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Document Scanning

Document scanning could be more important with death of the PC

Document scanning might become even more important for businesses as work starts to move from PCs to handheld devices.

UK firms investing in secure document storage that can be accessed online might be interested in comments made in a recent Guardian Tech Weekly podcast.

Presenter Aleks Krotoski put it to Salesforce.com chief scientist and technologist JP Rangaswami that tablets are simply a companion device that work with a machine at home as a cloud service.

However, Mr Rangaswami countered by suggesting that the PC will soon be obsolete, with smartphones and tablets taking over the market.

This could be an interesting point of view for IT departments looking at future proofing the business.

“I haven’t used a PC for maybe a decade, and I haven’t used a desktop since March, in terms of work,” the expert said.

“It has been a challenge to figure out what that means, not having a file system or a command line interface with a normal phone, but I’ve religiously stuck to saying I do all my work with a tablet.”

In fact, Mr Rangaswami suggested that the PC era is already over and that it is just taking time for businessmen and consumers to realise.

“They say that if the sun dies, it would take you nine minutes before you knew, and that is the way I feel about PCs. They have died, it just takes time for that death to work itself out. Post-PC is not a phrase,” he stated.

He predicted a future in which people will be more reliant on technology than ever, which could perhaps mean businesses will need to invest in document scanning to get all their paperwork available online.

“The children of today are people who are enfranchised to do things now they could never do before, like an archaeologist [who is] able to work with a device light enough to hold in one hand, [with] no wires in sight, no moving parts,” the Salesforce.com specialist pointed out.

“There are things happening now because of what the iPad has done which is changing how we engage with technology.”