By Jamie Bsales, Associate Editor, July 8, 2009

At IBM’s Impact 2009 conference, Ricoh Americas Corp. introduced its new Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technology for MFPs equipped with the company’s ESA (Embedded Software Architecture) platform. The Ricoh SOA Portal will enable enterprise customers to leverage IBM's WebSphere software in conjunction with Ricoh MFPs to drive complex business processes right from the devices’ control panels. Ricoh is the first MFP vendor to demonstrate SOA integration.

In an SOA environment, complex applications are built out of complementary layers of software services that can be handled by the various systems involved. So, for example, an MFP would handle the data capture and routing, while a back-end WebSphere application would handle the document processing, such as OCR functions or workflow.

With Ricoh MFPs, the SOA solution is a Java application running on the ESA platform. The MFP does not hold any SOA components; rather, it simply is a client that makes requests to the SOA environment using the SOA standards of Web services. Ricoh reports that all ESA-equipped models introduced since 2007 will run the SOA solution.

An Internet-like application on the MFP's control panel will enable users to easily select from a customized list of tasks or services that initiate business processes. Thanks to the bi-directional communication enabled by SOA and ESA, the required actions are pushed to the panel from the back-end system in the form of an icon that clearly represents the business process. This enables complex operations to be handled by the touch of a button, simplifying the workflow for the end user.

“We are providing a solution that easily plugs into an existing SOA environment and complements current Web-driven business infrastructures,” noted Mark Minshull, vice president and chief technologist for Ricoh. “Ricoh is excited to be able to leverage the investments that customers have made in SOA.”

According to a January 2009 study conducted by Computer Economics, an Irvine, CA-based research and consulting firm, 58 percent of organizations surveyed say they have begun to make a transition to the service-oriented model, versus only 20 percent of enterprises surveyed in 2007.

Bringing MFPs into the SOA fold is a natural extension of the platform that should help companies experience a larger return on both their SOA and MFP investments. At Impact 2009, Ricoh demonstrated a loan processing scenario as an example of how business processes could be customized by marrying ESA technology and an SOA environment. For example, when an end user submits a document that requires additional information, such as supporting documentation or a customer account number, the system will confirm for the user that all of the required items are included. If more inputs are necessary, the user is immediately notified and directed to fulfill the requirement in order to complete the process. This ability can make paper-based processes much more efficient, saving the company time and money while also improving customer satisfaction.

Minshull pointed out that the Ricoh SOA Portal can be applied to a number of different industries, such as applications for insurance, government and healthcare. It can also help streamline internal business operations such as invoices, contracts, purchase orders and expense reports.

This article was originally posted on Buyers Laboratory.