May 2002
MFPs Bring Imaging to the Enterprise
by Doug Henschen
Just when old-line document management companies are reshaping themselves as "enterprise content
management" providers, a new group is spearheading the drive for enterprisewide document imaging.
Led by Canon, Ricoh and Xerox, and joined more recently by Hewlett-Packard, the leading providers of
multifunction peripherals (MFPs) say they're making headway in spreading scanning across the
enterprise. Their latest product announcements provide further evidence of that focus.
At the AIIM show in early March 2002 in San Francisco, West Caldwell, NJ-based Ricoh announced
Global-Scan, a scan-to-e-mail document distribution system aimed at large organizations. Canon of
Lake Success, NY, chose AIIM to launch its ImageWare document management system. And one week later
at Europe's CeBIT show, HP announced it would extend its line of multifunction machines into the
departmental range with three new devices with copy, print and scan-to-e-mail capabilities.
For the copier vendors, the push into scanning has been an uphill battle. Since the appearance of
digital copiers in the mid-1990s, manufacturers struggled to educate customers (and their own sales
channels) that these devices could be networked and enhanced with scan-to-e-mail and
scan-to-management-system functionality. Yet by 2000, only 5 percent to 10 percent of the 816,455
digital copiers sold were scan-enabled, according to analysts IDC of Framingham, MA (see table).
Manufacturers say scanning is now gaining popularity.
"We've seen a significant shift in the last 18 months to two years," says Frank Falby, senior
marketing manager for midvolume products at Ricoh. "About 15 percent of our machines are now
shipping with scanning, and another 10 percent end up being upgraded in the field."
Falby cites better-educated sales teams, better integration with networks and more purchase
involvement from IT as contributors to the upswing in scanning deployments. "The software is better,
the functionality is better and customers are confident that it's going to do what we say it's going
to do," he says.
Ricoh's just-announced GlobalScan is aimed at document distribution on the network and beyond.
The server-based product relies on LDAP to allow users to browse and invoke multiple e-mail
addresses from multiple address books across an enterprise. Users access addresses directly from the
control panel of Ricoh Aficio MFPs. There is no limit on the number of addresses that can be
accessed. Users can also enter e-mail addresses in ad hoc fashion. Global-Scan offers network
authentication and an optional billing utility that tracks usage. The software, which runs on
Windows 2000 server running IIS, is priced at $15,000 and supports up to 100 Ricoh Aficio MFPs.
Ricoh also supplies MFPs sold under the Savin, Lanier and Gestetner brand names, and Falby says
GlobalScan will be available through all four lines. The software adds to Ricoh's ScanRouter and
ScanRouter Pro offerings, which are used for scan distribution within a network.
Canon, Lake Success, NY, has offered scan-to-e-mail and scan-to-management-system functionality
for several years, primarily through its partnership with eCopy of Nashua, NH. The new ImageWare
offering is a document management system aimed primarily at small- to medium-sized organizations.
The system can be tied to Canon's MFPs and scanners as well as to competing devices. Despite its
name, ImageWare can index and manage electronic documents and other objects as well as images.
Dennis Amorosano, director and assistant general manager of Canon U.S.A.'s Copier and Networked
Office Group, says ImageWare will bring the company deeper into the software and services
market.
"If you look at all our hardware, we have a lot of the components of the system," he explains.
"We need to provide the glue in between. It's a growth opportunity and a place where we can provide
differentiated value."
To support enterprise-level deployments, Canon has acquired Sintaks, a Philadelphia-based
integrator that developed a predecessor to ImageWare called SnapShot. The ImageWare Document Manager
starts at $3,495 for the Workgroup Edition (with 10 client licenses) while the Enterprise Edition is
$17,495. Separate server modules are available for database creation and administration, full-text
OCR/search, Web-based viewing and document management, and network-based document capture.
Xerox's version of document management software is DocuShare, a Web-based publishing and
management system introduced four years ago and now in its 2.2 release. Xerox was also a pioneer of
scan-to-e-mail functionality with its Document Centre MFPs, and it offers enterprise routing and
export-to-management-system functionality through its FlowPort capture system (see
"Document
Capture: New Devices, New Strategies").
Xerox reports that it's now shipping more than 30 percent of its MFPs with scanning capabilities.
To bolster the link between MFPs and electronic workflows, Xerox recently partnered with Kofax of
Irvine, CA, to market Ascent Ricochet. Ascent Ricochet is an add-on to a Kofax Ascent capture system
that routes images from MFPs (of any brand) into a capture workflow. Ascent offers out-of-the-box
image-and-index export capabilities to nearly 80 management systems.
The latecomer to the departmental MFP market is HP. Analysts had been critical of the company's
continued emphasis on network printers, but HP has responded with the March 2002 release of the
14-ppm LaserJet 3300 MFP, the 25-ppm LaserJet 4100mfp and the 50-ppm LaserJet 9000mfp. All three
models ship with scan-to-e-mail functionality and can be integrated with document management systems
with optional software.
"The ability to scan color documents and digitally send them over e-mail on a shared MFP device
is very attractive to our customers," said Brett Walters, North American MFP product manager for HP.
"We expect that scanning and digital sending will increase in importance as this category continues
to evolve."
While the list of scan-to-management and scan-to-workflow options is growing, Ed Schmid, CEO of
eCopy, says "scan-to-e-mail is the driving application that most people are interested in at first.
It's a horizontal application that offers immediate productivity improvements to anyone."
Despite the enthusiasm of MFP manufacturers, Keith Kmetz of IDC says he has yet to see hard
figures pointing to dramatic change.
"The message is getting out there that scanning enhances the value of these devices, but I don't
think [adoption] has gone up dramatically," he says. "Scanning has a huge potential to cut fax
costs, copying costs, and paper distribution costs and bring paper documents into electronic
workflows, but it's still the great unknown where this market is concerned."
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