HP Shakes Up Printer Market With New Color Officejets For Enterprises
Hewlett Packard is aiming to replace millions of LaserJet printers and copiers in business of all sizes by bringing its breakthrough "Ink in the Office" technology to the enterprise with new Officejet Enterprise Color multifunction printers.
The new HP Officejet Enterprise Color MFP X555 and X585 printers, which were announced at HP's Global Partner Conference on Monday, provide the same value -- twice the speed at half the cost of laser printers -- that has been popular in the SOHO (small office and home office) market to enterprises by adding the critical enterprise software and user interface available in 12 million HP enterprise LaserJet printers.
The new Officejet Enterprise Color MFPs are already getting rave reviews from customers that have been provided seed units and been astounded by the 72 page per minute speed, quality and price breakthrough of the new products, said John Patterson, vice president of imaging and printing for MCPc, the $262 million national solution provider, ranked No. 89 on the CRN SP500.
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"They absolutely love the product," Patterson said. "This is a product that represents a major paradigm shift. It's in a class by itself. This has everything. It has speed, all the capabilities of secure enterprise pull printing, a robust scanner and it is very inexpensive. The price point and total cost of ownership changes everything. It has been a while since a product like this has come along that changes the way people think."
The HP Officejet Enterprise Color MFP X555 is priced starting at $749 to $1,199, while the Officejet Enterprise Color MFPX585 is priced from $1,999 to $2,799. Both printers are available April 1.
Patterson says he sees the potential for MCPc to sprinkle the new Officejets throughout major enterprises replacing copiers and LaserJets. "This is a game changer in competing against large copiers," he said. "With this product in our arsenal, we can go in to a large company to fix the printing -copier inefficiencies of what they have in an extremely cost effective way and still have healthy margins. It allows us to play in a space where many times in the past we were just shut out of."
One sign of the potential for bringing the Officejet Enterprise into big business: a multinational company with a Six Sigma group impressed by the benefits of replacing copiers and LaserJet printers with the Officejet Enterprise Color MFPs, said Patterson. He said the Six Sigma group has found that there are significant benefits for moving the Officejets closer to workgroups.
The enterprise interface, firmware and security capabilities are mandatory to power the HP ink in the office move to businesses, said Patterson. "Having the security and same look and feel of the rest of the enterprise MFPs is critical," he said. "The regular Officejet Pro is great for SMB, but enterprise customers can't use because it can't be programmed like other enterprise MFPs. They just are not used to the limited functionality in the enterprise market. This breaks down all those barriers."
Among the HP enterprise functionality in the new printers are HP LaserJet FutureSmart firmware and HP Open Extensibility Platform allowing enterprise software including HP Access Control and HP Capture & Route.
"We are finally bringing together the best of two worlds, the low cost per page and speed of HP's breakthrough PageWide array with the full enterprise features and capabilities of our LaserJet portfolio," Andy Binder, general manager of HP's Enterprise Ink business, said of the new Officejet Enterprise Color MFPs. "By marrying them together we have got the best of both worlds. It's sort of like the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups with the chocolate and peanut butter together. It's the ultimate solution."
HP brought over 150 enterprise capabilities from the LaserJet,said Binder. The only two output related enterprise capabilities that could not be brought to the Enterprise Color MFPs were magnetic ink character recognition for printing bank checks which requires iron oxide and an RX prescription security printing solution, said Binder.
HP has already seen the SMB Officejet pros making big headway in Fortune 500 accounts where they are used in remote office or for teleworkers at home. "We have done a great job of getting into the enterprise already, now we are getting into the enterprise where they want to have the manageability features they associate with our Laser printers," said Binder.
The new product opens the door for partners to "simultaneously reduce the cost of printing for their customers, while also improving the margins for themselves," said Binder. "The channel partners have been asking for this product for a while and are very excited about it. The momentum is there."