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PITR:
MPS is a growing requirement for SMBs. Do you
have your own MPS offering or do your resellers offer
Dell products as part of their own solution?
McNally:
We looked at offering an MPS solution and what
we heard from customers is that they want a product-agnostic
approach. So we identified resellers who can offer that and go
and work with them. We don’t offer a specific programme where
we offer our own monitoring and tracking software. We leave
that to the reseller. But we will support them with things like
training and preferential bid pricing so that they can go and win
those opportunities. They have the relationships; they have the
expertise; they have the flexibility; they have the wide product
set. We will focus our efforts on working with resellers in that
community and grow our MPS offering through them.
PITR:
What benefits do end users get from selecting
Dell products?
McNally:
Very similar to those enjoyed by the channel. Dell’s a
brand that can be trusted. Our customers use Dell for their other
IT equipment, so using printers is a natural progression. We have
the same exacting quality and performance standards on our
print products as we do for the rest of our products. Customers
know they are getting a tried and trusted quality product.
We offer a range of benefits from how easy the product
is to use to how easy it is to own and manage. A lot of that
is built into the device, with things like the Dell Printer Hub.
That’s very much the cornerstone of our proposition: how we
simplify printing for customers. As well as providing a return on
investment and making sure our prices are competitive, we want
to add value to products.
PITR:
Do you think ease of use is becoming more
important with the rise of mobile workers who might
have to use machines they are not used to?
McNally:
Yes. To give you a couple of examples: we have
developed a WiFi Installer so that a home user can connect
their printer to WiFi with a maximum of two clicks – sometimes
just one click; and going forward, Dell products will all have
touchscreens very like the user interface on a smartphone. People
are used to capacitive touchscreens on their phones and we have
developed that on our products to make it really easy for people
to get the best out of them.
With Dell Document Hub, we have combined all the printer
utilities you get – the scan manager, print manager, toner
alerts – into one dashboard. It will also enable you to access
things like the cloud so you can have cloud repositories and
manage firmware updates from a simple dashboard console.
You can remove all those utilities and have them in one central
place, which makes things easier when you are setting up in an
unmanaged environment.
PITR:
Are you planning to recruit more dealers?
McNally:
If we feel the partner is right and we have mutual
goals, we will happily work with them particularly in the
managed print arena. We don’t have our own offering but we
see it as an important part of our business. We will also work
with partners that can offer an end-to-end solution because Dell
customers like our ‘document to data centre’ approach. There
shouldn’t be any reason why resellers don’t offer a Dell printer as
part of that offering.
...continued
HP has turned a spotlight on printer security with the announcement
that it will be incorporating self-healing security features into all new HP
LaserJet Enterprise and OfficeJet Enterprise X printers.
HP said it was incorporating the features because printers are often overlooked as
a security risk. Research by the Ponemon Institute shows that even though 64% of
IT managers think it likely that their printers are infected with malware, almost half
(47%) do not have a security policy that specifically applies to network-connected
printers.
The new features include:
•
HP Sure Start.
Already used to protect HP Elite PCs, HP Sure Start automatically
protects the deepest level of code that configures all hardware modules in the
printer. If it detects the BIOS code is compromised, it recovers using a safe,
hardware-protected version of the BIOS;
•
Whitelisting.
This automatically checks the signature of hardware components
and all protocols to ensure that only known firmware can be loaded and executed
on a printer; and
•
Run-time Intrusion Detection.
Developed in partnership with Red Balloon
Security, this provides in-device memory monitoring for malicious attacks while
the printer is running. If it sees a problem, it stops the printer and automatically
reboots the device back to a safe state.
Speaking at the launch of the printers, Patricia Tibis, Distinguished Fellow of the
Ponemon Institute, said: “People don't think of a printer as being nefarious actor on
the network, but it has actually become just like a PC: printers are smart, they are
intuitive, they think, they store, they forward, they have brains like a computer does.”
Ponemon research shows that one in 10 organisations has experienced a data
breach involving a network-connected printer. Moreover, 50% said that one was
likely or very likely to have occurred.
More than half (57%) said they expected the risk of data breaches to increase in
the next 12 months due to expanded use of mobile technologies (65%); increased
rate of malware infection (61%); more remote workers (60%); more network-
connected devices (53%); and increased user access (20%).
The first printers to include the new security features are the HP LaserJet
Enterprise M506 series, the HP LaserJet Enterprise MFP M527 series and the HP
Color LaserJet Enterprise MFP M577 series for workgroups of 5-15 users.
In addition to its security features, the new 500 series features low-melt HP
Colorsphere 3 and Precision Black toner. The use of low-melt toner has enabled HP
to reduce energy consumption on its devices by up to 53% and increase print speeds
and the first page to print by as much as 48%. At the same time, thanks to smaller,
more robust toner particles, HP has increased page yields by 33%.
It has also been able to shrink devices by as much as 40%, while improving
performance, for example, with auto duplex at the rated speed and a larger paper
supply. Throw in an attractive all-white design and ergonomic features like a slow-
close lid, easy slide-off glass platen and adjustable touch-screen and it is easy to see
why HP has won red dot design awards for the MFP M277 and the M553.
For more details about the printers and the Ponemon Institute research, see next
month's issue.
‘World’s most secure printers’
launched by HP
HP makes printer security a selling point
