SOFIAH NICHOLE SALIVIO

News Editor

PFU EMEA has launched ScanSnap Camera in its ScanSnap Home mobile app. Free to download, the feature arrives as the ScanSnap brand marks its 25th year.

The addition extends the ScanSnap line beyond dedicated scanners to smartphones. Users can capture documents, receipts, business cards and photos with a phone camera and convert them into digital files through the app.

PFU EMEA said the app uses the same image-processing technology as the ScanSnap scanner range. It includes automatic capture, image alignment and correction tools, and converts documents into searchable PDFs that can be reordered, rotated or adjusted before saving.

Files can be stored on the phone or in a cloud service. Registration is required, and the feature is available only in regions where ScanSnap Cloud is supported.

Broader reach

The move gives PFU a way to bring the ScanSnap brand to users who do not own one of its scanners. It also creates a lower-cost entry point to document digitisation for home users and small businesses that only need occasional scanning.

For channel partners, PFU is positioning the app as a way to open broader customer discussions around document capture. That links the free mobile feature to the wider ScanSnap hardware range, which includes portable, desktop and specialist scanners.

“The ScanSnap Camera app gives our partners a completely new way to engage customers. By making high-quality document capture freely available on a smartphone, we’re helping more people experience the value of digitisation, increasing the accessibility of scanning. Our reseller partners are then perfectly positioned to introduce the wider ScanSnap portfolio when users need greater speed, volume, reliability or functionality. It’s about creating more conversations, reaching more customers and growing the market together,” said Brian Fortune, GM Sales, PFU EMEA.

PFU said the current ScanSnap line-up covers different document workflows and work settings. The iX100 is aimed at mobile use, while the iX1300 is a compact desktop model. The iX2400 and iX2500 sit further up the range, and the SV600 is designed for bound documents, books and fragile materials.

Brand history

ScanSnap was first introduced in 2001 and built its reputation on simple document scanning for non-specialist users. PFU has long centred the range on straightforward setup and one-touch scanning, with an emphasis on turning paper records into organised digital files.

The release of a smartphone-based scanning tool reflects a shift in how PFU is framing that idea. Rather than requiring dedicated hardware from the outset, the ScanSnap experience can now start with a mobile device many users already own.

That may widen the brand’s audience at a time when small firms and households continue to manage a mix of physical and digital records. Receipts, forms, letters and identity documents often still begin on paper, even as storage and sharing increasingly move online.

PFU EMEA is the regional subsidiary of Japan-based PFU, which develops document imaging products and IT infrastructure services. PFU sits within the wider Ricoh group, whose business spans digital services, print and imaging operations in around 200 countries and regions.

The launch also coincides with a milestone for the ScanSnap name. PFU is using the 25-year mark to highlight the brand’s role in personal productivity, home administration and small business document management.

Yasunari Shimizu, President and CEO of PFU, outlined the company’s position on the new feature.

“ScanSnap has always been about removing complexity and making it easy for anyone to digitise their world. For 25 years, we have continued to evolve the ScanSnap experience while remaining true to the principles on which the brand was built. With ScanSnap Camera, we are extending that simplicity even further, bringing the trusted ScanSnap experience into every user’s pocket and enabling more people to experience its value, completely free,” said Shimizu.

The Rising Sun & Pad Thai Cuisine on High Street in Thame was visited by South Oxfordshire enviromental health officers earlier this year.

One key problem on the day was the management of food safety, which was deemed to require “major improvement”.

READ MORE: Major Oxfordshire caravan park fire was accidental says fire service

One category noted as being “generally satisfactory”, however, was the cleanliness and condition of both the facilities and building.

Meanwhile hygienic food handling was deemed as “improvement necessary”.

The website invites customers to enjoy the delights of a traditional British pub – oak beams, stone floors, great beers – and the flavours of fantastic Thai cuisine.

They also participated in this years Thame Pride with open mic nights and professional singers coming on later in the night to perform for punters.

Altimetrik has joined the World Economic Forum’s Centre for AI Excellence, placing the company among organisations contributing to the Forum’s work on responsible artificial intelligence.

It will bring its work in AI engineering, data and platform systems to the Centre, where members contribute to governance, industry adoption and the use of AI across large organisations. Altimetrik’s involvement centres on ALTi AIOS, its AI engineering operating system, designed for large businesses with established legacy systems.

The Centre for AI Excellence is one of the World Economic Forum’s hubs for AI governance and adoption. Its programmes focus on encouraging innovation, preparing industries and societies for broader AI use, and promoting what it describes as trustworthy technology through governance frameworks.

For Altimetrik, the membership adds an international policy and standards dimension to a business focused on deploying AI inside complex corporate environments. More than 10,000 engineering practitioners are working on AI in production across sectors including banking, financial services and insurance, manufacturing, retail, automotive, healthcare and life sciences.

The announcement also reflects a wider shift in the AI market, as attention moves from experimental pilots to the challenge of integrating AI into older technology estates. Many large companies are trying to apply new AI systems without replacing decades of accumulated software, data infrastructure and operational processes.

That issue is central to Altimetrik’s pitch. ALTi AIOS is built for so-called brownfield enterprise environments, where existing systems must be connected to AI tools rather than rebuilt from scratch. The platform provides a unified operational layer for managing models, data, governance and interactions between people and AI systems.

Enterprise Focus

Altimetrik argues that one of the main barriers to broader AI use in large organisations is not access to models, but the difficulty of embedding them into live operations with proper controls. In that context, governance, orchestration and trust have become as important to buyers as model performance.

Raj Sundaresan, Chief Executive Officer at Altimetrik, linked the membership to that agenda.

“Joining the World Economic Forum’s Centre for AI Excellence is a milestone for Altimetrik and an opportunity to help shape the global agenda on enterprise AI,” said Raj Sundaresan, Chief Executive Officer at Altimetrik.

“AI is receiving unprecedented attention, but real transformation requires more than deploying tools. It requires organisations to be engineered to run AI responsibly, securely and at scale,” he said.

Those remarks underline a growing debate in the corporate AI market over what responsible deployment means in practice. For some companies, it centres on model safety and data handling. For others, it also includes auditability, operational resilience and the ability to monitor how AI systems behave when embedded in customer-facing or regulated workflows.

Altimetrik says ALTi AIOS is intended to address those operational concerns by standardising how organisations manage AI systems and by building governance into the deployment process from the outset. The aim is to move AI beyond isolated experiments towards broader use across the business with measurable results.

Wider Debate

Altimetrik’s addition to the Centre comes as businesses, regulators and industry groups continue to debate how global standards for AI should develop. While there is broad agreement that governance is needed, there is less consensus on how to translate high-level principles into day-to-day operating practices inside large companies.

That leaves room for engineering-led firms to argue that responsible AI is as much an implementation issue as a policy one. In sectors such as financial services, healthcare and manufacturing, the challenge often lies in integrating new systems into regulated and business-critical environments without disrupting existing operations.

Niraj Nagrani, Chief Data and AI Officer at Altimetrik, framed the issue around system design and control.

“The enterprises that define the next decade will be the ones that engineer context, orchestration, governance and trust into every layer of their agentic systems, not bolt it on after the fact,” said Niraj Nagrani, Chief Data and AI Officer at Altimetrik.

“The World Economic Forum’s Centre for AI Excellence is the right platform to advance that agenda, and we’re proud to bring ALTi AIOS and our production AI experience to that conversation,” he said.

Altimetrik joins the Centre as companies seek a stronger voice in how AI rules and standards are shaped, particularly around deployment in established enterprises where the technical and governance issues are more complex than in greenfield systems.