High-Volume Scanners Get Smart

New intelligent processing features built into today's high-volume scanners are keeping the devices in demand in a growing desktop scanning market.

It seems high-volume production scanning sales aren't going to be as flat as InfoTrends research predicted for 2007. In fact, many high-volume scanner manufacturers are reporting solid growth figures thus far this year and anticipate this trend to continue in the near term. There are several reasons for the growth in a scanning sector that many industry analysts believed was on the decline.

"One reason for the growth we're seeing in production scanner sales is there are a ton of VARs looking to add service bureau capabilities to their solution offerings," says Eric Olsen, product marketing manager for production capture for Eastman Kodak Company. "At the same time, we're seeing a dramatic increase in the desire for existing service bureaus to invest in added scanning capacity. This is occurring as businesses initiate or update document management programs and opt to outsource the scanning function rather than take it on themselves. In particular, there is a high demand for document conversion services in the healthcare vertical for scanning of patient record back-files."