Hyland, a Westlake, Ohio-based content services and enterprise imaging technology vendor, signed a definitive agreement to acquire content services platform Alfresco this week.

The move follows Hyland's acquisition of German robotic process automation software developer Another Monday this past month.

"We continue to grow our business and advance our platform organically and via acquisitions," said Bill Priemer, president and CEO of Hyland, in a statement.

WHY IT MATTERS

Hyland, which provides content services for a variety of industries – including financial services, government, higher education, insurance and healthcare – has products in use at more than half of Fortune 100 companies, says the vendor.

Its cloud-based, SaaS platform includes security features such as version control, data classification and at-rest data encryption, according to the company's website.

Expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020, Alfresco's entire business of cloud-native content services solutions for enterprises with large volumes of unstructured content will likely be managed under Hyland.

"With this acquisition Alfresco brings significant geographic and industry experience to Hyland as well as an open source community as a new source of product innovation," said Jay Bhatt, president and CEO of Alfresco. 

Another Monday, meanwhile, houses four complementary software products for automation, including tools for automatic process documentation, development, conduction and monitoring.

"The RPA market is an exciting and challenging space with rapid growth and a vast number of possible applications that organizations can easily combine and integrate for better and more flexible business processes support," said Hans Martens, CEO of Another Monday, in a statement.

"We see Hyland as the best fit to embed our RPA technology into their powerful automation platform, to truly implement easy, end-to-end automation for everyone," Martens continued.

Hyland also this past month announced new enhancements to its platform, including updated mobile capabilities and an improved upgrade process.

THE LARGER TREND

Susan deCathelineau, senior vice president of healthcare sales and services at Hyland, told Healthcare IT News earlier this year that unstructured information – such as clinical documents, narratives, consents and images – has largely been overlooked when it comes to interoperability concerns. 

She also pointed to artificial intelligence as a needed complement to physicians overwhelmed by data and noted that moving to the cloud was an essential shift for the healthcare industry.

"The hesitancy that used to surround cloud adoption in healthcare now is being replaced by the realization of its ultimate inevitability. Once again, this shift in mindset largely has to do with data overload," she said.

Hyland had at the time recently acquired the blockchain-credentialing vendor LearningMachine, another in a string of acquisitions dating back years.

ON THE RECORD

"This acquisition will expand our global reach, enabling us to help more organizations achieve their digital transformation goals and become more informed, empowered and connected," said Priemer in a statement.

Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Twitter: @kjercich
Email: kjercich@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.