PRINTITRESELLER.UK 37 OPINION Henning Volkmer, Chief Evangelist ezeep and President and CEO ThinPrint Inc believes that AI will be the dominating topic for anything IT in 2024 What will AI print in 2024? world in a meaningful and useful way and bridge gaps between digital silos. AI can send messages to people’s devices and with printing it can interact with inanimate objects as well. The label AI might read on an object to identify it had to be printed. AI can also print other information so an inanimate object can be made to do something like being shipped, reclassified with a new label that AI can read for a new process, information about it can be provided to a person and more. A focal point for printing With or without AI, a focal point for printing in 2024 will be printing that doesn’t come from traditional user facing apps like Word or Excel. Connecting CRM, ERP, EMR/EHR and the other myriad of applications we have moved to the cloud to the offices many of us will return to at least a few days a week will be crucial to keep our workflows running. The challenge here is two-fold: One, we have to ensure there is secure, private network connectivity between the cloud-based applications without having to connect everything we use to an expensive, difficult-to-use VPN. Two, we have to make sure the applications can translate their data to the printer’s language so a true-to-format, highquality printout can be printed. Managing printing in an office environment is still not easy. Does everyone have the correct driver for the printer they are looking to print to? Do they know how to connect/map the printer to their device? Can they print to the office when they are working from home to keep workflows running? Is sufficient security in place to protect sensitive data? What about smartphones and tablets? Cloud connected One final trend I’d like to mention is the no-code/low-code trend led by companies like Zapier or Make. These platforms allow everyday users to created automated processes that connect the different cloud services they are using so that if something happens in one application (e.g., an order is submitted to an online shop) then something happens in another application (e.g., a shipping label is printed, and the CRM is updated to reflect the customer’s order). Applying ink or toner to a page is a process that will always remain on-premise, but the processes of connecting applications to printers, making printers available to users, ensuring printer drivers are available and the print data is processed with the right printer driver, ensuring secure handling of the data printed, simplifying administration, removing costly print servers, offsetting the carbon footprint of printing are processes that should be a service provided from the cloud. AI and many if not most of our daily applications are run in and powered by the cloud. Printing is an important connection between the cloud and the physical world and in order to make that connection, printing needs to be based in the cloud, too. That way, cloud printing customers and their organisations save hundreds per user every year, ditch print servers and printer drivers while minimising risk to networks and printers. For all devices, apps and desktops. www.thinprint.com At first, it might seem wild to combine printing and AI into the same thought, but bear with me for a moment. Most IT vendors, especially the larger ones will make the 2024 innovation cycle all about the addition of AI to their products and solutions. Some of those additions will be available to all customers to make products more capable and justify continued maintenance or subscription payments. Other features will be paid add-ons, useful to the customer and helpful to the vendor to fund the resources needed to make AI work. To date, we have only scratched the surface of what AI can do, the spotlight has been on generative AI like ChatGPT, Bard, Bing etc. and the content these products can generate. But in order to make my way back to printing, I would like to draw your attention to AI’s ability to analyse patterns, connect data dots and in combination with the right APIs make one (enterprise) app do something with another (enterprise) app. And that is when AI will add printing to its list of abilities, and – more importantly – requirements. For example, a customer might submit a warranty claim for a broken product through an AI automated customer service interface, AI determines the product needs to be replaced and releases the packing list and shipping label to a warehouse. In another scenario AI might ‘keep an eye’ on performance data of manufacturing equipment, determine preventative maintenance is needed, release a pick list for spare parts, a work order along with instructions on how to complete the repair to different printers in the maintenance department so a team can be dispatched to ensure the machine is fixed before it interrupts production. Bridge gaps between digital silos This list could go on and on but the point I am trying to make is that printing allows AI to interact with our physical Henning Volkmer
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