Best known for its heritage of printing, Xerox is now moving its focus to becoming a digital provider through use of technologies like Artificial Intelligence and more. Ritesh Gandotra, Director - Managed Document Services, Xerox India shares his views on how the company is re-inventing its product lines to transform user experience and make people more productive and secure.
The way people work is evolving at hyperspeed. We are seeing customers navigating the intersection of physical and digital worlds, and they are looking for solutions that are simple, secure and mobile. In one scenario we responded with innovative ConnectKey technology to drive productivity, enabling customers to accomplish more and better work in less time. So the defining elements of the new Xerox machines today are connectivity, customization, personalization and security. All these features combined will transform the user experience itself. This is what we call as the future of work.
The goal for us is to provide technology both from the devices and software perspective. New age technologies like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, IoT etc. are all finding place within our portfolio. So it is no longer about selling printers. It is about providing workplace automation solutions.
Xerox has applied its research from its PARC (formerly Palo Alto Research Center) and Xerox Research Centre Europe in AI, machine learning, and natural language processing. Using AI we can now understand, diagnose, and solve customer problems — without being specifically programmed to give rote responses. AI is already appearing in our apps and solutions today. Take Xerox Easy Translate Service as an example, it constantly uses a learning engine to improve translation quality.
AI will play a key role in improving the usability and reliability of our products and services, both through embedded sensing and intelligence as well as leveraging new technologies such as augmented reality to empower customers to learn how to perform a function or fix a problem. For example, our analytics dashboards can help users control the paper use. Users can rely on analytics, look at what they are printing, why they are printing it and can it be done electronically. In other words they can optimize their printing infrastructure and automate transactional workflows.
AI has the potential to open up new revenue streams for print businesses by improving the effectiveness of the end-to-end printing process, from print job creation through to continuous production and machine service optimizations. Our effort is to deliver a truly omni-channel experience. Internally, the solution captures data like customer sentiment, described symptoms, problem types, root causes etc. There is a lot of research we are carrying out around AI. For example, predicting human behaviour and assisting in decision-making using algorithms to find patterns that influence human behaviour and decisions.
If you look closely, over the years printers have transformed into multi-functional servers, often including embedded web servers for administrative purposes. Enterprises need to realize that such functionalities expose their printer to the Internet, and open a backdoor to their company. Generally, printers have not been part of the IT departments portfolio. However, it is time that these network devices are considered as IoT devices and included in the overall IT and security strategies with policies defined.
Development of all Xerox products, and not only printers, is guided by the Xerox Security Development Lifecycle. Our solutions handle data as it enters the organization, while it is circulated within the organization or while it is transmitted outside the organization. Hence, it is imperative that the solutions deploy latest advancements to protect data irrespective of its stage i.e. in storage or in transit.
From a data security perspective our devices are enabled with McAfee Intrusion Prevention software, including McAfee Embedded Control, McAfee Enhanced Security and McAfee Integrity control. These his features enable the device to self-monitor and self-protect against intrusions or any unauthorized code execution. It can also send email alerts to pre-defined contacts on detection of any incident enabling further actions.
The information within the device is protected by using Cisco TrustSec solution that secures customer networks by building and enforcing identity-based access policies for users and devices while protecting critical data throughout the network. In addition, our devices have an image overwrite feature, which electronically shreds the information on the hard disk drive once it is printed to protect client data.