PRINT
IT
RESELLER.UK
5
Printer sales up again
as prices fall
Sales of printers and MFPs in Western European grew strongly in
the third quarter of 2014 – the sixth consecutive quarter of positive
growth – as prices continued to fall.
The latest
IDC Worldwide Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker
shows
that unit sales were up 2% or 118,000 units compared to the same period
last year, but that strong pricing pressure caused the overall value of hardware
shipments to fall.
Sales of MFPs grew by 2.8%, driven by rising demand for colour devices,
while those of single-function printers fell by 1.2%. MFPs accounted for more
than four out of five (80.8%) of the 5.87 million print devices shipped.
From a technology perspective, laser sales were flat, while inkjet sales
grew by 2.8%. The business inkjet sector grew strongly with shipments up
10.9%.
The UK market outperformed the market overall, with sales growth of
7.8% and year-on-year increases in both inkjet and laser markets. However,
following very strong shipments in the first half of the year, sales of business
inkjets contracted by 11.2%.
New research from the Cloud Industry
Forum reveals a slow uptake of cloud-
based print and file management among
UK businesses.
The survey of 250 IT decision-makers found
that one in five (19%) organisations that have
a file and print management service host it in
the cloud, with a further 17% planning to do
so in the near future. The remaining 63% have
no plans to move this function to the cloud,
preferring to keep it in-house.
Andrew Smith, Head of Professional Services at
Annodata, is surprised there isn’t greater appetite
for cloud-based print given the central role the
printed page still has in today’s enterprises.
“There’s clearly momentum in this space,
but it’s surprising to see that cloud-based print
and file management isn’t even on the radar of
so many businesses. Print and file management
languishes at the bottom third of IT directors’
priorities and is too often thought of as trivial,
yet it’s integral to the well running of a host of
other business functions. Moreover, it’s one of the
functions that stands to benefit most by being
hosted in the cloud,” he said.
Letters decline slows
Letter volumes fell again in the first half of this
year but by less than Royal Mail was expecting
due to the improving economy. The Group's
half year results show that in the six months to
28 September 2014, addressed letter volumes
decreased by 3%, compared to an expected
decline of 4-6%. Overall, letter revenue was up
1% to £2,242 million, primarily due to election
mailings.
Better mobility and security
HP has enhanced its security and mobility portfolio with a new version of
HP ePrint Enterprise (version 4.0), which brings mobile printing to Windows
8-enabled smartphones for the first time, and a new version of HP Access
Control (version 14.2), which brings secure authentication, secure pull
printing, job accounting and intelligent device management to the HP
OfficeJet Pro X and Enterprise X series of business inkjet printers.
Speedy scanning
To help managed print service customers make
the transition from paper-based to paper-less
processes, Kyocera Document Solutions UK Ltd has
added six high-speed Fujitsu document scanners
to its portfolio. These
range from the mobile,
wireless ScanSnap
iX100 (£183 ex VAT)
to the high speed
fi-6800 capable
of scanning
130 pages per
minute
(£12,795
ex VAT).
MSP Vissensa adds
secure cloud printing
services to its offering
Managed services company Vissensa and
print management solutions company
Ubiquitech A/S have joined forces to
provide secure, simple, on-demand printing
to today's more mobile workers.
They are jointly providing cloud-based printing
services hosted on Vissensa’s secure IBM system
zLinux platform and Ubiquitech’s Enterprise Print
Linux Server solution.
The solution enables clients to manage printer
estates securely from a centralised print service
and print to a specific device on-demand, rather
than waiting in a printer buffer or printing to a
device in another location.
Erik Ejdrup, VP of Sales for Ubiquitech,
said “We are seeing a major shift in the way
companies procure and manage their printer
estates. The cost of consumables is usually the
most visible factor, but increasingly the focus is
on the hidden costs of workforce productivity,
helpdesk and support when drivers and printers
have to be downloaded or configured.”
He added: “When you include the security
of print and an inability to control much of the
printing task once the user has sent the print job,
there are massive savings to be made if the right
solution is deployed. We believe that Vissensa’s
cloud platform is the best solution for this service.”
Steve Groom, CEO of Vissensa, said:
“Ubiquitech is a great example of the type of
solution that MSPs like Vissensa can offer as an
extension to a range of IT services. In this case,
Vissensa was an ideal partner for Ubiquitech as
our new zLinux Mainframe can offer cloud printing
services for large-scale printer estates alongside
multi-tenant one or two printer services for SMBs.”
Little appetite for
cloud-based printing
BULLETIN
