Canon Announces New Solutions-Focused Subsidiary

In a move that may have been somewhat previewed (check out the last two paragraphs) during our recent meeting with Canon at the AIIM On Demand show in March, Canon USA has lauched a new, wholly owned subsidiary dedicated to expanding Canon’s overall solutions business." Known as "Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, Canon USA "is targeting the company to exceed $500 million in sales by 2014."
Imaging and records management, business process optimization, security, ERP, cloud computing, IT services, and healthcare are all mentioned in the release. It doesn't say if M&A will be involved. Canon technology and that from leading "third party partners" will be utilized. We hope to have more on this in an upcoming premium issue.

DocSolid Signs Distribution Agreement with Supplies Network

DocSolid, an ISV promoting a universal document capture platform for managed print services implementations, recently announced a partnership with Supplies Network, which will be offering DocSolid's
Airmail2 platform to its MPS partners. Supplies Network bills itself as "the largest privately-owned wholesaler of IT consumables in the U.S. and an early innovator in MPS."

DocSolid was founded by document imaging industry veteran Steve Irons, a former reseller who also launched another ISV ImageTag. AirMail2 employs some of the same bar-code recognition concepts as ImageTag, but the eventual destination for scanned documents is a cloud-based computing environment, which currently manages e-mailing but will be made available for integration with other cloud-based applications.

Looking to take advantage of the MPS wave, Irons told us that instead of building a distribution channel for his software this time around, he was going to try to leverage one that already exists. He views capture as a natural extension of MPS with a cost of fractions of a cent per print - which is what the MPS charges are based on. More on this in an upcoming premium issue.

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.

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.

Kodak Introduces New SharePoint Tools

Kodak continues to innovate on the SharePoint front, introducing two new tools for integrating document imaging technology with Microsoft's ECM platform. Kodak has introduced a Document Viewer Software for previewing documents returned by SharePoint searches. It works with 300 document types, so it's not liminted to images. Kodak has also introduced a Scan and View component, which enables users to enhance scanned images, run meta data searches, and mark-up and annotate documents.

This is exactly the type of functionality users need to turn SharePoint into an true document image management application. The new tools are designed to be integrated with Kodak's Capture Pro Software. Kodak recently introduced the ability to to import SharePoint Server library columns (meta data fields) to be used for indexing fields when capturing documents. All good moves on Kodak's part to capitalize on the growing desire to implement imaging functionality within SharePoint environments.

From the press release: "KODAK Document Viewer Software and KODAK Scan and View Software will be available beginning in May of 2011. Availability will vary by geographic location. For more information about KODAK Document Viewer Software and KODAK Scan and View Software, go to www.kodak.com/go/sharepoint."

DocuLex Announces New Education Program

From the press release:  DocuLex, Inc.(http://www.doculex.com/), creator of award-winning, business-ready document management software, announced today the initiation of its Customer Experience Program, a program that will revolve around further education for DocuLex Dealers and Partners on the benefits of owning DocuLex software.  Aspects of the program will include increases in educational email, mail and other communications, regular webinars on newly released and forgotten features of the Archive Studio Software Suite, post-service surveys, prompt follow up to requests for upgrades and annual support (maintenance bundles), information on professional services available, as well as a venue for escalating outstanding issues.

"There was a gap in our existing processes that was becoming increasingly obvious – the need in the channel for more education on the benefits of the DocuLex Archive Studio Software Suite for document management."

Couldn't agree more that there is significant opportunity around education to take full advantage of document management software features - especially when you sell through the digital copier channel, like DocuWare primarily does. 

DocuWare Upgrades Web Client

DocuWare's new Web client is being advertised as now having most of the key featuures of its Windows client. An announcement about DocuWare 5.1c was made this week at DocuWorld, the German-based ISVs annual reseller conference being held in Orlando. DocuWare has a zero-footprint client that it introduced in 2008. Last year, co-president Juergen Biffar told us that the zero-footprint client was being deployed in about half the company's new sales. We can only assume that has increased since.

When we talked with Biffar, DocuWare had recently announced it had set aside one million Euros for Web-based development. "“To transfer the entire functionality and quality of our traditional client to a browser-based environment is a huge effort, and we want to accelerate that process,” Biffar told us at the time. “That’s where half our additional spending will go. The other half is related to SaaS. We will have new challengers in this area that we do not know from our traditional business. To overcome these challengers will require money.”

