December 29, 2003—Hummingbird Ltd., a developer of enterprise information management systems, has formed a technology alliance with Ricoh Corporation, a provider of digital office equipment.
The partnership extends Hummingbird Enterprise solutions to provide customers with the ability to easily and securely capture, manage, and share scanned documents and photographic images across the enterprise, from multiple sources to a single repository, streamlining business processes and improving productivity.
The Hummingbird and Ricoh technology alliance introduces two distinct applications: Ricoh GlobalScan document scanning software linked to the Hummingbird DM system; and a new geo-imaging solution integrating Hummingbird Enterprise for ESRI with the Ricoh GPS-enabled digital camera.
Ricoh GlobalScan software, combined with Ricoh Aficio multi-function products, can link seamlessly to the Hummingbird DM system allowing users to scan and index documents into Hummingbird document management repositories directly from the touch-screen panel of the Ricoh Aficio MFPs. The combined technologies offer a scalable and secure Internet information management platform allowing users to collaborate on critical business content and store the information with a touch of a button. Ricoh’s network log-in authentication feature provides Hummingbird customers with secure network access at the scanning device.
The new geo-imaging solution provides customers with a fully automated and error-free way to integrate photographic images with geographic information system documents and maps. The Ricoh digital camera captures the global positioning system latitude and longitude coordinates at the time a picture is taken. This spatial meta-data is permanently encoded into the image and is used to geographically position the image when it is uploaded to the Hummingbird Enterprise for ESRI solution. The result is a fully automated solution for positioning pictures in geo-space. Photographic documentation can be wirelessly transmitted or synchronized into GIS databases when the user returns to the office. Users can retrieve the image by clicking on the map or by searching in the Hummingbird document management repository.
