New, easy-to-use configuration tools let solution providers create custom applications built with printers and MFPs.

As solution providers continue their transition from box movers to trusted advisors for customers that want to better control over their printing and imaging infrastructures, several new tools are arriving to help create targeted solutions. One important class of customization tools has arrived in full force within the last year — software development kits (SDKs) for printers and multifunction products (MFPs).

Armed with these low-level but relatively easy-to-use programming aids, solution providers can distinguish themselves and their offerings by giving customers more than a box that churns out printed output or, in the case of MFPs, adds scanning and faxing. Instead, the devices can become important components in wider enterprise applications that relieve the pain of paper and secure sensitive information better.

The rise of SDKs for printers and MFPs comes at a time when more end users want to perform tasks that go beyond simply scanning and printing documents; they also want to index and route information to workflow and document-management programs. The SDKs strengthen security by allowing solution providers and others to add identity-card readers and role-based rules that regulate how individuals can distribute information via the MFP display panel.

SDKs like Hewlett-Packard’s Open Extensibility Platform (OXP) and Xerox’s Extensible Interface Platform (EIP) use standard Web technologies, including embedded browsers, to give solution providers the tools they need to quickly customize front panels and control information flows without doing a lot of complicated and time-consuming software programming. These tailoring options can help solution providers compete by promoting their ability to create customer-oriented solutions rather than by competing on low prices or high volumes.

Collection of Tools
Xerox’s EIP supports a range of Xerox MFPs, including two families important to solution providers — the WorkCentre 7200 and 7300 series. Rather than being a single SDK, EIP consists of seven kits, some of which have been available for years. But according to Shelly Dates, Xerox solutions marketing manager, two kits that arrived in recent months are particularly popular among developers who are working to expand MFP capabilities. One kit provides presentation services that enable bidirectional communications among devices and a central Web server, which allows solution providers and others to assign front-panel buttons to custom workflows and to present drop-down menus that offer document-management shortcuts to end users.

A second kit, designed to enhance MFP security, offers authentication services for passwords and identity cards, which can control who gains initial access to each machine and then regulates how they use the equipment. For example, some staff members may be authorized for basic printing and scanning functions but would be blocked from sending outbound faxes and e-mails.

Solution providers can also program in layers of usage levels so that depending on someone’s credentials, he or she may be allowed to send sensitive documents only to a selected list of destinations. This eliminates the danger, for instance, of accidentally sending a confidential health-care record to the wrong fax number, Dates says.

Xerox distributes EIP free of charge to organizations that complete a short application and sign an end-user licensing agreement. The company estimates that about 420 organizations have now signed on as EIP developers.

Easy to Use
With HP’s OXP, solution providers download an XML “Config,” or configuration file, that allows them to customize the MFP’s front panel. OXP is available for a variety of HP devices, including LaserJet MFPs, LaserJet printers and models supporting its Edgeline technology.

Customizing printing devices using OXP “is not actual programming. You are just configuring the front panel by naming what each button will be called, and if someone pushes a button, what action will be taken” by the hardware, says Keith Moore, chief technologist for HP’s Global Enterprise Systems. “You can change the buttons so they say whatever you want. As a systems integrator, you are able to convert the front panel button to be about the task that you are trying to get accomplished.”

The custom buttons may be geared for specific companies or for vertical industries, he adds. For example, in health care, a common button instruction is “Augment Patient Record. These buttons are tied to the task that a nurse, a doctor or a claims adjustor is performing while standing at the device,” he explains. “So instead of sending an e-mail and then going back to your desk and trying to figure out where to route it, the task is immediately doable from the front panel of the device. You can push the button, and the scan will be routed and delivered automatically.”

Outbound targets can range from e-mail systems to secure Web sites to FTP servers.

HP makes the year-old OXP technology available to members of its solutions business partners, which include solution providers and ISVs such as Kofax and Omtool Ltd..

Growth Potential
In addition to helping solution providers tailor printers and MFPs to customer needs, the SDKs can also create valuable bridges between the devices and third-party software vendors. This in turn can further enhance the offerings that solution providers bring to their customers. By expanding the breadth of document-management applications, the SDKs are helping to increase the distribution of products like Omtool’s AccuRoute document-routing software, says Karen Cummings, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Omtool.

She adds that the market for document-management applications continues to expand from a collection of first-generation “point” solutions to highly scalable applications that take advantage of the close integration with printers and MFPs made possible by the new SDKs. The result is wider market acceptance for these classes of applications. “We expect the market to double in the next 12 to 18 months,” Cummings says.