Ricoh Company, Ltd. today announced its entry into the unified communication (UC) market, launching a new unified communication system (UCS) business which integrates video, voice and various other information for efficient communication.
Ricoh is aiming for $1.25 Billion of sales from this business in the global market in five years, by fiscal year 2015. Until now, Ricoh has been developing its IT equipment and solutions business for offices, focused on paper borne information. From now on, the company will also expand its business in the communications field utilizing video and voice.
Ricoh's UCS business will provide a system and cloud services which unify various data such as video, voice, documents, text and handwritten input. Faster and cheaper IP networks are enabling interaction between diverse information and communication methods and devices, as communication efficiency advances and evolves.
Ricoh's UCS business will provide greater diversity of communication sites, with environments and systems enabling communication in various situations. It will also provide greater variety of communication devices, providing functions to enable two-way communication with various IT and communications devices.
Ricoh will provide Machine-to-Machine communications control technologies (M2M: technology which easily connects different machines) and optimal architecture/service platforms which can provide communication services using video/voice. The company will also adopt a new codec technology (standard H.264/SVC ) with no video jitter or interruption, delivering systems and services which are optimal for communications using video/voice, and developing new market segments.
For its first UCS business offering, Ricoh will launch one new portable device and another for use in meeting rooms. These will be launched globally starting in summer 2011. At the same time, the company will start providing cloud services to enable remote communication. This portable type communication system will achieve "anytime, anywhere" remote video communications for conditions which were previously impractical, enabling easy video communication anytime, and anyplace. This is an easy system which does not force one to choose a fixed place. It is a new concept of remote video communication, totally different from existing video conferencing and web conferencing systems. The company will also develop two-way communication with various devices.