Fujitsu has integrated MindTouch technology into its scanner technology. The service means that people can feed documents through a Fujitsu scanner and then automatically post them to the MindTouch cloud-based collaboration service. Documents will be uploaded, stored, shared and processed into a web-oriented environment.
It’s the cloud factor that makes this interesting. Scanning documents into a cloud-based environment has a number of implications for markets that still rely on antiquated storage practices. For example, this is the kind of application that would seem to be applicable for law firms that now use warehouses to store millions of paper documents.
The documents are processed using optical character recognition, making the documents searchable. Before a document gets scanned a user provides an email address. The document then appears in that account. MindTouch uses Lucene as its enterprise search technology. Each document has its its own hyperlink associated with it. Version control is built into the process so documents may be tracked.
MindTouch Cloud is an open-source, SaaS service that integrates business data into a dashboard environment. It uses wiki technology, designed for an enterprise environment.
The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 is pretty affordable. It sells for $295. There is no installation required with MindTouchCloud.