Buried in the chaos of the BEA acquisition news was the Oracle acquisition of Captovation: a scanning software company.

People always asked me what scanning solutions integrate well with Stellent Content Management. I've pointed them to several companies, including both Captovation and Kofax. Both are excellent scanning solutions... the general consensus was that Kofax was the leader, but it cost more. However, I guess the new official line is to recommend Captovation ;-)

This blend is definitely A Good Thing. I see a ton of opportunity here, especially for line-of-business scanning solutions. Its a problem almost everyone has, there is clear return-on-investment, and its a quick sale.

Then of course, once the scanning solution is working, people start playing with the Content Server a bit more... they notice cool things like web content management, digital asset management, wikis, folios, all in the same repository. Heck, they might not even need to install any new software! They start using advanced features more and more, and finally "get" the value of true Enterprise Content Management.

Or, they decide to integrate their process at a higher level... after scanning the document, they use the Stellent BPEL Integration to push the document into an enterprise-wide workflow process. Using BPEL, they can integrate with hundreds of ERP or CRM systems, and create complex process flows to integrate everything and everyone they need. Then they will finally "get" the value of Enterprise 2.0.

Or, it just remains a line-of-business app... it does one thing, and does it well... never to become part of a larger whole. That would be a shame, but at least the customer is happy!