Captaris to Buy Archiving Software Maker

Business delivery software maker Captaris agreed to acquire Information Management Research (IMR), an archiving and records management software maker, for $26.5 million in cash.

Captaris made the play because it believes IMR's flagship Alchemy product line will help in its bid to become a leader in retrieving and archiving important business information rendered as fixed content that cannot be changed.

Alchemy handles multiple types of fixed content, such as images, e-mail and PDFs, and manages the content through information lifecycle management (ILM) stages, which includes capture, workflow, document management, archive, records management, retrieval and distribution.

It is expected Englewood, Calif.-based IMR will complement Captaris products, including RightFax enterprise fax and e-document delivery, Teamplate business process workflow and Interchange information automation.

Scheduled to close this month, the purchase will also give Captaris, of Bellevue, Wash., a combined base of almost 100,000 system shipments worldwide.

David Anastasi, Captaris president and CEO, said in a statement that many of Captaris' customers require archiving and records management, noting that the play was "a continuation of our acquisition strategy to add complementary technologies to our product portfolio."

Demand for archiving and records management software has skyrocketed in the wake of several records retention rules put into place in the last couple of years. Regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and SEC 17a-4 require that corporations save certain documents for a set period of time.

"Organizations are under tremendous pressure to manage this content effectively, not only to improve operational efficiency and productivity while reducing costs, but also for compliance and risk reduction purposes," said Richard Medina, principal analyst at research firm Doculabs, in a statement.

The need to retrieve and provide documents, such as purchase orders, legal contracts or even just basic e-mail correspondence has fueled several acquisitions in the storage sector in particular.

EMC a year ago purchased Legato Systems and Documentum for e-mail archiving and content management, respectively. Open Text acquired e-mail archiving specialist Ixos Software.

Zantaz picked up e-mail archiving concern Educom and Steelpoint Technologies for litigation software support.

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