addressed by what Forrester, Kofax and others are calling Smart Process Applications (SPAs). From a Kofax press release on Forrester's definition of SPAs: "SPAs is a new category of application software designed to support industry specific business activities that are people intensive, highly variable, loosely structured, and subject to frequent change. SPAs automate both structured and unstructured work activities in support of collaborative processes."

SPAs combine technology like capture, BPM, collaboration, and analytics to help connect customer-facing systems of engagement - which is what the Obamacare Web site is supposed to be - with systems of record, which is presumably what sits on the back end of the Obamacare Web site and is supposed to come up with a selection of insurance plans I can choose from. There is obviously a breakdown in the current system for making this connection as I've been trying to get some quotes from several weeks now!

As I've said before, I think this whole Obamacare mess demonstrates the market potential for SPAs. Sure, some e-commerce sites, like Amazon, are great, but they have spend billions of dollars and multiple years ramping up to their current level of mostly automated customer service. For almost everyone else, most back end systems are based on some type of tradtional paper process and just gluing a Web site to the front end is not going to work. This is where SPA fits in. It can act as the glue between old processes and new e-commerce driven ones. And document imaging ISVs and SIs are the perfect people to sell and install SPAs because their businesses are rooted in taking traditional processes and making them more electronic through applications like capture and workflow.  Basically, they understand technology and they also understand processes - two key ingredients to making e-commerce systems work successfully in a real world full of legacy systems and old habits.

In conclusion, I hope I get this healthcare thing resolved and I hope all you capture, document imaging and SPA vendors and SIs can leverage the so-far disastrous results of the Obamacare service to convince organizations transitioning to more e-commerce that they really need your help. After all, they certainly don't want to make the same mistakes and be compared to Obamacare when trying to conduct business.

Best T-Giving wishes,

Ralph

Kofax Extends What's Covered in Mobile Capture Patent

Key quote from the press release: "the technology embodied in this patent allows us to expand our mobile capture capabilities to include using a postal database to correct addresses captured from driver licenses and using a biller database to correct data captured from consumer bills.”

Make Sure You Read the End of This - ARMA Notes & More

ARMA - the Records Management Association  - held its 58th annual conference and exhibition last week in Las Vegas. I didn't attend, but wanted to share with you a couple insights from people who where there:

1. ARMA produced this podcast, which is an interview with IBML EVP, Worldwide Sales and Business Development Robert Sbrissa. Sbrissa has been in our industry for a few years and has a good perspective on how things have evolved. Here's a quote by him from that podcast that I really liked:


"We are seeing this year customer looking for not only what’s new but what’s simplified and improved – as our technology is evolving and becoming more efficient and easier to deploy. Customers  now realize that the technology exists. The question is how to choose technology that is simpler, easier to implement and easier to maintain."

2. Also, Art Nichols, VP of sales at recognition ISV NovoDynamics shared this insight with us: "Document classification to the ARMA folks is as likely to mean dealing with existing text files (word, excel, email) as it is they way we use it in forms /image capture."

I thought this was interesting because it jives with the content/first tack that  that Content Analyst, an ISV with a specialty in semantic understanding, seems to be taking as it attempts to expand its market from the e-discovery space, where it has had its initial success. And that seems to be part of the issue with semantic understanding in general as we attempt to apply it to the ECM market - where does it fit best? In a capture or an RM process, i.e. in the front-or-the back-end of the application? Of course, this is kind of the same issue that Kofax is broaching as it introduces BPM into it capture/SPA frameworks. It's all a bit muddled, but will likely make sense in the end when capture is finally subsumed by ECM - or vice-versa, and it all ends up as some sort of real-time, on-demand indexing/retrieval workflow paradigm that gets the right info to the right person at the optimal time - isn't that all we're after anyhow.

Kofax: A Go-To Partner for MS in SPA

A couple weeks ago, Kofax announced it would make an insurance claims processing solution available for demonstration as part of an engagement at Microsoft Technology Centers (KTC) worldwide. Here's our blog post discussing that announcement. It mainly focuses on Kofax's moving its technology to a cloud environment.

