IRIS specialises in scanning and electronic document recognition from business cards to invoices and its products will bolster Canon's offering in a number of applications, including large-volume scanning and optical character recognition.

In addition, Canon said that it was "interested in the expertise of IRIS in large-scale ECM solutions projects".

ECM, or Enterprise Content Management, refers to tools and strategies used in the management of content and documents within an organisation.

According to Canon Europe president and chief executive Ryoichi Bamba, the two companies have a "complementary approach to the strategic development of products and solutions for the document solutions market".

The deal cements Canon's existing strategic commercial partnership with IRIS that began in February 2009 and involves Canon selling IRIS’s products.

A spokeswoman for Canon said that the intention was to maintain the independence and autonomy of IRIS with Canon collaborating only on strategic development within the document management market.