Ricoh adds MFP smarts to the network
Ricoh adds MFP smarts to the network
February 26, 2009: Ricoh made a preliminary showing of its new embedded intelligence technology with IBM’s Tivoli Monitoring and Asset Management for IT at the IBM Pulse conference in Las Vegas.
The solution monitors and reports on Ricoh multifunction product (MFP) energy consumption and automates settings based on a corporation’s environmental management objectives.
Ricoh tracks the activity of all Ricoh MFPs connected to a network in order to gauge real-time metrics of power usage through IBM’s Tivoli system management software. An IT administrator can define customised metrics by defining parameters on an individual company’s cost reduction and sustainability goals.
The Ricoh system is able to identify when established thresholds have been reached and will automatically adjust the network’s settings. For instance, if all users in a particular workgroup are not using their computers, the system will recognise this inactivity and automatically shut down the workgroup’s MFP to a sleep mode, greatly reducing power consumption and costs.
Ricoh’s solution can also enable a company to apply print rules that push settings onto workgroups. Therefore, if a particular group is consistently failing to meet the company’s sustainability goals, the settings can force users to duplex or limit prints in order to better manage and improve the company’s carbon footprint.