Control documents at your MFP

This week FedEx upped its fuel surcharge from 28% of the normal cost of your package to 32.5%. Do you think that charge will decrease soon? If you think so, are you interested in a bridge for sale near Brooklyn?

But getting vital documents from place A to place B no longer requires these pricey courier services. You can send massive files via online services, such as YouSendIt, or, if full secure file transfer management is your goal, consider the appliances from Accellion Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.

According to Paula Skokowski, chief marketing officer, Accellion devices securely transmit and monitor documents, noting such things as who sent what and when a recipient opened the file. All documents pass through the Accellion appliance, which forwards any e-mail message accompanying the file directly to the recipient's mailbox with a url that actually holds the document until it's downloaded by its receiver.

Later in Q3, the company plans to offer a module that does exactly the same thing for documents that are scanned by multifunction printers (MFPs), which can also be used to directly transmit scanned files within or outside your organization. Called SMTP Satellite, Skokowski says it is a virtual appliance that runs on a separate server and communicates with an Accellion device. SMTP Satellite watches the ports used by MFPs and forwards any messages and scanned files to the hardware appliance where the same policies you apply to files sent from PCs are enforced.

Skokowski observes MFPs are often overlooked by security and document management processes as sources that need to be controlled.

She adds that by using technology like Accellion, you're not only saving money you'd spend on rising courier costs, your documents get to their destination much faster and in a greener fashion.

Pricing for SMTP Satellite has not been set.