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Interview
continued...
they are in the middle of an
important print job. Instant
Ink addresses a lot of pain
points and at the same time it
addresses the cost piece. We
are pretty excited about it,”
Tierney said.
“This is a whole new
business model. It goes back
to cloud, mobility, big data and
security. They will change the
face of how IT in all its forms
is consumed and delivered.
Instant Ink and the cloud
deliver a totally new business
model. Will it include laser in
the future? It is too early to say.
Could it? Well, yes.”
The return of ink
HP claims Instant Ink
customers can save as
much as 70% on ink costs.
The actual level of savings
will depend on people using
their full page allowance and
maximising ink coverage, but
the message is clear: ink is
not only convenient but also
economical – an argument that
HP has long used in connection
with its Officejet Pro printers/
MFPs, which it promotes on the
basis that they provide colour
at twice the speed and half
the cost of comparable laser
devices.
Originally targeted at
consumers and micro
businesses, the Officejet
Pro range has recently been
expanded to meet the needs
of workgroups, with the Pro
X series, and more recently
enterprises and managed print
service customers, with the
HP Officejet Enterprise Colour
MFP X585 and the HP Officejet
Enterprise Colour X555.
Suitable for workgroups
of 5-15 people printing up
to 6,000 pages a month,
these new devices have the
same cost and productivity
advantages as other HP
business inkjets, but
with the added benefit of
enterprise-grade security,
fleet management and mobile
printing options. They have
the same user interface as 12
million HP Enterprise Laserjet
printers and come with HP
Laserjet FutureSmart firmware
and the HP Open Extensibility
Platform (OXP), which enables
solutions like HP Access
Control and HP Capture &
Route to be accessed through
the device.
HP Flow MFPs have high speed, dual head scanners and large
touchscreens for easy scan routing
HP Officejet Enterprise X:
enterprise-class functionality with
printing at up to twice the speed
and half the cost of lasers
The multifunctional model
is available in a scan-optimised
HP Flow bundle featuring a
dual-head scanner and best-
in-class scanning features for
faster, more accurate scanning
and document processing.
For Tierney, these new
products represent a real
challenge to the status quo
and run counter to what many
businesses have been taught.
“The big innovation in office
printing has been bringing ink
into the enterprise,” he said. “It
started with the Officejet Pro X
and, this year, with the OfficeJet
Enterprise platform we are
bringing ink into enterprise-
type environments. This isn’t
intuitive to a lot of people, as
for years most people have
been trying to take ink out of
their business and move into
departmental laser MFPs.”
While HP still has work to
do in educating the business
community about the merits of
business inkjets, Tierney says
that the results so far have
been very encouraging.
“The Officejet Pro X was
released last February and
in calendar Q4 it got to 10%
market share in the small work
team laser segment. If it was its
own vendor it would have been
number four in the market from
a standing start in February. We
were number one with colour
laser and the Officejet Pro X
would have been number 4. If
we achieve our share goal in
2014, the Pro X, on its own, will
be number 2 to HP LaserJet.”
When you add in Flow MFP
features, these device have
even more potential to disrupt
existing models.
“OfficeJet Enterprise and
Pro X are really disruptive
technologies that change the
dynamic of the laser MFP
market. If we are right and
scanning becomes more central
to the way people work today,
spending time at the device
scanning versus printing, I think
it is going to break the model
of let’s consolidate everything
down to one big A3 device
at the end of a floor. Getting
functionality back closer to
users, in smaller groups, a more
shared environment but not
having to make the trade-off in
cost: that’s the beauty of what
we think the ink in the Officejet
Enterprise does. It brings that
high end Laserjet functionality
at a cost per page that was
never available on a laser
device of a comparable size.”
Tierney added: “We are
convinced that over the next
number of years the way people
have been buying equipment or
services or supplies is going to
fundamentally shift and change
and we want to make sure we
have the assets to address it.”
