Bill DeStefanis
The explosion of mobile devices represents both the biggest trend and the biggest challenge to document imaging and print management in 2012.
Thanks to cloud services, all the statistics point to an increase in the use of mobile devices for capabilities once reserved for the office—namely scanning and printing. As the popularity of these devices continues, and their versatility grows, those in the imaging industry should be positioning to handle this seismic shift.
In 2012, for the first time ever, sales of mobile devices are expected to surpass those of traditional desktop and laptop computers, and 85 billion downloads of mobile apps are predicted to generate more revenue that the mainstream computing market, according to “Competing for 2020,” a report by market research firm IDC. And about three of every five business persons employs a mobile device to manage content outside the office, according to a report from Forrester Research.
Of course, this means an ever-increasing number of individuals added to the millions who already use cloud services to print, upload document captures, convert documents and send them. Mobile devices are unique when it comes to document capture in that many of these devices, such as smart phones, contain high resolution cameras that can scan documents reasonably well and also perform barcode scanning. This powerful combination of the ease of management and the unlimited server capacity offered with cloud services and the high functionality of mobile devices has resulted in huge volumes of data and users who expect an easy transition into mobile printing.
Yet mobile devices present a unique challenge as they typically have no on-board print services and rely on either a cloud service or an e-mail service to render print jobs at multi-function printers. This is an important question for the industry in 2012 and beyond as far as how to connect mobile devices to MFPs, which means device acquisition either by proximity location services or by building server-based directories.
But while it may pose difficulties in 2012, a move toward the cloud actually creates a host of new business opportunities as cloud services associated with MFPs offer a significant advantage to dealers and channel professionals. Connecting MFP devices to cloud services allows for mobile printing but also makes traditional print management and document captures dramatically simpler and more streamlined because it removes the need to set up the on-premise server infrastructure. As this server complexity is eliminated, more and more channel partners can begin to look at document capture and print management solutions.
