Open Text Solutions Extends Kofax Capture to Oracle Fusion Middleware

Over the past decade, Open Text has developed and delivered innovative content management solutions for Oracle databases and applications. We have focused on leveraging many of the same world class ERP applications that Oracle has developed and now acquired, including PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Oracle E-Business Suite.  Open Text is committed to continued development that extends and enhances the Oracle application portfolio, helping our customers maximize their investment in our joint solutions.

Our agreements with Oracle enable Open Text to resell or bundle Oracle technology with our solutions. The Open Text Oracle Solutions Group located in Irvine, California is focused on building transactional content management based applications which optimize automate processes around core business applications such as Accounts Payable and Expense Report. 

Oracle Fusion Middleware is a pre-integrated portfolio of customer-proven software that spans from portals and process managers to application infrastructure, developer tools, and business intelligence. One key technology within the Fusion product family is the Service-Oriented Architecture Suite (SOA), and we have written a three part series previously to provide an overview of how Open Text is leveraging SOA to build world class transactional content solutions.

Continuing in our rich traditions, Open Text has extended our Livelink ECM - Release Script for Kofax Ascent Capture to support direct release to Livelink repositories, Web services, and/or Oracle Fusion Middleware.  This technology approach and flexibility is always an important element of SOA architectures and implementations. 

Web Services

Today, the ability to seamlessly exchange information between internal business units, customers, and partners is vital for success; yet most organizations employ a variety of disparate applications that store and exchange data in dissimilar ways and therefore cannot "Talk" to one another productively. Web services have evolved as a practical, cost-effective solution for uniting information distributed between critical applications over operating system, platform, and language barriers that were previously impassable.

Web services are software components that communicate using pervasive, standards-based Web technologies including HTTP and XML-based messaging. Web services are designed to be accessed by other applications and vary in complexity from simple operations, such as checking a banking account balance online, to complex processes running CRM (customer relationship management) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Since they are based on open standards such as HTTP and XML-based protocols including SOAP and WSDL, Web services are hardware, programming language, and operating system independent. This means that applications written in different programming languages and running on different platforms can seamlessly exchange data over intranets or the Internet using Web services.

Web services provide several technological and business benefits, a few of which include:

• Application and data integration
• Versatility
• Code re-use
• Cost savings

All these benefits add up to significant cost savings too.  As a result, nearly all vendors are moving toward and supporting web service approaches to for their technology. 

Document and Data Capture

Documents can arrive in a variety of ways – by mail, by fax, and by EDI, and all need to be managed efficiently.
Paper needs to be converted to digital through a capture process.  The Open Text solution uses industry leading technologies from Kofax to enhance and optimize the scanned images as they are being scanned.  Integration with products such as Captaris RightFax brings those images through a consistent interface and provides a central facility for managing indexing.

The Open Text Kofax Release Script for Livelink now seamlessly supports web services directly, which allows rapid integration with other leading and existing software that requires document capture.  Companies can integrate document capture throughout the organization with existing systems or new initiatives while capitalizing on existing technology investments.  In addition, the release script ties tightly to the Livelink Content Repository providing even more capabilities to extend Enterprise Content Management throughout the organization. 

Further leveraging the benefits of this technology, the next generations of Open Text Accounts Payable (A/P) solutions for Oracle ERP will utilize this new functionality and will give our customers even more options to streamline the invoice receipt-to-pay cycle.

Figure 1: Document Settings Configuration Tab Provides Easy Configuration with Livelink

Figure 2: Web Service Configuration Tab Provides Easy Configuration of Web Services

Shining Teamwork

Our Livelink ECM technology and domain expertise, together with our Oracle and Kofax alliances enable Open Text to deliver a total solution in support of an imaging and workflow-enabled solution.  In addition, Open Text software has a low total cost of ownership (TCO) and also helps in enforcement of controls, traditionally two opposing goals throughout the entire AP process.

Our powerful solution means that organizations can take full advantage of their knowledge assets for searching, browsing, and viewing information that was previously only imagined and now able to further integrate document capture technology into their company while leveraging existing investments.