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.