This week Box.net announced, in conjunction with scanner maker Lexmark, a new cloud-based scanning solution. As the Box.net announcement points out, there are many ways to get digital content from your computer to a Box account, but if it's in paper form, that's a problem.

Box has been hearing from customers who want to be able go from paper directly to a Box account without the extra step of scanning to the computer, then separately moving the file to Box. This new feature lets users do that.

Lexmark has built the functionality into the software on their printer/scanners. You need to set up a default Box account and folder on the web, then you can use the Lexmark "Scan to Box" button to scan directly to the pre-defined account. In fact, you don't even need to have a computer on so long as the printer/scanner is connected to the Internet.

When discussing the ability to move content management to the cloud, one of the biggest obstacles has always been the hardware end of it. In a post by Jeff Shuey (no longer online, but which we wrote about last year), he identified the scanner as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to a fully functioning cloud content management solution.

This is a nice innovation and clearly places the pure document management end of content management directly in the cloud, an aspect many thought would remain out of reach for some time.

For more information:
- see the Box.net blog post    

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