Epson Workforce Pro WF-R5690
Remember when the workgroup ruled and centralized printing was in vogue? That wasn’t so long ago. In fact it’s still happening now. Or how about that bygone era when personal printers dotted every corner and corner office of Corporate America? No doubt there’s still segments of Corporate America where personal printers still rule or are flying under the radar of those whose mission is to destroy all personal printers.
It takes all kinds…of printing disciplines that is. One that’s worthy of consideration, especially when speaking to anyone in the Business Imaging division of Epson America, is distributed printing.
Larry Trevarthen, director, Business Imaging for Epson America, Inc., is an unabashed advocate for distributed printing. Just say the word and he’ll outline the benefits it brings to end users and resellers alike.
But first let’s define what Trevarthen means by distributed printing. “It’s [placing] a high quality, affordable, network compatible printer that meets all office and IT requirements for tracking and security closer to the end user or to the workgroup, as opposed to more centralized printing that tends to be in the copy center.”
This doesn’t sound like such a new concept, so how prevalent is distributed printing in businesses right now?
“Distributed printing is very common,, for example in a marketing department or an engineering department that may have specialized needs. But what happens is there’s a natural tension between users that need to print and the organization that needs to manage the negative aspects of print—supplies management, operating costs, and controlling usage of print supplies, etc.,” explains Trevarthen. “As barriers are reduced, customers are doing distributed printing, but they are controlling it. Now with new technology we can put more devices closer to more people and let companies do what they’re supposed to be doing—growing their business—as opposed to worrying about printing.”
Trevarthen identifies MPS as one of the impediments to the acceptance of distributed printing largely because MPS tends to be focused around centralized printing.
“The benefits of MPS are low cost and lots of control, but you also get workers walking back and forth to the centralized device,” acknowledges Trevarthen.
He adds that today you can get low operating costs, low intervention, and IT managers can support it, enabling dealers to place printers closer to the end user and keep knowledge workers working.
Is this the distributed printing message an easy one for the dealer/reseller to take their customers or IT managers?
“One of the reasons distributed printing hasn’t been more pervasive is IT hasn’t been able to manage the costs or manage the devices, which is the IT manager’s responsibility,” notes Trevarthen. “For the IT manager, our message is they can now meet their user needs of high quality color printing by placing devices near the user and also meeting IT’s needs by managing costs and controlling costs. It’s a nice message for dealers because historically they’ve been focused on centralized printing and control, and this allows them to broaden their portfolio with more devices and expand their reach in their customer base that they wouldn’t have gone after before. They can now have a different, extended conversation with the IT manager.”
Naturally there’s a good reason that Epson is touting distributed printing and Trevarthen doesn’t leave that out of our discussion, highlighting Epson devices that use the company’s new Replaceable Ink Pack System rated for up to 75,000 color or monochrome pages.
“You can place these devices and not have the ink/toner management issues you’ve had with previous generations of printers,” emphasizes Trevarthen. “Replacement Ink Pack Systems products reduces the management of supplies to remote or distributed offices.”
In the event you missed the original Epson announcement from a few months back, these sell for about half the cost of laser printers while also reducing color operating costs.
“I won’t quote a number because dealers tailor the solution for their customers, but these printers are very affordable versus low-end laser printers, which is the other option for distributed printing,” notes Trevarthen. “Finally, from a management standpoint all of these devices are fully configurable for MPS and compatible with Print Audit, FMAudit, and PrintFleet so we can track what’s being printed and report back for billing and accounting purposes.”
This leads into another issue worth mentioning regarding distributed printing and that’s the long-standing concern about inkjet vs. laser printing.
“We are into a new phase of printing where the technologies available today are different from the ones that were available two or three years ago,” says Trevarthen. “Ink technology today is farther along in terms of reliability, print quality, ability to handle a variety of media, paper handling capacity, etc.”
If distributed printing gains traction as Epson hopes it will, what does Trevarthen think printing in Corporate America will look like in another five years?
“The conversations we’re having today around inkjet vs. laser printing, black & white vs. color printing, and concerns about management of devices will have largely disappeared,” he responds. “And customers will print what they need to print on the most affordable and economical printers available. They’ll be able to focus, as one customer said to us, on managing their business, not their printer. So the printer becomes an invisible utility printing high quality color documents close to a knowledge worker and the management aspects of the printer and supplies have largely disappeared.”
