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But this latest acquisition seems to dwarf even those in its significance. Kofax products have for a very long time been seen as the de facto standard for a huge number of capture users, so Lexmark will inherit a massive install base on day one, along with a team of technical experts with an unrivalled breadth of knowledge of the sector.

Let's not forget that Kofax themselves were for a long time voraciously acquisitive. They've barely had time to complete the integration of Kapow into their portfolio before being faced with the reverse challenge of being themselves 'assimilated' into the Lexmark business. It will be interesting to see how this move affects Lexmark's positioning in the market - we can probably assume a shift toward process automation and a more solution-focused proposition, but what else might change?

Coincidentally, this issue features an article on multi-channel capture, which foreshadows some of the trends that this acquisition could herald. ABBYY's Markus Pichler touches on how the 'changing world of work' is impacting capture strategies: "To integrate multiple locations and mobile workers into the business process, capture and processing increasingly lends itself to the cloud. This enables companies - and their workforces - to gain flexibility. But that's not the only benefit. Web-based technologies such as the cloud and web capture offer the highest safety standards that many organisations require during data transmission."

Forrester have long been predicting that capture will increasingly have to incorporate advanced analytics, mobile solutions, BPM and case management, as well as stronger integration with enterprise production platforms. There is no doubt that such thoughts are uppermost in the minds of the executives of the newly-merged Lexmark and Kofax business.

Elsewhere, the impact of the cloud on the ECM sector comes up again in an opinion piece from Silver Peak's Everett Dolgner, who argues that investing in cloud storage needs careful planning: "Technical requirements need to be carefully considered as data that is stranded in the cloud is useless. If business critical data is going to be protected in the cloud, there needs to be a way to restore the data into a VM, or onto a physical server, for rapid recovery. If the data must be downloaded first, the solution should not be used for anything critical."

Dave Tyler
Editor
david.tyler@btc.co.uk