We were also wondering how significant this was regarding Kofax's relationship with Microsoft. Here's the reply we received from Dermot McCauley, VP, solutions product marketing, for Kofax: "The Kofax Agile Claims demonstration supports the Microsoft partnership by providing innovative technologies that allow us to offer a more complete customer solution and meet their customer’s exact needs. These resources shorten the time required to develop a customer demonstration by removing traditional barriers and reduces the total cost of solution acquisition while providing compelling customer value. Drawing on the integrated innovation of Kofax Total Agility, the Microsoft Technology Center can be a powerful resource for customer organizations.  

"Additionally, the KTA offering potentially influences Microsoft licensing including Azure, Dynamics, SQL Server, SharePoint, O365, Exchange, Lync, and Bing. As we continue to roll-out this demonstration globally, Microsoft team members in the field will look to Kofax as a leading provider of smart process applications for the business critical First Mile of customer interactions."

It seems as if he is trying to position Kofax as a go-to partner for MS in the SP space. That's not a bad thing.

Partnerships Take Technology into new Geographies

This week both NovoDynamics and KnowledgeLake announced interesting partnerships that will help them expand into new geographical markets. In conjunction with the recent GITEX show, held in Dubai, Novo, a recognition technology specialist, announced that ForeFront Technologies, a VAD that focuses on the Middle East and Africa, will be carrying its OCR software. KnowledgeLake, which develops software for document image-enabling Microsoft SharePoint, announced that PFU will be introducing its technology into PFU's ECM practice in Japan.

Novo, which first came onto our radar screen because of its Arabic OCR technology (it currently supports Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and English languages as well), exhibited at GITEX. "This show covers all areas of IT and expects over 140,000 visitors before the week is over," reported Art Nichols, Novo's VP of Global Sales, who attended the event. "Forefront is a large Fujitsu and Kodak distributor that also sells Kofax and now NovoDynamics NovoVerus."

Georges Mehchi, CFO and Managing Partner for ForeFront sounded pretty excited about the partnership. As quoted in a press release,  “The intelligence that NovoDynamics has built into NovoVerus’ software truly raises the bar for language detection, recognition and data extraction, taking Arabic and multilingual OCR to an unparalleled level! Introducing this technology into Middle Eastern and African markets will be life changing, not only for Arab nations, but globally.”

 The KnowledgeLake-PFU partnership was a natural, seeing how the ISV is now a wholly owned subsidiary of PFU. Said Ron Cameron, president of KnowledgeLake in a press release, "“This natural progression of our partnership with PFU will extend their already successful ECM practice to include SharePoint ECM. As SharePoint continues to gain momentum in the Japanese marketplace, we hope this partnership promotes the profile and perception of Microsoft’s platform by providing value around its robust ECM capabilities. We are grateful for this opportunity and I couldn’t think of a more suiting partner in this effort than our parent company, PFU."

I don't think there is any question that we are truly working in a global economy today. Yes, there are certainly hurdles to be cleared to be successful doing business in multiple countries, but working with strong partners, like the ones that NovoDynamics and KnowledgeLake have chosen, represents a great way to clear these hurdles.

Business Imaging Expo Less than Five Weeks Out

The Business Imaging Expo, being put on by 1105 Media, is set for Dec. 10-12 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Vegas. The event is aimed at Office Imaging vendors, dealers, and channel and is expected to draw around 1,500 total attendees, including 75-100 vendor exhibitors.

A pair of executive summits kick things off on Tuesday, Dec. 10: one on MPS, and the other on workflow, which has a focus on ECM and document imaging technologies. Featured speakers include Pam Doyle of Fujitsu, Bruce Orcutt of Kofax, and Ron Glaz of IDC.

“This is a brand new event that is a mix of everything we cover,” said Amy Weiss, editorial director for 1105 Media’s Office Technology Group. Weiss oversees three publications: Recharger Magazine, The Imaging Channel, and Workflow. “We see this event as really representing the future of the office imaging market. The tagline features ‘service, supplies, and solutions’ and we see opportunity where those three areas converge. We hope to provide some cutting edge content and information for attendees looking to address the future of the market."

