Alfresco Offers Kofax Integration for Document Scanning and Capture

By David Roe | Published Jun 26, 2009

At the end of March this year Alfresco (news, site) released version 3.1 of its enterprise content management system. Discussing the new release, VP of Business Development Matt Asay indicated that they had improved support for Kofax Capture. So the announcement that a new extension for Alfresco 3.1 is undergoing beta testing and will soon be ready for general release is no real surprise.

However, it was neither Kofax, nor Alfresco itself that developed the extension, but Alfresco’s partner Micro Strategies did the honors this time.

Earlier Integration

This is not the first time that Alfresco and Kofax have had dealings together. As early as September 2006 they had joined up to launch an integration of Kofax Ascent Capture with Alfresco’s open source repository.

This production document capture solution allowed for automatic document classification, data extraction and validation for both internet-based distributed capture and centralized environments.

But times and solutions move on and the integration of what is now Kofax Capture 8 and Alfresco 3.1 Enterprise is a considerable leap forward, the companies say.

The new Alfresco Kofax Release Script will allow users to extract data from paper forms, deposit that data in the Alfresco content management system and then manage it throughout its entire lifecycle.

Micro Strategies Integration

Micro Strategies, a New Jersey based provider of technology management solutions, have said little about the new extension with nothing on their website about it.

They appear to have come into the deal, created the solution and left it to Alfresco and Kofax to do all the promoting.

However Adam Storch Vice President, Business Solutions at Micro Strategies did have this to say: “Micro Strategies developed the integration between Kofax and Alfresco in response to increasing demand for open source document management solutions. By providing this script, we can now support user requirements for high-volume document capture into Alfresco.”

And there you have it — there really doesn’t appear to be any decline in the demand for solutions that can process paper documentation despite a lot of talk going around about the rise of the paperless office.

As yet there doesn’t appear to be any definitive release date, but when it is released this is one for Alfresco Enterprise subscription customers.