About CAPS Solutions:
Company history

CAPS Solutions Ltd was created in April 1999 when ESRI purchased Norsk Data's local government business unit, known as NDlg. ('CAPS' stood for 'Corporate and Public Sector').

The first integrated solutions for local government

Formed in 1989, NDlg was the first provider of truly integrated land and property solutions to local government. Development of the UNI-form suite started in 1989, and it was first presented to the market in May 1990.

The first release of UNI-form was designed to meet the requirements of Planning, Building Control and Environmental Health departments, who increasingly wished to work together and share land and property information. UNI-form was the first integrated system of its kind running on Unix, supported by a relational database management system (RDBMS).

With the growing popularity of Microsoft Windows during the early 1990s, NDlg quickly delivered a true Windows version of the UNI-form software without having to undergo the pain of a complete redevelopment project. This was thanks to the flexible design decisions made for the original development, which still hold true today.

UNI-form spatial capabilities — an added dimension

During the mid-1990s NDlg recognised the need to provide a spatial dimension to the UNI-form suite and, as a result, a comprehensive interface was built between UNI-form and ESRI (UK)'s ArcView 3. GIS software. This enabled users of all UNI-form modules to relate text-based information to spatial information for the first time without any complex import or export routines. As a result, NDlg quickly became ESRI (UK)'s most significant business partner.

At the same time NDlg increased the breadth of its product portfolio with new modules, including Land Charges, Trading Standards and Estates Management, adding further value to data-sharing beyond departmental boundaries.

In April 1999, NDlg was acquired by the ESRI (UK) Group, which re-formed it as a new company — CAPS Solutions Ltd.

2001 saw the release of UNI-form Spatial, which contained embedded spatial functionality and focused much more on the specific spatial business functionality required to service the needs of individual module users. The release of UNI-form Spatial also contained a significantly redesigned land and property database module to meet the requirements of the revised BS 7666 standard for land and property gazetteers. The CAPS Solutions Gazetteer Management System (GMS) is the most widely used corporate gazetteer of its type in local authorities today.

Since 2001, CAPS Solutions has invested significant effort into meeting the requirements of, first, the e-Government, and now the t-Government, agenda. Developments include tools that make it easy for local authorities to provide web-based portals to information held in their UNI-form modules, and Connectors that enable supportable and sustainable integration of UNI-form with third-party systems.

CAPS Solutions today

CAPS was acquired by IDOX plc in June 2007. IDOX has been a solutions partner with CAPS for several years and, like CAPS, is focused on providing innovative solutions to local government. The joining together of CAPS Solutions and IDOX was a logical step and makes the combined company the leading provider of Land and Property software and solutions in the UK local authority market.

Today CAPS Solutions employs 140 people and has approximately 260 local authority customers, compared with 10 employees and two customers in 1989. Since 1999 the company has seen a five-fold increase in revenues, a significant increase in market share, and the development of a company structure that can support further growth in the dynamic local government marketplace. And perhaps the most telling statistic is that we still provide UNI-form software and services to those valued customers who placed their faith in us in 1989.