The new Edgeline technology, which already powers the HP Photosmart pm1000 Microlab printer and the HP Photosmart Express self-serve kiosk, allows the printer to spray ink across paper rapidly and precisely in one pass. In enterprise models it should be capable of print speeds in excess of 70 pages per minute, the company is claiming.
Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HP’s Printing and Imaging group, said the Edgeline development came out of its five year, $1.4bn Scalable Print Technology R&D initiative which basically has allowed HP to put more ink nozzles on its print heads so its units can spray ink faster and at higher densities than seen before.
The as yet unnamed enterprise Edgeline models, where the paper moves but the printheads do not, will eventually be joined with systems that will find a home doing industrial print jobs, as well as versions that will be suitable for light production runs.
Joshi not only announced what is said to be the vendor’s largest-ever rollout of multifunction printers, but publicized a new approach to sales that aims to draw bigger contract sizes out of its printer customers.
According to IDC estimates HP increased market share by five points during Q206, Joshi claimed. Some of the new approaches being drafted for its printer sales operations should help sustain that growth and lead to an expansion of HP’s managed print service interests, as well.
Bruce Dahlgren, who came to HP from Lexmark some nine months ago, is fronting the new sales activities which will see the company hire hundreds of new account managers supported by sales consultants with technology and business process proficiencies.
The aim is to get customers more in tune with what technologies we have and what we can do for them he said. Eventually, HP plans to tailor a set of imaging and printing options to build industry-specific offerings for major vertical markets in the public and commercial sectors.
An initial target of 2,300 named key accounts has been selected worldwide to sell a proposition that layers HP’s various print management capabilities.
HP wants to be seen capable of optimizing an organization’s print assets with a balanced deployment of the right single-function devices and MFPs that use an appropriate split of mono and color.
It also wants to build on the $1bn in managed print contracts it claims to have in the pipeline, preferably using service agreements that are written to include pay-for-use charges and metrics based on utilization rates. And ultimately, it wants to broker content management integration projects involving a mix of partners and its own professional services staffs, to improve and automate business workflows using MFP units installed as data capture devices. For that it has aligned itself to data capture ISVs like Kofax and eCopy.
The new series of LaserJet color and mono printer units unveiled yesterday are intended to help the company build on the success it has had with the 4345 MFP machine it introduced almost 18 months ago.
The M3035 MFP which Joshi described as a big brother to the 4345 runs at 35 prints a minute and pushes out the first page within ten seconds. It is capable of also handling fax and digital sending, and comes with a touch-sensitive screen and stapler built in. It will retail at $1,999 and becomes available later this month. That unit will handle duty cycles of up to 75,000 pages per month.
Among the ranges announced was a wide-format A3 black-and-white MFP. The LaserJet M5035 MFP has print and copy speeds of up to 35 pages per minute and will retail at $3,999. It is a heavy duty workgroup machine that should be suited to duty cycle of up to 200,000 pages a month.
