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Captaris Acquires Oce Document Technologies

Captaris, Inc., a provider of software products that automate document-centric processes, has announced the completion of its acquisition of Oce Document Technologies GmbH (ODT), a company specializing in document capture, text recognition and document classification.

This acquisition, first announced on December 20th, is a significant transaction that the people at Captaris expect will bring them added revenue and an expanded customer base.

ODT is based in Constance, Germany and employs about 180 people in its offices in Germany and the US. Specializing in input management and the optimization of business processes, they are also a global provider of products in the related core technologies such as scanning, character recognition and document interpretation. ODT products include RecoStar, DOKuStar, DOKuStar Capture Suite, Single Click Entry, ID-Star, BUSY, Invoice CENTER, Tax CENTER, and Mail CENTER.

“Our acquisition of ODT significantly increases the scale of our business, our international presence, and the depth of our technology capabilities. It also positions us well to pursue growth in the rapidly evolving distributed capture market,” said David P. Anastasi, President and CEO of Captaris. “Leading document capture providers have leveraged ODT technology for years to create competitive advantage within their platforms. We intend to continue emphasizing these OEM relationships and believe that through leveraging the technology within Captaris platforms we can reach a considerably broader audience in the fastest growing segments of the capture market.”

Anastasi also expects revenue from the ODT business to diversify their revenue sources and are anticipating further organic growth in 2008 from multiple initiatives focused at automating document-centric business processes through leveraging intelligence from captured images.

So how much does an international document technology company set one back these days? Captaris acquired ODT for approximately EUR 10.4 (USD $15.3 million). They also assumed ODT’s operating and financial liabilities, including approximately $17.8 million USD in future retirement and bonus obligations. Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, these numbers could change according to ODT’s actual revenue for the year ended November 30, 2007.

Captaris, founded in 1982, is known for its RightFax, Captaris Workflow, Alchemy and FaxPress products that are distributed through a global network of technology partners. Captaris boasts a wide and impressive customer base that includes the entire Fortune 100 and the majority of the Global 2000 companies.