Two OEMs have been making a bit of noise the past few weeks and I thought it would be interesting to share some of that noise with you while I’m away at the Sharp dealer meeting.
During the second week in November Kyocera had a Webinar to introduce two new apps that further underscore the company’s status as one of the industry’s leading app developers among the OEMs. Admittedly, Kyocera isn’t alone in unveiling apps, but they are arguably one of the most prolific OEMs in this arena.
One of those apps, DocuWare Connector, allows any Kyocera HyPAS-enabled or capable Kyocera MFP to serve as a portal to the DocuWare enterprise content management system. Reportedly, it’s the first application to support the DocuWare cloud platform, which represents 15-20 percent of DocuWare’s U.S. installations. The purpose of DocuWare Connector is to simplify complex document management processes. Users can use their Kyocera MFPs to scan documents directly to—and retrieve documents from—any folder within the company’s DocuWare system.
The second application, AccuSender powered by Biscom, runs on Kyocera MFPs and integrates with Biscom’s secure file transfer technology. The app allows Kyocera MFP users to scan any size document and send the document as a secure encrypted file to one or multiple recipients.
According to Michael Paris, Kyocera’s solutions marketing manager, “These are two applications of a strong portfolio of proprietary and third party solutions.”
Although Paris is most definitely biased, when you look at the menu of apps that Kyocera has rolled out during the past few years, he’s not exaggerating at all.
Two weeks ago Canon U.S.A. held a conference call for press and analysts to discuss their highlights from 2015 and what to expect from Canon in 2016. The timing for this was ideal as we’re focusing on highlights of the year throughout the month of December in ENX/The Week in Imaging while next month we’re presenting what’s new in 2016 from the leading players in the office technology, solutions, services, and supplies segments of the industry.
Canon’s 2015 highlights encompass their rapid growth in color, driven in part by the new Canon imageRunners introduced during the past two years. The company’s solutions services business is also growing, particularly uniFlow, which has experienced 50 percent growth year over year since 2014. According to Tom O’Neill, vice president of marketing, Enterprise Solutions for Canon, one of the reasons for this growth is that the sales channel is realizing that uniFlow is more than just an output management solution and that it also manages workflow.
Also growing, albeit not to the extent of uniFlow is ThereFore, an end-to-end information management solution that enhances the storage, management, and processing of information.
“Therefore is not just a document management solution, it does manage documents, information, but it does manage workflow,” said Hiro Imamura, VP and GM of Canon U.S.A.’s Business Imaging Solutions Group. “What’s unique about the latest version of Therefore is that you can analyze workflow and identify the bottleneck [in the workflow] and address that. Along with uniFlow our partners can now use those tools as a platform for their consultative services.”
Another Canon highlight is a new cloud service, ACD (Advanced Cloud Portal), which the company describes as an information management hub. Initially introduced as a connector to Google Drive, Imamura reports that Canon is looking to expand into other areas, including its own solutions and third-party solutions.
“Our goal is to provide our customers with more flexible ability to connect to their services not limited to Canon solutions,” he said.
Also notable was the introduction of a business management service infrastructure called CBSP (Canon Business Solutions Platform), which allows Canon’s partners and their customers to more efficiently manage the company’s sourced services/apps.
“We feel the work we’re doing on that is critical to our future and what are customers really want,” stated O’Neill. “[CBSP] is much more than just an app store. We want to provide an easier way for customers to get applications to use in a business when working with their print systems, but more importantly, it is designed to make it easier and more manageable for dealer partners and their customers to manage the variety of different cloud-based services that they’re ultimately moving toward.”
“As we launch more of these services and solutions our goal is to bring single-faced services although there are more sources for those services it may not always be from Canon it could be from third parties, our goal is single-face for those services,” added Imamura.
Looking ahead to 2016, O’Neill reports that the greatest market opportunity for Canon is color, a segment where he expects to see continued growth.
“We anticipate that, but also anticipate good growth in our MPS areas and those types of engagements,” stated O’Neill. “And as mentioned, the strength of the uniFlow application will continue to evolve and that is going to offer additional growth in enabling us to provide the benefits of uniFlow management, secure print and output management, and monitoring of usage to even a wider group of customers down to the smaller level.”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Canon sees cloud-based delivery of services growing in the coming year and they expect to be right in the middle of that too.
Thanks for reading.
