Fujitsu scans the Web

The paperless office isn't here yet, so Fujitsu Computer Products of America is offering a way to reduce piles of paper with a new hardware and software package that will help companies scan and publish documents to the Internet and intranets.

Fujitsu is marketing what it calls a scan-to-Web package that will enable companies to convert documents into an electronic format that can be easily shared. The package includes the ScanPartner 600C 24-bit color scanner with an automatic document feeder. Scanned material is automatically converted to Adobe's portable document format (PDF).

The advantage of having PDF files is that contents can be viewed and searched from Web browsers on a variety of systems, Fujitsu said. Documents also retain the appearance and format of the original paper document on each of those systems. Thus, documents can be made available on a company Web site for use by customers or be published internally on a company's intranet.

While more offices are using email and other software for internal communications, business-to-business communication often still takes the form of faxes or other paper documents.

Research suggests that more and more companies are looking for ways to turn paper documents into electronic documents, to improve access to information. According to International Data Corporation, companies looking to boost information availability will grow the document management software market to $2.4 billion by 2001, from $518 million in 1996.

In addition to the color scanner, Fujitsu is including Adobe Acrobat 3.0 software for creating and viewing PDF files, Adobe Photoshop LE for image editing, and PageMill for Web page production, as well as software for document imaging and communications.

The ScanPartner 600C scan-to-Web solution is available for a list price of $1,795 through authorized distributors.