SAN JOSE, Calif., May 27, 1997: Six member companies of the Salutation Consortium recently announced Salutation-enabled products or announced their intention to provide Salutation-enabled appliances.
Canon, Fuji Xerox, IBM Japan, Mita, Muratec, and Ricoh exhibited Salutation-enabled products at the Consortium booth at Business Show O97, May 13-16 at the Tokyo Big Sight convention center.
These new products support the Salutation vision of a company intranet that automatically detects new peripherals as they get attached, either directly or through remote ports, and makes their functional capabilities available for use. The new products include both hardware models and software applications. Many of them integrate closely with Lotus Notes in a corporate intranet environment.
Technical seminars sponsored by the Salutation Consortium ran concurrently in the Big Sight conference building. Products exhibited at the Business Show will be marketed in the Japanese market. The companies have not indicated their plans for the US market.
The Salutation Consortium has published an open specification that enables an application to locate a particular resource on a network through a broadcast query. The specification is independent of network transport, hardware platform, and operating system software and supports standard Internet and other message formats.
Steve Mills, general manager, IBM Software Solutions, said "Standards such as those developed by the Salutation Consortium ensure that information goes where users want it and when they want it, regardless of what information appliance they happen to be using."
The Salutation System combines a Canon GP30F digital copier (known as MEDIO 30F) with Salutation-enabled print control and scanning applications to create new network features for a corporate intranet environment based on Lotus Notes.
The scanning application, MEDIO OfficeScan for Salutation, stores documents scanned by the copier directly into Lotus Notes Server. The user can then view the documents from a Notes client or with a web browser. This function works in combination with IBM NuOffice, also announced today. (See below.) The print control application, MEDIO OfficeTerminal for Salutation, automatically notifies the user when a printing job is complete and ready for pickup. From a web browser, the user can determine what features and optional equipment are installed on the copier.
Network Able combines the four functions of copying, faxing, printing and scanning on a network into one machine. The Network Able for Salutation makes full use of the Salutation Architecture for its network functions.
A complete office environment based on Lotus Notes, NuOffice uses the Salutation Architecture to make copiers, facsimile machines, scanners and printers active players on a company network. IBM NuOffice adds intelligence to the scanning function of copiers and fax machines, permitting these devices to input information from paper documents into Lotus Notes. Using NuOffice, a user can email a scanned document directly from a fax machine or copier.
NuOffice enables users to operate office equipment from Lotus Notes, confirming device status and controlling such functions such as high speed printing, sorting and collating.
Salutation-enabled software expands the functions of TME10 NetFinity to provide users with additional control of printers in a PC LAN environment. Users can confirm and change printer settings, control print jobs, and monitor paper supply. This product was previewed in the U.S. at Comdex/Fall I November 1996.
IBM demonstrated an update to the IBM Salutation Manager developer tool kit for Salutation-enabled applications. The toolkit supports Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2, and Windows 3.1. It helps developers build devices, services, and applications that take advantage of the Salutation Consortium1s open protocol for locating and controlling Internet devices.
Mita announces the Network Connection Kit for Notes as an option for the Antico 30 plain paper fax. With the kit installed, documents received from other Salutation-enabled devices can be distributed as email automatically to Notes clients on the network. This fax distributing function is also available from the fax using the Subaddress (SUB) signal as defined in ITU-T Recommenda- tion T.30. Furthermore, users can use the Antico 30 as a network scanner/FAX/printer from a Notes desktop.
Muratec announces the upcoming development of Fax server F- 120/F-150 (temporary name), which will conform to the Salutation Architecture. Fax server F-120/F-150 acts as a network fax modem, faxing documents created on a PC. A document received as a fax can be forwarded without an interim printing step, preserving document quality. Users can query the status of a sent fax and determine whether the document has been opened by the recipient.
Ricoh announces a Salutation software package which allows the Imagio MF-P digital copiers to be used as network printers/scanners in a Lotus Notes intranet environment. With Salutation support, each function of the Imagio copier (copy, fax, print, scan) can be addressed individually for maximum user convenience. A Lotus Notes user can, for instance, have the copier send a document or scanned image as Lotus Notes mail directly to another user1s desktop. Ricoh provides supporting print server software and scanner server software.
The Salutation Consortium is a non-profit corporation with member organizations in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Member companies include APTi, Axis Communications, Brother, Canon, Casio, Cisco, Eastman Kodak, Fuji Xerox, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, Integrated Systems, IBM, Iwatsu, Justsystem, Kobe Steel, Konica, Lexmark, Matsushita, Microware Systems, Minolta, Mita, Mitsubishi, Murata (Muratec), Novell, Oki Data, Ricoh, Rios Systems, Sanyo, Seiko Epson, Sharp, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba, and Xerox.
Information about the Salutation Architecture is available on the Consortium's web site (http://www.salutation.org). (30)