HP used the Dscoop Edge users conference earlier this week to announce a number of new additions to its PrintOS Marketplace, which of course is designed to push greater take up of its cloud-based PrintOS workflow system.
Marketplace was launched at last year’s Dscoop event in Dallas. Alon Bar-Shany, general manager of HP Indigo, explains: “PrintOS Marketplace is an open platform designed to spread innovation and help customers adapt faster to the complexities of the changing print market.”
There’s a new ideas store that will include projects-in-a-box for labels and packaging, commercial and photo printing with some 50 free projects and design tools currently available, such as Mosaic and Collage packaging templates, seed patterns, sample files, and royalty-free images and icons. HP is hoping that its customers will choose to either share or sell their print ideas in the store. One such customer, Jon Bailey, CEO of UK-based ProCo, commented: “Marketplace is going to be a game changer in how people are able to produce work in a digital print environment. Access to other print providers’ applications means I don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every project. And fundamentally, we’re going to have access to thousands of partner apps in a cost effective and quick way.”
HP has also added a new Marketplace store for Applications, with monthly, subscription-based apps from HP and solutions partners. These include: Locr, for creating personalized maps; MindFire, a marketing campaign automation tool; OneFlow, for automating manual prepress operations; and Hybrid Software’s PACKZilizer cloud-based tool for preparing packaging files for production.
There are also several applications from HP itself, including: PrintOS Jobs API, which sends production-status and job-costing data from an Indigo press to an MIS for more accurate quoting; PrintOS Composer for creating variable data jobs; PrintOS OEE, to analyse Overall Equipment Effectiveness and improve press utilization; PrintOS Color Beat, for more consistent colour performance; and PrintOS Site Flow, which manages the flow of jobs from submission to shipping. I think it’s worth pointing out that quite a lot of this sort of functionality used to come as part of the workflow software, which itself used to be part of the cost of the press, rather than an additional chargeable item.
There’s also a new Licenses Store where customers can download licenses for existing software solutions from HP and some of its partners. This includes HP’s SmartStream Designer variable data printing tool, as well as Esko’s DeskPack Essentials and ArtPro+ packaging tools, Hybrid Software’s PACKz PDF editor and CloudFlow prepress workflow, a photo optimization solution from Memador, and Tilia Labs’ Phoenix and Imposition AI workflow and imposition tools for labels and packaging.
HP claims to have more than 20,000 users for its PrintOS since launching at Drupa 2016. The software supports the Indigo, PageWide and Scitex presses as well as the Latex and DesignJet wide format printers.
You can find more information on PrintOS at hp.com.
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