News

Sharp launch Cloud Portal Office

21 000 2013

Sharp Electronics manufacture a wide variety of displays and office equipment as well as the hard-copy output devices with which we are more familiar.  So it's no surprise that Sharp's new cloud-based document resource center has been designed with wider integration than some others:  in addition to providing a universally available storage location for documents scanned on a Sharp copier and a means to print cloud-based content to a Sharp printer, Sharp Cloud Portal Office can also be hooked up to Sharp whiteboards and other display systems.  This will make it a useful place for teams to share and work together.

Cloud Portal Office has some other interesting facets.  Its licensing model is single user - rather than per MFP - and this will make it easier for anyone to print to a cloud-ready Sharp.  European users can be sure all content is stored highly securely within the EU by reputable third parties such as Amazon Web Services and Fujitsu Cloud Services.  A connector to DropBox provides an alternative storage location, and other connectors are in the offing, according to Sharp. 

Configuration is quite straight forward, and company-wide policies can be implemented for all users by means of the Cloud Portal.  Sharp MFPs in some countries are already being shipped with this Cloud Portal Office pre-installed.  Sharp are also highlighting the fact that cloud-based document storage is cheaper to implement than own-managed FTP sites. 

Our fuller analyses will be available to DMO Solutions subscribers shortly.