Kodak partner gives away scanning software for Sharepoint users

When you have a user base the size of SharePoint's, you are going to have people who want to come along for the ride. Millions of users can create business for you, and the partners who want a piece of the action, if you can build an ecosystem of tools that are appealing and move beyond the base system. Perhaps that's why Kodak is giving away free scanning software for SharePoint users through its partner Atalasoft, Inc. The free software works with the Kodak SCANMATE i1120, i1220, i1320 and i1420 scanners.

Chances are Atalasoft wants a bigger piece of the SharePoint/Kodak action and is luring customers with the free software in hopes they will become paying customers down the road. The pay version of the Vizit suite of products works directly in SharePoint in a browser. After scanning their documents, users can view, annotate and clean up scanned documents in SharePoint and create a scanned document repository.

According to the press release announcing the free software add-on, "Vizit Scan-to-SharePoint software allows users to configure shortcuts to commonly used document libraries to streamline workflow process saving minutes for each scanned document and to eliminate errors when identifying the file destination."

With a pool as large as SharePoint's, if even a minuscule percentage were to buy the pay version of the software, it could lead to a lot of new customers, and for Kodak it's just a nice goodwill gesture for its customers. It's a reasonable strategy, and further proof that giving away something valuable now, can be profitable later.

For more information:
- read the Kodak press release

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