Brainware Lands $4.1 Million Deal

This is a mailroom application with a "U.S.-based energy provider." It involves auto-classifcation of more than 1,000 document types.

Kofax Releases New Version of Express

Kofax has announced a new version of its SMB/departmental batch capture software. Kofax Express 2.5 includes automated data capture improvements, as well as certification with SharePoint 2010. On the data capture front, users can now do zonal OCR as well capture fields by rubber-banding text on images.

Former Perceptive A/P Expert Joins Brainware

Former Perceptive Software accounts payable solutions manager Chuck Kingston has joined Brainware. Kingston helped set up an OEM deal between Perceptive and Brainware to pair Perceptives image management and workflow technology with Brainware's automated capture. In a few discussions with him, I was really impressed at how much he knew about the A/P market. From what I remember, something like 40% of Perceptive's business came in that space.

With Brainware, Kingston will be a product manager. According to the press release, "he will be guiding Brainware’s product strategy and vision, leveraging extensive industry knowledge to deliver new product capabilities, capitalizing on opportunities for effective partnerships and product positioning, developing compelling product demonstrations and ensuring the company’s product development, sales strategies, professional services and technical support are aligned with customer needs." Sounds like a pretty big job.

Perceptive, of course, was acquired by Lexmark last summer and seems to have been investing considerably in growing the business. This is the first higher profile exit that I'm aware of since the acquisition.

Closing of Sale of Kofax Distributor Delayed

It doesn't seem like a big deal, but apparently the closing of the sale of Kofax's hardware distribution business has been delayed for a couple months. According to this article, the deal, which was announced in January and originally expected to close in March, will now close next month. According to an analyst quoted in the article, "Kofax has confirmed that the delay is due to a combination slightly longer timescales to create the required legal entities and to complete the necessary regulatory filings in order to complete the spin off and transfer of the business to the new owners, Hannover Finanz. The delays have been particular issues in the United Arab Emirates, South Africa and certain other countries."

The sale of the $130 million, slightly profitable business, will net Kofax some $20 million that it is expected to use for acquisition. Interestingly, when I talked with Tony Barbeau of Kodak Document Imaging, we compared Kodak's sale of its microfilm business to Kofax's sale of the hardware distribution business. Both businesses were actually the foundations of the entities that are now selling them. In the early days, profits from each were used to fund new businesses that have now overtaken the legacy operations.

Kodak Sells Micrographics Business

Yesterday, Kodak announced it had "completed the sale of certain assets of its microfilm products and equipment business to Eastman Park Micrographics, Inc." Eastman Park is a Dallas-based entity founded by former Kodak executive and long-time document imaging entrepreneur William "Sonny" Oates. Basically, Eastman Park will be taking over all sales and distribution of Kodak microfilm and micrographics equipment. However, the film will continue to be manufactured by Kodak in Rochester and carry the Kodak brand name.

I caught up with Tony Barbeau of Kodak Document Imaging who indicated the move was designed to enable Kodak to focus more completely on its digital business - which is the strategic direction of the company. Kodak's document scanner and imaging business grew out of the micrographics business in the late 1980s and 1990s. In early 2001, we reported that Kodak's digital document imaging and micrographics businesses combined were approaching $1 billion - with digital sales poised to overtake micrographics sales for the first time that year.

Barbeau indicated that the sale would affect about 10 Kodak employees. He said that while sales of many forms of traditional microfilm are shrinking, archive, preservation microfilm sales continue to grow.

More in our next premium issue.

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?

Tidmarsh Joins Box.net

I haven't seen any confirmation of this yet, but it was certainly the talk of AIIM. The CEO of Box.net, which advertises itself as an on-line content management firm, apparently gave a great keynote at the recent AIIM/Global 360 event. From what I've picked up, it has a cool interface for on-line file collaboration and a SaaS sales model. Tidmarsh worked at Documentum and then EMC's Content Management division, for some time, most recently as a chief marketing officer.

