EFI campaigns ‘Internet of printers’

BANGALORE: Printing service major, Electronics For Imaging Inc., (EFI) is bullish about introducing its `PrintMe’ service in India. Being tested in a few locations at the Taj group of hotels in the country on a pilot basis.

The `Internet of Printers’ service-PrintMe was launched post 2000 by the company as software solutions for mobile printing needs and went live in 2002 in the US and is all set to make its impact in India very soon. The support for its global PrintMe networks of EFI is located in Bangalore manned by a team of professionals monitoring the network through servers in the city. PrintMe enables printing from a desktop, PDA, laptop, or cell phone from anywhere across the world to the PrintMe enabled printers, located worldwide.

"In today’s mobile and pervasive world, printing some document becomes a business critical need. Although with the advent of advanced technology a reliable printing service offered by a network of centers, especially in the hospitality line is a welcome boon for travelling executives," said Country Head of EFI India, Atul Saran. "PrintMe enables this by networking the printers located in various centers and enabling the execution of a print command from one location to another through Internet."

Foster City, California based EFI would have some stiff competition from printing service companies in India, like WeP and HP, who are making strong strides in the printer market. However EFI is not looking at these vendors as competitors but as partners as EFI is not a printer manufacturer but a printing enabler with its hardware and software solutions.

"Most of the printing majors are our partners including Canon and Xerox, worldwide. Our printing server and flagship product, Fiery is the most sold printing server in major printing houses," added Saran.

PrintMe networks printers across the world by assigning a number for each one. To print a document on a particular location, the user needs to command print and key in the particular number from any wireless devices. Fax machines are automatically PrintMe-enabled through the PrintMe fax gateway, making millions of fax machines instantly part of the PrintMe network.

To use the service, people sign up for a free individual PrintMe accounts at www.printme.com. This account allows them to print to any printer on the growing PrintMe network or, with a premium account, to additionally fax to any fax machine nationwide and a growing number of countries around the world. PrintMe is designed to work with any mobile device.

Once a user has opened a free PrintMe account, they simply send documents to the PrintMe network via e-mail, a Web browser, or Infrared technology, to immediately print to any printer on the network, or "park" the document to print whenever and wherever it is convenient.

For secure document distribution, users can also assign a Document ID to any print job and send this ID number to desired recipients for printing on demand. To maximize security and control over sensitive documents, users can also assign an expiration time as well as control the number of permitted copies.

Earlier this year, EFI had entered the country through the acquisition of Unimobile and is setting up a 100-member strong development team in Bangalore and envisages the center as the engineering hub for the company. It also recently announced the acquisition of Print Café and TR Systems to enhance its services.