EMC to Acquire Captiva Software

In a move designed to beef up its ECM (enterprise content management) Documentum business and storage portfolio-wide archival strategy, EMC has announced it will acquire Captiva Software for approximately $275 million net of Captivas cash balance, or $22.25 per share in cash.

Founded in 1989, the San Diego-based longtime partner of EMC Corp., Captiva Software Corp. provides input management software and products which enable the conversion of paper-based documents into digital formats. Data can be captured and managed from a wide variety of forms, reports, and other types of physical media via scanners and fax machines, said officials of Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC.

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EMCs acquisition of Captiva Software is expected to close by either the end of this year or in early 2006. Upon completion of the purchase, EMC will take charge of approximately $15 million to $20 million estimated value of Captivas in-process research and development expenditures, EMC officials noted.

Captivas technology enables organizations to digitize, classify, and categorize their business information toward the early stages of ILM (information lifecycle management) and policy-based workflow processes involving their applications. In turn business rules are applied to minimize management and ensure greater accuracy within critical IT systems including ERP (enterprise resource planning), accounting, credit, and other enterprise content management operations.

The companys product line ranges from desktop offerings to enterprise-level class products. These offerings include processing software such as FormWare, InputAccel which is Captivas document capture platform, and scanning tool eInput. Other Captiva offerings include Digital MailRoom to capture and classify information and Input Management Console to monitor applications.

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