At the event, she told us she was leaving EMC and handed off her keynote to Jeetu Patel, CTO of EMC's Information Intelligence Group. Box.net is apparently pretty hot, and according to this Forbes article has raised somewhere around $70 million in venture capital. So, I guess they can afford someone with Tidmash's experience. I'm guessing Tidmarsh is being brought on board to help expand the breadth of the company's content management offering and wouldn't be surprised to see them add some capture technology in the near future.

AIIM Wrap-up

Just finished up another great week at the AIIM show. This year's show was held in Washington, DC - a great city, but it can be a very expensive place to go for an event. Next year's event is apparently scheduled for June 12-14 at the Javits Center in New York City. New York in early June seems like a great time for the event, but, per our last post, it will also be the first year when the "AIIM" name will not be used. The event has been re-branded as Info 360. On Demand looks like its keeping its name.

From what we understand, ITEX will not be co-located with the two events next year. The feedback we got this year was that you had pay an extra $250 for an ITEX badge and that the monitors were checking badges. I know I tried to get on the ITEX floor and had to point out that my press credentials were good for both events. Anyhow, I heard ITEX is heading back out to Vegas.

This year's AIIM show was certainly the quietest I've ever seen. Yeah, there were still more than 130 vendors there, but almost nobody, except for Canon, had a large booth. And the number of presentations and booth shills to attract attendees' interest was very low. There were times when I almost felt I had to whisper to avoid from being overheard. The few exhibitors that gave me positive feedback about the attendance indicated that they had made several appointments ahead of time to create their own traffic. (In show organizer Questex's defense, this is what they have been telling people to do for years.)

The Microsoft Pavilion, which we figured had about the fifth of the exhibitors looked crowded, but that may have just been because there were so many vendors crowded into a relatively small space, and each vendor had multiple staff there.

For me, the event was once again a great networking opportunity, although there were certainly less people there to network with than in years past, but still enough to fill up my dance card for three days. We'll have plenty of coverage in upcoming issues of DIR.

AIIM Being Dropped from Show Name

Just got an e-mail from AIIM - the trade organization today to that effect: "The Info360 event taking place from March 21 – 24 in Washington, DC will be the final "AIIM" Show to bear the AIIM name."

I'm really not sure that this means or what exactly AIIM was doing for the show anyhow, aside from holding it's annual awards dinner in conjunction with it. And if AIIM stops doing that, it would probably hurt the networking aspect of the show, which is really the best part for many people

I'm sure we'll find out more next week.

Sharp Introduces New MFP Interface

According to the Sharp press release, "Operating in a manner similar to today's most advanced smart phones, Sharp's new user interface provides easy access to all MFP features, each of which are viewed as familiar icons. Users can perform all tasks using "flick," "tap," "slide" and "drag" gestures on the color LCD touchscreen. Icons perform the tasks the user expects them to, and the system guides the user based on the previous commands to help them execute desired functions more quickly. This "smart" user experience dramatically reduces the learning curve, leading to more widespread use of advanced functions like duplexing, staple sorting and others."

There is a video on the press release link that does a good job showing some of the features that are described. The page preview and manipulation features are especially cool. In conjunction with the release of the new interface, which is debuting on three A3 products and will eventually be available throughout Sharp's product line, Sharp is debuting its OSA 4.0 platform - designed specifically to work with the new interface. OSA, for open systems architecture, is Sharp's toolkit for integrating applications, like ECM and capture, with its MFPs. It was one of the first Web-based platforms for achieving this type of integration.

SourceCorp Merging With HOV Services

SourceCorp, which began life as a document imaging service bureau roll-up, has entered into an agreement to merge with HOV Services. HOV Services is an India-based document services outsourcing specialist that acquired SourceCorp competitor Lason back in 2007. Back in the late 1990s, Lason and SourceCorp (then known as FYI) engaged in a bit of a bidding war for service bureaus. SourceCorp, which was founded by executives from outside our industry, took a more fiscally responsible to the roll-up. I remember a conversation with a few SourceCorp execs at AIIM 1998, who accurately predicted the impending fall of Lason - which actually had three ex-execs go to jail for stock fraud, or something along those lines.