Early-bird rates are in effect until Nov. 15. You can register online at businessimagingexpo.com/events/bix2013

MS Partnership Hightlights Kofax's Cloud Strategy

Not really sure how big a deal with this, but Kofax today announced it would make an insurance claims processing solution is available for demonstration as part of an engagement at Microsoft Technology Centers worldwide. The solution is built on Kofax's new Total Agility 7.0 platform, which is basically a combination of all its technology - capture, plus everything is has acquired over the past few years in areas like data analytics, BPM and Web interfaces - put together in one platform. The demo is set up an Azure, so this really represents Kofax's first full scale cloud-centric marketing.

The Microsoft Technology Centers are hosted in a number of brick-and-mortar locations around the world. They are designed to provide "collaborative environments that provide access to innovative technologies and world-class expertise, enabling you to envision, design, and deploy solutions to meet your exact needs." It sounds like Microsoft and Kofax plan on working more closely together in the future around KTA 7.0 and Azure. Said Kim Akers, general manager, Microsoft Corp, “Kofax continues to demonstrate its commitment to the Microsoft community with TotalAgility, the first BPM and case management platform hosted on Windows Azure."

It will be interesting to see how Kofax's revenue is going to break down between on-premise and cloud solutions in future years.

Kurzweil, the Wisdom of Harvey Spencer, & Kofax TA 7.0

A couple weeks ago at Kodak Alaris' excellent Global Directions 13 Conference, noted futurist and technology author Ray Kurzweil gave the keynote. As I noted earlier, he totally delivered on the hype, and gave an excellent talk discussing everything from his roots in the document imaging industry to how and why we are going to live much longer in the near future. The main theme of his talk was how information technology grows at an exponential, and not a linear, speed. This causes people to underestimate the improvements that will be made a few years down the road, and as a result, the effect these improvements will have on our lives.

Related to this, Kurzweil noted that people developing technology products need to be working on stuff that makes sense three to four years down the road. This made me reflect on the Harvey Spencer Associates' conference I had attended two weeks earlier. At the HSA conferences, Harvey likes to push the envelope of the capture industry. In fact, he will often have speakers that make you think, what the heck does this have to do with the market? This year, in fact, there were a couple speakers that focused on voice technology, which, aside from Nuance, wouldn't seem to affect anyone in the capture market. But, when you consider Kurzweil's sentiments, maybe it will.

For some perspective, I took a look at the agenda for the second HSA Capture conference, held in 2006. One of the sessions was "Check 21 and its Impact on the Convergence of Document and Transaction Processing." I remember telling Harvey at the time, I really didn't see the connection between payments and document processing. But, low and behold, some seven years later, at IOFM Payments Summit I attended recently, the convergence of documents and payments processing was one of the major themes.

Of course, Windows Vista was also a topic on the agenda at HSA Capture 2006, so you can't win them all, but, I think it's safe to say, in line with Kurzweil's strategy, looking ahead a few years when developing new technology is important, because it helps get you to market ahead of the competition, who can follow, but will have a tough time unseating an established leader. SharePoint 2007 was another topic discussed at HSA 2006, and by that time KnowledgeLake already had an established, if small, capture-to-SharePoint practice. As Spencer's vision of the influence of SharePoint proved correct, and it spread as a popular ECM repository, KnoweldgeLake blossomed from a start-up to a major player in our industry, while other vendors scrambled to catch up.

Which all brings us to Kofax's announcement today of Total Agility 7, a platform for implementing smart process applications (SPA). Kofax first unveiled its SPA strategy about a year ago. At the time I wondered what the heck they were talking about. Kofax's CMO Martyn Christian (who left the company about a month ago), however, did a pretty good job tying SPAs to the newly defined "first-mile" of business processes and the strategy started to make sense, but I was still wondering how Kofax planned to address it. Well, Total Agility 7, which has apparently (per Kurzweil's advice) been in the works for several years and some $125 million worth of acquisition and R&D investment, makes it all clear. Basically, it's a Web-based (eventually cloud-based) platform with all the tools needed to create SPAs.

I'll expound more on this in my next premium issue of DIR, as Kofax CTO Anthony Macciola gave me a great interview on the details of TA 7. In brief, it combines Kofax's existing capture technology, with its internally developed mobile tools, with the technology from the acquisitions Kofax has made over the past few years, and puts in all in a Webified, cloud-ready environment that appears ready to address what Kofax hopes is an emerging market for SPA solutions.