Lexmark Acquires Two More Software Companies

Just a short time after announcing it had acquired intelligent document recognition vendor Brainware, Lexmark announced two more software acquisitions that are being rolled into its Perceptive ECM business. The acquisitions are of Nolij, a U.S.-based document imaging and workflow specialist in the higher education market, and Australia-based ISYS, which specializes in enterprise search.

According to the press release, Nolij Transfer is "a Web-based data integration product that enables automated data matching and upload to student information systems...in enrollment services, university development and the business office." Perceptive, of course, is already one of the leaders in marketing ECM to the higher education market. According to Scott Coons, president and CEO of Perceptive and Lexmark VP, "Nolij brings advanced system integration, unique browser based scanning and forms processing capabilities to our education customers so they can better serve their students."


Regarding ISYS, the press release states, "ISYS enterprise search solutions deliver powerful federated search, text mining, and mobile and embedded search capabilities across a wide range of formats, languages and platforms...Its class-leading Document Filters technology is the core analytics engine at the heart of its suite. Document Filters enables users to parse, extract, analyze, load and display (in high definition) content contained in hundreds of different file types. Today, more than 16,000 enterprise organizations and many of the world’s leading IT vendors use ISYS software.

We hope to provide more details of how these products will be integrated into Perceptive's ECM suite and Lexmark's business in an upcoming premium issue.

Autonomy Acquires Iron Mountain Digital Assets

I'm not sure why this is a good move for Iron Mountain aside from the fact that it generates some cash. According to a press release, Autonomy has agreed to pay $380 million in cash for a business with a run rate of $130-$140 million that includes "selected key assets of Iron Mountain's digital division including archiving, eDiscovery and online backup." I'm assuming this includes Iron Mountain's growing document scanning business, which was certainly integrated with the e-discovery business.

I like the deal for Autonomy and have echoed the setiments of CEO Dr. Mike Lynch in the past: ""In 2007 we correctly predicted the merging of regulatory archiving and search, and we believe we are now seeing the next phase where the convergence of regulatory archiving, back-up and data restoration with operational processing of data in the cloud is coming to pass." - A lot of my view was formed by conversations with Dr. Johannes Scholtes, the CEO of Zylab, another vendor with a focus on search, so I guess it would make sense that I agree with Autonomy's strategy.

Apparently, Iron Mountain felt it couldn't compete in the emerging cloud-based storage market.

Xerox Search

Xerox has introduced some new search technology. We're not sure how this fits in with the rest of its product lines, but as is typical with Xerox it seems like pretty cool technology.

Microsoft Yahoo!

Unless there's something here I don't see, I don't understand how Microsoft and Yahoo! getting together will pose a threat to Google! Putting together two also-rans (alright, maybe the number-two and three players) to take on the leader in a developing market just doesn't seem like a good idea. It almost reminds me of the Time-Warner/AOL thing. Two losers don't necessarily make a winner.
Also, here's a link to podcast of a roundtable on e-discovery that I participated in at the recent AIIM Conference in Boston. It's interesting for its diversity of opinions on the topic. Obviously, this is very much an emerging market, in which the rules and directions are still being determined. You also had a good mix of editors, lawyers, and consultants on the panel.