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ATLANTA, GEORGIA, April 13, 1999 . . . IBM today announced the North American availability of NuOffice, a networked office system based on Lotus Notes Domino that simplifies the transfer of data to and from office equipment.

In addition, the company announced that three major manufacturers—Ricoh, Canon, and Muratec— will ship multifunction peripherals that support the NuOffice system.

NuOffice and its supporting peripherals adhere to the Salutation Architecture, open middleware technology for locating and controlling equipment across the Internet or a company intranet. Once a device has been located, Salutation can facilitate the attachment of the proper device drivers.

With NuOffice, Lotus Notes users can print, fax or scan information to any Salutation-compliant peripheral and the software automatically senses the configuration and loads the necessary drivers. NuOffice peripherals can be locally or remotely attached to the Lotus Notes Domino Server

Mark Bregman, IBM General Manager of Pervasive Computing said, "NuOffice is an ideal solution for large corporate offices and workgroups that transforms ordinary office equipment into intelligent devices on the network. Today's announcement is also a significant endorsement of the Salutation Architecture. Broad support of this open standard increases the number of devices NuOffice can access."

IBM NuOffice is a successful product in Japan, along with a family of supporting NuOffice peripherals and softwares from Canon, Fuji Xerox, Mita, Muratec and Ricoh.

A NuOffice user can email a scanned document directly from a fax machine or copier, or scan documents directly into a Notes Data Base. From there the scanned image may be forwarded or routed. Additionally, NuOffice can input to application processes, such as OCR. Incoming faxes and scanned images can be stored in individual mailboxes or in a specific database, allowing the mobile worker to share information with the office. When printing, end users with NuOffice can easily query devices for functions, options, and availability.

In addition, NuOffice automatically manages the task of upgrading, reconfiguring, and removing equipment on the network . NuOffice can discover Salutation equipment locally or remotely. If the equipment can attach to the NuOffice server through a LAN, WAN or Internet, it can reap the benefits of NuOffice. NuOffice provides an interface between the Salutation-enabled devices and the Notes Data Base. This provides simple integration of network peripherals with existing vertical applications that monitor Notes Data Base content.

IBM's NuOffice will be available in June '99. Newly compatible Ricoh products include the RICOH Aficio 350/450 digital imaging systems, the AP Series digital black & white and color digital printers. The Ricoh/IBM NuOffice supported products will be available in early 3Q99. Canon intends to make its Image Platform (IP) devices enabled with Salutation Architecture and IBM NuOffice software available in 4Q99. In addition, Murata (Muratec)'s Salutation Fax Server System, including the F-120 fax server and SM-100 server software will be available in June '99.

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM's Pervasive Computing unit has responsibility for creating e-business solutions that leverage the new class of connected client devices such as handheld Internet appliances and screenphones. A key part of the team's mission is furthering the adoption of open industry standards for pervasive computing to help customers easily access and act on information whenever and wherever they may be. IBM can be found on the Web at http://www.ibm.com.

About the Salutation Consortium

The Salutation Consortium is a non-profit corporation focused on providing technologies to improve information interchange, with member organizations in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Member companies include Adobe Systems, Inc., Advanced Peripherals Technologies, Axis Communications, Brother Industries Ltd.,Canon Inc.,Cisco Systems, Inc., Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., Fujitsu Limited, Granite Systems, Hewlett-Packard Corp., Hitachi, Ltd., IBM, Kobe Steel, Ltd., Komatsu, Inc., Konica Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Mita Industrial Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Murata Machinery, Ltd., Oki Data Corp., Ricoh Company, Ltd., Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., Seiko Epson Corp., Sun Microsystems, Inc., Sharp Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, Xerox Corporation.

Information about the Salutation Architecture is available at http://www.salutation.org.