One of the recurring themes for multi-function printers (MFPs) is coming up with ways to turn the printer into a kind of customized workflow kiosk for any given business's needs.  The goal is to build a menu of easy to use options that show on the MFP's touch panel.  Users can then walk up to the MFP, pick an option, and start a workflow without having to know anything about what's going on behind the scenes with the information they want to scan or print.  Ricoh's new service-oriented architecture (SOA)-enabled technology is the latest, and in many ways the most fully realized, implementation of that goal for large organizations.

What makes Ricoh's new approach fundamentally different from most is that it doesn't assume that companies will build workflows based on the printers' capabilities.  Rather, it assumes companies already have, or are planning to get, SOA applications, and it lets the printer plug directly into those applications. 

SOA, in case you're not familiar with the term, is a conceptual approach to creating a solution, in the same sense that cloud-computing or, indeed, the idea of programming itself is a concept.  The basic idea is to take advantage of the ability to move information between operating systems, programming languages, programs, and the like.  The individual processes available in any given implementation of SOA are called services.  Applications like workflows move data between two or more services.  They also coordinate what the services are actually doing.

IBM's WebSphere is one of the leading implementations of SOA.  It's used by both government and business, and includes applications aimed specifically at healthcare, insurance, banking, more. 

What Ricoh has done is create a client application that runs on Ricoh printers to let them work specifically with WebSphere.  Essentially, it lets the printers plug into the WebSphere workflows, so the WebSphere application can take advantage of the MFP (or even a single function printer in some cases) as part of the workflow.

Ricoh demonstrated its SOA technology for the first time in May, at IBM's Impact 2009 conference, using a loan processing application as an example. 

Consider a scenario where a bank loan can't be processed until a customer provides a missing document.  With WebSphere and Ricoh SOA-enabled printers, the bank can tell the prospective customer to bring the document to any branch.  When he or she arrives, all that's needed is to enter the customer's ID at the MFP.  The MFP will then communicate with the WebSphere application, which already knows that it's waiting for a document.  The WebSphere application will send an instruction to the MFP's screen to scan the document; and after guiding the user through the scan, it will continue the workflow.

The key point here is not how the loan application works, but that you can use the same technology for a wide variety of workflows in essentially any industry. 

Ricoh says that its new SOA-enabled client can run on any Java-enabled Ricoh printer, which translates to virtually any current Ricoh departmental printer.  Ricoh also acknowledges that because the ability to tie into WebSphere depends on Java, other manufacturers can do essentially the same thing, should they choose too.  However, Ricoh is the only company offering this feature now.  And even if other manufacturers decide to do the same, Ricoh has the advantage of having gotten there first.

For obvious reasons -- namely, to take advantage of scanning as well printing -- the SOA-enabled feature will be more useful for an MFP than for a single function printer.  And because WebSphere's ease of use depends in part on its Web-like interface and menus, the feature will be most useful for MFPs with large touch screens.

Clearly, Ricoh's SOA-enabled feature is intended primarily for companies who already have an extensive investment in their WebSphere applications, but it's also for those who are considering making that commitment to WebSphere.  In either case, a company that uses WebSphere can benefit from printers that will integrate into SOA applications, so the company can use those applications more efficiently.  For those companies who use WebSphere, the new option from Ricoh is obviously worth investigating, and it potentially gives Ricoh printers an edge over the competition.