30 Minute Interview

Standalone devices pose a security problem

Companies are moving in different directions on printing, Som Gangopadhyay of Canon India talks to Kushal Shah about the various trends in printing solutions.

Som Gangopadhyay

People are comparing standalone devices and MFDs a lot; can you throw some light on this?

When we are talking of higher productivity and efficiency across the organisation, then standalone devices pose a big problem. They not only occupy more space but also, being out of the network, pose a big risk as your data goes out of the secured network space. Normally through a server or the ERP architecture, organisations try to secure business intensive data. The moment you give it to too many standalone devices, data goes out of the network and goes into the spools of those printers, which is a big security risk. Apart from that, if the running cost is not managed, it results in islands of excellence or disaster as the case may be. Individual standalone devices, physically managed by an efficient administrator, can be an island of excellence. The chances of such thing happening in the modern world are few, so it is quite likely that it will result in disaster.

Where is MFD technology at and where is it headed?

Multi functional devices, beyond the built in multiple functionalities, are efficient multi tasking tools. It is not the number of functions which a device has; it is about the tasks that it can perform. A device will make sense when it can perform all the necessary tasks in the office on a network. Multi functionality is kind of passé and at the same time multitasking is important.

On what category are you focusing?

Canon’s printing and document solution business which is BIS (Business Imaging solution division) mostly looks into corporate, commercial and government space and the verticals in between. We do not work with wide spread SMBs from BIS, so small size equipment which generally goes in SMBs is of little importance to us.

Print outsourcing is picking up. Can you compare these two trends of print outsourcing and owning the equipment?

The world is moving into different directions and the same will go for India in the near future. The ratio between owning equipment and print outsourcing depends on the workflow of an organisation. Take the example of a bill printing solution for a telecom company, public sector unit or BFSI. For them owning up the equipment is important because they usually own the printer along with the server and workflow. Only for some organisations where printing per se is more of peripheral activity such as printing lots of hand bills and postcards, the task gets outsourced to a large extent. For corporate houses which require lots of printing, like in ITES companies, in terms of bio data of employees and applicants, HR data, leave data, this task will soon be outsourced.

Does Canon take on outsourcing contracts?

We certainly do outsourcing work for organisations. Currently we are doing it at a small scale but in coming years we plan to do this on a larger scale. We are developing a set of software which are more solution driven than print driven because Production Digital Printing (PDP) solution is only part of it .We are working in that areas also for our image software. As far as giving devices on rental is concerned, we do it at many places.

Which are the various models for print outsourcing?

Basically there are three levels or models for print outsourcing. The first type of print outsourcing is holistic, which is complete outsourcing. If it is the case of outsourcing for printing bills then amount would be paid per bill printed by the outsourcing company. In the second type, the provider charges for services and not for machines, rather, the rental is paid for machines and manpower and not on stationary. In the last type, rent is paid only for the machine and rest is provided by the customer. So to summarise the different types, the first one is complete outsourcing, the second is partial and the third is more like rental rather than outsourcing.

Security in printing is a big issue these days. Printers and computers on a network are equally vulnerable. How do you deal with such a situation?

Security depends on the type of printer you are using. If printers are using protected software for printers on a network then they are pretty much safe. Canon provides such software platforms built in the hardware. Encryption takes place at the entry point when the message gets into the system and decryption at the output.