SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 21, 1998–Xerox Corporation and IBM are the first major US vendors to announce plans to add support for the Salutation Architecture in upcoming products, according to Robert F. Pecora, managing director of the Salutation Consortium.
The IBM and Xerox announcement is part of an initiative to deliver a new solution that helps customers manage paper and electronic documents across an enterprise. The Salutation Architecture is added to products to simplify their network plug-and-play interoperability. It is an open technology available without cost to hardware and software developers.
Pecora said, “Salutation technology will enable IBM and Xerox to provide a new generation of products that simplify network collaboration.”
According to the companies, Xerox intends to add Salutation Architecture support to its flagship Document Centre family of digital multifunction office systems. IBM will supply software called NuOffice to link its Lotus Domino web server software from IBM’s Lotus Development Corp. subsidiary. Together the products deliver a unified system for scanning, document management, e-mail, messaging, fax, and distributed printing.
The Salutation Architecture is open middleware technology for locating and controlling equipment across the Internet or a company intranet. It lets you query the network to discover which attached devices can receive your images, files, and messages. Salutation reduces LAN administration by autoregistering new devices on the network and by supporting ad hoc discovery, with no need for enterprise-wide directories.
Pecora said, “Salutation-enabled products from multiple vendors are available in Japan, and we expect to see products from these and other vendors launched in the US. Manufacturers of network peripherals and office systems want to make network collaboration simpler and more convenient for their customers. Salutation can help them reach that goal and improve their competitive position.” The Salutation Consortium recruits and supports developers incorporating the Salutation Architecture into hardware and software. Most recently, the Consortium sponsored the independent development of port-of-entry software that extends Salutation interoperability to legacy peripherals attached to Windows PCs.
Recent Salutation Successes
In the Fujitsu booth at AIIM’98 in May the Salutation Consortium demonstrated a scan-directly-to-Notes application using products from Axis Communications and presented Salutation-enabled NuOffice software from IBM. NuOffice is marketed in Japan, along with a family of supporting peripherals and software from Canon, Fuji Xerox, Mita, Muratec, and Ricoh. Market momentum around the NuOffice effort has resulted in Fuji Xerox adopting the Salutation Architecture as a company standard for networking office automation equipment. In other industry recognition, Mita’s Salutation-enabled Network Connection Kit for Notes was named “Best of Comdex” in the category of Enterprise System Software at Comdex Japan in April. NuOffice provides a complete office system for large customer sites with many mobile or telecommuting users. It includes Salutation extensions to Lotus Notes that enable users to print, scan, fax, and email without concern for device drivers or directories. The NuOffice user can send documents to printers and other peripherals, rather than only to a PC. The user can receive fax information as email and send email to fax machines. Running on Lotus Notes Domino Server and Lotus Notes Client, NuOffice allows a document received from a peripheral, for example, a scanner or fax, to be imported into a Notes database. Additionally, a NuOffice user can access and distribute information right from a peripheral device, without opening a laptop, logging in to a workstation, or dialing a phone number.
About the Consortium
The Salutation Consortium is a non-profit corporation with member organizations in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Member companies include Adobe Systems, APTi, Axis Communications, Brother, Canon, Cisco, Eastman Kodak, Fuji Xerox, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, Integrated Systems, IBM, Kobe Steel, Komatsu, Konica, Matsushita, Mita, Mitsubishi, Murata (Muratec), Okamura, Oki Data, Ricoh, Rios Systems, Sanyo, Seiko Epson, Sharp, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba, and Xerox.