IBM Buys Document Management Specialist

IBM said Tuesday it acquired Datacap Inc., a privately held developer of software that allows businesses to more efficiently manage information scanned from paper documents.

Datacap's customers include companies in the insurance, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial industries, as well as state and local governments. The roster includes BlueCross BlueShield Arizona, Goodyear, Dow Jones, and the Chicago Department of Public Health.

An IBM spokesperson said the company is not releasing financial details of the transaction. IBM plans to integrate Datacap's operations into its Enterprise Content Management business.

"Transforming the way organizations do business requires not only a powerful and flexible technology platform to accommodate a wide range of business requirements, challenges, and goals, but also a deep understanding of the processes of the industries in which our clients operate," said Ron Ercanbrack, IBM's VP for ECM.

"We've chosen to make Datacap's approach the foundation of IBM's document capture strategy. Datacap's approach to image capture, using sophisticated business rules management, sets it above the rest in the industry and provides the most complementary capabilities for IBM," said Ercanbrack.

Datacap is based in Tarrytown, NY, not far from IBM's Armonk headquarters.

As part of the deal, Datacap CEO Scott Blau has been named IBM's director of Enterprise Content Management. Datacap is known for its Taskmaster data capture and forms processing solution. Among its competitors are Oracle's Oracle Document Capture platform.

The deal represents IBM's eighth announced or completed acquisition this year, the largest being the $1.4 billion buyout of integration specialist Sterling Commerce. IBM shares were off .81%, to $130.93, in midday trading Tuesday.