RJS Acquires Twin Cities Reseller, Discusses Product Realignment

Published: September 26, 2006

by Alex Woodie

RJS Software Systems took a definitive step to build its business last week when it announced plans to buy Ultimate Data Systems, an iSeries reseller and technical services provider based in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. In addition to the acquisition, RJS lifted the lid a little on the upcoming launch of its new suite of cross-platform document and content management solutions, which it expects to ship in early 2007.

Business has been good at Burnsville, Minnesota-based RJS Software. The company's mix of low-cost Windows and iSeries document and content management offerings appear to be resonating well with the small and mid size business (SMB) market, where many companies are saving money and boosting efficiency by replacing paper-based processes with electronic document and report distribution processes.

This success has spawned M&A interest at RJS, according to company president, Richard Schoen. The company entertained an acquisition offer from another company two years ago, but decided not to go down that road, Schoen says. Now, that experience in due diligence reporting has given RJS the confidence to make the first acquisition of its own with Ultimate Data, which is based in nearby Edina, Minnesota.

Ultimate Data is an iSeries reseller, and is a business partner of both IBM and Microsoft. In addition to its iSeries reseller business, Ultimate Data has expertise in document imaging, scanning, and conversion, according to the company's Web site.

Ultimate's programming expertise and its local installed base were key factors in RJS' decision to buy it, Schoen says. "Ultimate Data's expertise provides us with the local services and programming support we need to continue our growth into being a full service hardware and software provider," Schoen says in a press release distributed at last week's Fall COMMON conference in Miami Beach. "Until now a sizable amount of our business has been conducted nationally and this acquisition immediately increases our local presence in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area."

Ultimate will continue to operate as a subsidiary of RJS. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close soon, were not divulged.

While in South Florida, Schoen also took the opportunity expanded on RJS' previously announced cross-platform development plan, which centers on redeveloping in Java, and XML. Last week, the company announced that it will start shipping its new enterprise report delivery product (which hasn't been named yet) in January or February 2007.

The new report delivery product will combine re-architected versions of many of RJS' core products into a single, integrated suite that runs on multiple platforms and features a GUI, the company says. The software will be open-ended, which will enable it to output data from iSeries and other source systems with enterprise content management systems from IBM, Documentum (owned by EMC), and Stellant, in addition to Microsoft and Domino collaboration environments.

One of the main benefits of the unnamed report delivery product is the consolidation of products from RJS. Currently, the company offers a confusing array of 60-plus products. By focusing on a single offering, and then allowing a customer to select from a list of plug-ins, it will simplify the product selection process for customers.

The acquisition of Ultimate Data will also play into RJS' vision of product delivery via appliances. Up to this point, the company has focused on selling shrink-wrapped software. Following the completion of the Ultimate acquisition, the company will also be a hardware reseller, and this could allow the company to sell its software pre-packaged on servers. This appliance-based approach has the possibility to eliminate much of the complexity that comes with customers having to buy the right size hardware, install the software, and configure it themselves, RJS says.

RJS also announced new capabilities in its Enterprise Workflow process that customers can start using right now. The new release of Enterprise Workflow, which RJS announced 18 months ago and started shipping last fall, features a new browser-based GUI and several "under-the-hood" enhancements that should boost productivity.

Among the enhancements are a new optional e-mail notification that automatically sends an e-mail to a user when new "workpieces" reach a user's "workbaskets." Links to the workbaskets are also included in the e-mail, allowing the workflow process to proceed more quickly.

RJS has also added dynamic assignment of workpieces, which enables the system to send workpieces to specific workbaskets based on the contents of the workpiece. Also, workpieces can now contain references to network file system objects and documents stored in WebDocs, further heightening the integration of the company's products.

Enterprise Workflow managers can fine tune their document lifecycles with new workpiece "timeouts" that can span years, months, minutes, or seconds, as well as through workbasket "timeouts" that automatically advance a particular workpiece to the next station, "rather than languishing in an unattended workbasket," the company says.

Lastly, the company has included new tools and sample code for building Windows-based interfaces that work with Enterprise Workflow, and also tested the system running on Apache Tomcat on System i and Windows, and with DB2/400, SQL Server, MySQL databases, among others.

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