Lason was eventually bought by the investment group Charterhouse for something like $25 milllion and some assumed debt. Charterhouse, which also had an investment in document capture ISV Top Image Systems, then flipped Lason for $148 million to HOV three years later. At the time, the combined company was estimated to have more than $200 million in annual revenue. SourceCorp, which reported revenue of greater than $400 million in 2005 as a public company, was sold to the investment firm Apollo Management in 2006 for $475 million. I thought SourceCorp had dispersed some of its businesses since then to narrow its focus, but we'll estimate that the new HOV/SourceCorp entity is worth at least $500 million annually. Definitely an interesting starting point for a BPO business.

Big Capture Projects Continue

By most accounts, the last three months of 2010 were a good time for the capture industry. ReadSoft, Kofax, and Top Image Systems, three publicly traded companies, each announced strong calendar fourth quarters. And that momentum appears to have flowed over into the first part of 2010. Top Image recently announced this $760,000 deal for the Argentinian Census. According to Omri Gelb, executive VP, it is TIS's 11th census win in the last year.

Utilizing automated data capture on census forms seems to have become a no-brainer. In a census that was fraught with budget overruns in other areas, scanner vendor ibml has announced that "its high-speed document scanning technology played a key role in helping the Lockheed Martin-led Decennial Response Integration System (DRIS) team complete the 2010 U.S. Census forms processing operation on schedule and under budget." From the ibml press release, "the team was able to process as many as 2.5 million 2010 Census forms every 24 hours during peak production. Lockheed Martin used 44 ibml ImageTrac scanners across three data capture centers to capture images from more than 165 million 2010 Census forms."

Finally, what report on the document capture space would be complete without mention of Kofax, which recently announced a $900,000 invoice processing deal. It's a combination Kofax Capture/KTM and Markview workflow deal - the type Kofax envisioned when it bought 170 Systems about a year and a half ago.

MS SharePoint 2011 Conference Registration Open

I mainly note this because the 2009 conference, at which SharePoint 2010 was previewed, was one of the best conferences I've ever been too. There were more than 7,500 people there, it was sold out, there was a waiting list, and it was well run. Plus, we all got to see what was going to be included in SharePoint 2010 and why it is going to have such a large effect on the ECM industry as we know it.

I know I vacillate back and forth over how much influence SharePoint is going to have on the document imaging market, but after talking with a pair of SI's today, I am lifted back out of the trough of disillusionment and into being a believer again. Basically, it seems that to do true ECM in SharePoint, in anything close to an out-of-the-box way, you need to have 2010 installed. Currently, as the product just came out last year, that is not the case at many sites. Also, there seems to be a bit of a lack of knowledge out there about how to actually unleash SharePoint's true ECM capabilties.

Basically, the solution seems to be (and more on this in my next premium issue) marrying people with ECM process knowledge to SharePoint - so they can apply that knowledge to SharePoint applications. There are reasons this isn't happening full-force yet, but that could/should change in the future. (This is the kind of stuff I'll discuss.) Anyhow, here' s the link to the SharePoint 2011 MS Conference.

A lot of imaging players are sponsors, of the MS SharePoint event, incluidng KnowledgeLake, who's a platinum sponsor. KLake will be holding its own first ever user event in conjunction with the Microsoft event. The MS event runs Oct. 3-6 at the Anaheim Convention Center, with KLake's event being held the preceding weekend.

Speaking of events, SharePoint looks like it's going to have a huge presence at the upcoming AIIM Info 360 event being held at the D.C. Convention Center later this month. The floor plan shows like 25 ISVs (maybe some integrators in there) in the Microsoft Partner Pavilion, not to mention KnowledgeLake, which is next door. A quick look at the exhibitor list, shows like 138  total exhibitors, so once again it should be a good show for DIR and anyone else looking to do some networking.

Apparently, Hyland Software will be missing for the first time since I started covering the event for DIR back in 1998. That show was in Anaheim and from what I understand that was Hyland's first big coming out party after they had gotten a bunch of money from someone for their check imaging technology. At the show, then CEO Packy Hyland, Jr. handed me a card on which he listed his position as "One Happy Dude" and told me his goal was to grow Hyland larger than FileNet. They've certainly come pretty close. I'm not sure how much their really big AIIM booths over the years helped them, but apparently, they've moved on from that strategy.

Anyhow, ping me if you want to get together at AIIM