Ricoh 2006 Annual Report Download - page 12

11 ANNUAL REPORT 2006
Embedded Software Architecture technology highlights
Ricoh values in the next-generation MFP market
Solutions
La Sapienza of Rome, the winning college team
The Ricoh Group and Sun Micro Systems
are holding “Programming Contest Powered
by U” catering to university students in
Europe. This contest invites entrants to
program Java applications for installation on
Ricoh’s ESA. In 2006, the second year of
the competition, 154 students from
Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, and UK took
part. The judges first chose the winning
team in each country, and then the winning
teams from the five countries competed in
the finals held in Amsterdam on May 4 and
5, 2006. The winning entry was Aficio
Nados developed by the team from
University La Sapienza of Rome from Italy.
European university student programming contest.
Embedded Software Architecture,
a core technology of the Ricoh
Group’s next-generation MFP
vision, was awarded the Duke
Choice Award 2005, an award
which is presented to the best
Java™ technology every year.
The award demonstrated the
reliability and capability of our IT
solutions to customers around
the world.
Boosting development of next-
generation MFP that can be
linked to various systems
From the late 1980's to 1990's, the global
office equipment market experienced a
dramatic revolution as it saw the transition
to digital and color technologies and the
implementation of sophisticated functions in
facsimile machines and scanners. T he rapid
spread of networks and IT after 2000 has
made system integration another desirable
feature in copiers. As a result, MFP
(multifunctional printer) development has
expanded into yet another new field.
In past years, the Ricoh Group has met the
need for linkage between MFPs and office
mainframe systems by providing software
and applications customized for each
customer. As such need increased around
the world, however, we felt that we should
establish such system integration as a
business model, and provide customers with
a valuable service. Therefore, in April 2005,
we formed an organization to promote the
development of a next-generation MFP that
can be integrated into various systems.
Ricoh's ESA technology wins the
Duke Choice Award 2005
Embedded Software Architecture (ESA) is
the core technology that the Ricoh Group
invented for the next-generation MFP. T he
technology serves as the foundation for
running various applications on MFPs. By
running applications provided by Ricoh or
those independently developed by the
customer on an MFP, the customer can
tailor the MFP to its operational needs.
For example, the primary function of
conventional scanning software installed on
an MFP is to save imported images as PDF
files on a PC. The Embedded Software
Architecture, on the other hand, can identify
the scanned image type to store the image in
an appropriate area of the database, or
convert and save the image as text data when
it recognizes a barcode.
For an order filled for a major global
German manufacturer in November 2005,
we used Embedded Software Architecture to
create a system that allows employee IDs to
be used to manage such office equipment as
MFPs and printers to achieve both a highly
efficient information environment and
security. T his system features Java™
operation environment on Ricoh FG500 and
custom application to realize the functions.
This application was awarded the Duke
Choice Award 2005, which is given to the
best Java™ technology of the year. Ricoh
Europe (REBV) and Genius Bytes, which
developed the application, received the award
from Sun Micro Systems at Java One
Conference Pavilion in San Francisco on
May 16.
Conceptual Diagram of Embedded Software
Architecture
imagio
MP C3000
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*Java™ VM absorbs the OS difference and allows
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