digital every year. And fourthly, the industry and consumers are moving from a device- or hardware-centric model to service-based business models. HP IPG predicts that the opportunity for managed printing services will grow from USD 18 billion in 2010 to USD 25 billion by 2013. Retailing publishing services will soar from USD 5 billion in 2010 to USD 12 billion by 2013. In this scenario, workers and consumers would need to print from any device, at any location, on-demand. Responding to this transformation HP IPG believes the printer needs to be “web-enabled” and “cloud-ware.” Speaking at a press conference in New Delhi on July 7, Vyomesh Joshi, Executive Vice President, HP IPG said, “We decided that above a certain price point, every printer will be connected to the web. It will be cloud-aware, and it will have an e-mail address. So if I take a picture on my smartphone, I can send the picture to the e-mail address of that printer, it goes to the cloud and gets printed.” In a short demo Joshi printed documents on his smartphone and on Google Docs to a printer on stage, wirelessly, via the cloud. This was done in a few minutes via a service called ePrint. To do this one has to first register their HP web-enabled printer
“We decided that above a certain price point, every printer will be connected to the web. It will be cloud-aware, and it will have an e-mail address”
Vyomesh Joshi
Executive VP, HP IPG
(support for ePrint) at the ePrint center (www.hp.com/go/eprint). The printer will then be assigned a unique e-mail address. And to print documents one has to simply send it to the printer’s e-mail address. Speaking to InformationWeek after the press conference, Neeraj Sharma, Vice President, HP IPG India said, “We have been shipping printers with the ePrint function since the past one year. These printers cost ` 8,000 onwards. Apart from AirPrint [wireless printing from Apple devices] we’ve got ePrint even in enterprises. Wireless printing will complement printing from wired devices.” When asked about the security aspects, Sharma said, “The ePrint Center (HP’s cloud printing service) allows you to define people who will be able to use your printer.” Sharma also informed that much of the innovation on ePrint was done at HP’s R&D labs in India.
“We want to focus beyond the metros, in places where there is faster urbanization happening. We see a lot of potential for this service in the education sector in these (tier-2 and tier-3) cities,” said Sharma.
Web Press
With media increasingly moving from analog to digital, HP IPG also wants to play an important role in the digital or Web Press. “Just like photos, we are transforming book publishing. The same thing will happen to magazines. Digital lets you print what you need and where you need,” said Joshi. Joshi whipped out a novel titled Kate, which is a detailed account about the royal wedding in the UK. He said a publisher in Paris produced 5,000 copies of the book in just four days. The technology that enables this is HP Web Press, an enhanced version of its digital press, it introduced a few years ago. “The Web Press can print 25 – 50 million pages a month; over one billion pages were printed on HP Web Press in 2010,” informed Joshi. He further added, “Some publishers in India have evoked a keen interest in the Web Press.” We believe that if there is indeed a market for this technology, the day is not far when we could get our customized newspapers and magazines, all with our favourite topics and articles! The writer was hosted in New Delhi by HP-IPG India.
(L-R) Ajay Gupta, John Solomon, Vyomesh Joshi, Neeraj Sharma
u Brian Pereira brian.pereira@ubm.com
august 2011 i n f o r m at i o n w e e k 21