Captaris acquires Oce Document Technologies
Interesting news for those of you who work in the field of Document-centric business processes:
Captaris completed the acquisition of Oce Document Technologies (the maker of DokuStar and RecoStar OCR among other fine products), for approximately EUR 10.4 million in cash (USD $15.3 million), net of ODT’s cash balance as of the closing of approximately EUR 21.2 million (USD $31.1 million). More consolidation in that market…
This allows Captaris to strengthen its position as a major player in that very crowded (and consolidating) market, moving beyond fax and distributed capture.
While this looks like a sensible deal on the surface, lets remember OCR technology has been around for a while. I strongly believe Captaris should have invested in Saas and availability services instead. more clients in the SMB and enterprise space are embracing this model. Online document imaging solutions delivered as a service will keep you in the black, an acquisition like this in the current state of the economy will put you in the red.
With Open Source fast gaining ground, the wave of acquisitions like this will not be for long as the Linux environment is fast becoming a standard.
Alani Kuye
Phantom Data Systems Inc.
http://www.phantomdatasystems.com
Online Document imaging Solutions
Data Storage and Recovery
Norwalk CT.
[...] indigestion”. OpenText has acquired a few smaller companies earlier this year, but Captaris is also digesting its own acquisition of Oce Document Technologies and its Dokustar product [...]
Nine months ago I posted the first response to this blog. Here we are today and Open Text just acquired Captaris as I predicted earlier.
Not only did they acquire Captaris, they fired the top guys (karma is a *itch), cleaned out operations and pretty much adopted the CA model which is to screw the channel while acting as it’s friend.
I make a bold statement by saying this is not the end, that industry is in a sharp nose dive.
Every Tom, Dick and Harry is now making document / content management software. We we move into a more collaboratively competitive environment instead of a purely competitive one, we’ll be seeing more shakeups like these.
Alani Kuye
Phantom Data Systems Inc.
http://www.phantomdatasystems.com
Online Document imaging Solutions
Data Storage and Recovery
Norwalk CT.