If you work in an office, you probably already know how indispensable the office fax machine, copy machine and scanners are to the people who work in the office. The day to day goings on in the office world involve the copying, scanning and fax transmission of scanned and copied documents around the world on a daily basis.
One of the most convenient developments in the world of "convergence products" (a class of products that have been developed as hybrid devices that perform the tasks and have the full capabilities of multiple devices) is the office Fax/Scanner/Copier devices that are becoming popular in SOHO and enterprise office environments around the world.
Within this class of product are several tiers of devices with varying levels of functionality. Entry level SOHO units are small desktop or tabletop devices that are not much larger than a standard fax machine. These devices usually connect to a host PC via USB or Ethernet (or both) and allow programs that can utilize its printing, faxing, scanning and copying capabilities to use it for any of these purposes. These small office machines replace an entire shelf of electronics that not only take up floor space, but also require users to visit multiple machines to accomplish one task.
On the higher end of the digital convergence office machines lives devices like Konica Minolta's "BizHub" line of devices. These convergence units can perform all the roles of the smaller tabletop units, but also function as a network center for road warriors to connect back to the office and utilize the resources on site as if they were there. The BizHub line of devices allow for employees on the road to connect back to the office via a secure VPN connection enabled by the BizHub device. Users on the network can share data with off site employees as if they were in the same room. No need to deal with emails and attachments and disorganized communications. This new breed of office device does the job of many other devices while enabling inter-office communication that simply was not possible before its development.
