With millions of users in more than 27,000 organisations worldwide, Laserfiche president and CEO Nien-Ling Wacker, is personally frustrated by the lack of penetration in the government market in Australia.

The founder of the successful privately held ECM vendor is planning to change all that with a renewed push into the region in 2010, accompanied by the recent opening of a regional office in Hong Kong.

A Melbourne University graduate, Wacker has fond memories of the time she lived in Australia before leaving to pursue postgraduate studies in the US, ultimately founding Long Beach-based Laserfiche in 1987.A pioneer in electronic document management technology, Shanghai-born Nien-Ling. Wacker holds a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of Melbourne, Australia and a Master of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Southern California. 

The vendor is proud of its stronghold on the government sector, and Wacker goes so far to refer to LaserFiche as the "Microsoft" of the US government ECM market.

"In the US we have over 5000 agencies, but the government market in Australia has been very tough for us," she told IDM.

"Domestically in the US we are much stronger in the local government market. The traditional ECM vendors have a more mainframe concept where they tell users exactly what to do and how to do it. We believe in encouraging grassroots users to spread the word about how easy it is to use and give central IT the ability to manage without suffocating."

LaserFiche does have over 250 commercial clients in Australia such as Virgin Blue and Macquarie University.

LaserFiche intents to apply for VERS certification, and Wacker is keen to share the story about LaserFiche's strong integration with SharePoint.

Laserfiche had a large presence at the 2009 SharePoint Conference to showcase its existing solution, dubbed Agile ECM.

It allows employees scan and upload documents directly through the SharePoint interface, then view and manage them with the Laserfiche document viewer.

"One of the reasons we setup LaserFiche International in Hong Kong was to be able to better provide for local needs in the APAC region. The APAC countries have a tremendous future. Its exciting," she said.