When I noticed Oracle's Captovation purchase, it brought back some of my own experiences in the capture software market. So bear with me for a moment, I promise to get back to the acquisition.

A few years back I worked for a FileNET (now IBM) solution provider, and a good one at that. Last time I checked, I think they were FileNET's Partner Of The Year three out of the last four years.

So why were they so successful? Were they slick ECM marketers pontificating about business processes, federated search, and service-oriented everything? Were they high-end ECM strategists billing out at $275 an hour? Nope. It was really simple. They were really good at helping rid offices of paper. Their CEO was smart enough to realize that going digital always began with identifying where the paper trail started. And that was back when going paperless didn't have the 'green' sexiness tied to it.

But trendy or not, there's big money in capture-driven ECM projects. In paper-intensive industries like Insurance, Financial Services and Healthcare, the glamorous ECM pitch of managing both unstructured and structured content just doesn't resonate as much as telling them you'll set up scanners and digitize all those forms and applications.

If you're not convinced, Oracle's recent acquisition of Captovation might persuade you. I'm guessing the deal came in well south of $50 million, a real deal considering the capabilities they'll add to their ECM stack. And couple the Captovation purchase with Oracle's Stellent buy in 2006 and you've got the makings of a heck of a fight between ECM heavyweights IBM, EMC, Oracle and Microsoft.