Takeaways From Toshiba Fast Forward
“Any industrial manufacturer that has not awakened to the fact that it must become a service business is in serious peril today,” read one of the first slides at the Toshiba Fast Forward Dealer Event earlier this week at the beautiful Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, Nev.
The quote comes from the Harvard Business Review article “Four Strategies for the Age of Smart Services” by Glen Allmedinger and Ralph Lombreglia, and Toshiba is incorporating this message into its vision of the future.
According to Toshiba President and COO Mark Matthews, mobility, cloud computing, managed print and security are new technology opportunities the company is heavily investing in. Here are a couple of highlights from these emerging trends:
Services
“Providing services is the key to business today,” Matthews said, and for Toshiba, these services will come in the form of mobile and cloud printing applications, devices and partnerships; managed print services; and eventually managed document services.
With the sheer amount of smart phone and tablet sales in 2010, printing will change, and mobile and cloud options that are secure, convenient and easy will be important to users, explained Bill Melo, vice president, marketing, service and solutions.
Toshiba just announced the release of its next generation e-BRIDGE platform – the Toshiba e-STUDIO 5540c/6540c/6550c series and e-STUDIO 2040c/2540c/3040c/3540c/4540c series. Along with its standard printing, scanning and faxing features, these devices offer more administrator control as well as encryption, filtering and protocol security measures. However, the security devices utilized do not get in the way of convenient mobile or cloud printing. New user interfaces give users the ability to release print jobs with a scannable barcode or a print code unique to each print job. Additionally, the interface offers live chat for questions and is “weeks away” from supporting live video chat.
Security
As managed print services, mobile printing and cloud printing gain more popularity, so to do security issues. According to Tim Baker, Channel Solutions Program manager for HP LES Americas, the six most common data-security risks today are:
- output tray
- hard disk
- network card
- control panel
- secure input tray
- printing fleet.
To combat some of these issues, Toshiba has created its own security measures within its devices (as mentioned above) and has also partnered with HP to present ePrint Enterprise to its customers for more secure mobile and cloud printing capabilities.
Toshiba hosted an event full of vision, education and motivation for its dealer community, demonstrating its commitment to and investment in providing a mobile, connected, secure and services-led future.
Posted by Katherine Fernelius on 05/25/2011