Fujifilm buys Whitech

Fujifilm Holdings Australia has bought Australian photographic software developer Whitech for an undisclosed sum. 

The transaction increases Fujifilm’s 35 percent stake to full ownership. 

It said the buy would give it a powerful software development platform to support its growing CloudNET business offerings for digital asset management, analogue to digital transition, application integration, online storage and software-as-a-service.

“A key advantage of Fujifilm’s ownership of Whitech is that the organisation can direct software development as required,” said Fujifilm Australia director Dave Marshall.

“CloudNET solutions can be customised to accommodate specific customer needs, allowing software requirements to be developed accordingly using Whitech’s expertise.” 

Intelligent software has emerged as one of the key market differentiators in the printing market.

A year ago Lexmark bought US ECM specialists Perceptive Software for $US280 million to get its hands on the ImageNow enterprise document management suite. Earlier HP bought Exstream Software Solution from American Capital Strategies in a bid to bolster its HP Open Extensibility Platform (HP OXP) for document management and workflow.

At the same time the industry has experienced a spate of consolidation activity over the past two years, which has seen a number of local companies snapped up, including Upstream Print Solutions which was bought last year by Fuji Xerox Australia.

Northern Territory integrator and managed print specialists CSG has also acquired a number of companies in the space including outsourced print management company ATI Group, and more recently Konica Minolta Business Solutions New Zealand (KMBS), and its financing business, Leading Solutions Limited (LSL).

It followed recent acquisitions in Australia’s rapidly consolidating printing and imaging industry.