OEM Agreement
02 April 2003 - 9:30AM
UK Regulatory
RNS Number:5223J
Dicom Group PLC
02 April 2003
DICOM Group plc
OEM Agreement with Hewlett-Packard Co.
DICOM Group plc ("DICOM Group"), the global leader in the Electronic Document
Capture ("EDC") market, announces that Kofax Image Products, its US-based centre
for product development, and Hewlett-Packard Co. ("HP") have concluded their
first ever OEM agreement together. This is also DICOM Group's first ever OEM
agreement in the mid-range scanner segment, regarded as the fastest growing area
in the document scanner market.
The agreement provides for HP to integrate DICOM Group's award-winning
VirtualReScan(R) (VRS) document image enhancement technology with their new line
of business document scanners for workgroups. The integration of VRS with HP
Scanjet 8290 series, launched yesterday, ensures that these mid-range scanners
can produce high quality document scans.
HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and
services to consumers and businesses. The company's offerings span IT
infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and
imaging and printing. HP serves more than one billion customers in more than 160
countries and was ranked 28th in the 2002 Fortune 500 ranking.
Kofax develops leading-edge technologies designed to capture high volumes of
data and convert text and images into electronic information that can be more
efficiently indexed, archived, retrieved and processed. VRS technology performs
an extensive inspection of each document, which significantly improves
readability of scanned images by automatically straightening, cropping and
optimizing exposure in real time.
The VRS technology lowers the cost of the document capture process by
eliminating rescans. It improves readability, significantly reduces the manual
labour required to presort documents and change scanner settings and increases
automated recognition accuracy. VRS also improves OCR results approximately 35
percent in tests conducted by Doculabs, the independent research firm.
Arnold von Buren, Chief Executive Officer of DICOM Group said:
"We are delighted to be a part of HP's in-box software solution. This is a
further confirmation of VRS's clear position as the industry standard for
document image quality.
"VRS will help HP's customers produce perfect scans every time. It will
dramatically reduce the need for rescanning or pre-scan document sorting. As a
result, their customers can effortlessly produce perfect document scans without
adjusting and readjusting the scanner for different paper types, colours or
varying quality of the original."
Linda O'Brien, future product marketing manager, HP Imaging and Printing
Organisation said:
"The Kofax and VRS brands packaged with HP's new 8200 series scanners reassures
business customers that they have a solution which will automatically produce
the most readable document images possible"
ENDS
DICOM Group plc Binns & Co Public Relations Ltd
Christoph Loslein Executive Director Peter Binns
Dr. Bettina Moschner Investor Relations Manager Paul McManus
Tel: +44 (0) 800 6520 616 or
+49 (0) 761 45269 36
Fax: +44 (0) 1189 820 102 Tel: +44 (0) 20 7786 9600
+49 (0) 761 45269 936 Mob: +44 (0) 7980 541 893
E-mail: christoph_loeslein@dicomgroup.com paul.mcmanus@binnspr.co.uk
bettina_moschner@dicomgroup.com
Internet: http://www.dicomgroup.com http://www.binnspr.com
About DICOM Group plc
DICOM Group plc ("DICOM Group") is the global leader in the Electronic Document
Capture ("EDC") market, a fast growing segment of the Office Automation
industry. EDC improves the performance of many business applications such as
document and content management and converts non-digital and digital documents
into structured data streams. Its implementation allows substantial increases in
office efficiency and offers high returns on investment.
DICOM Group's core competence is consulting, development and provision of EDC
products and services. More than 10,000 organisations world-wide have
implemented DICOM Group developed products, supported by 800 employees in 25
countries in Europe, the US, South East Asia and Australia.
US-based Kofax Image Products, DICOM Group's software development centre,
designs solutions to manage the capture process of large volumes of data and
documents and products that substantially improves document capture speed.
Ascent Capture allows document capture of text, forms, office documents, audio
and video data. Web based components and server products enable the
administration of the capture process independent of its location and the
availability of processing resources. Its patented and industry award winning
VirtualReScan (VRS) technology improves the image quality and the scanning
process in real time.
DICOM Group's European and Asian sales and service organisation offers a broad
range of services and complementary third party EDC products. Its network of
pre-sales, after-sales and consulting organisation addresses the increasing
demand for internationally deployed EDC solutions, project management and
professional support.
The Group's SGA Division focuses on multimedia visualisation products for the
IT, POI and Entertainment market. In Switzerland, it operates as sole agency of
Samsung's high performance flat screen display.
About VRS
VirtualReScan automatically straightens, crops and optimises exposure of scanned
documents in real time. The result: VRS dramatically improves the readability of
scanned documents for document users and for optical character recognition of
text. A study by US research firm Doculabs determined that VRS improves optical
character recognition accuracy by more than 35 percent.
VRS was introduced in 1999 and has become the de facto standard in the high
performance scanner market. Leading scanner manufacturers, such as Fujitsu and
Bell & Howell have embraced VRS technology, signing OEM agreements to
incorporate VRS into their production scanners. Manufacturers of copiers and
multifunctional devices have also expressed interest in adding VRS technology to
their products.
VRS has twice been named "Best of AIIM" (the Association for Information and
Image Management); once in 1999 for the hardware version, and again in 2001 for
Software VRS. Transform Magazine has also selected Software VRS version 2.0 as a
2001 Product of the Year finalist.
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
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