HP Polishes Multifunctions

Hewlett-Packard Co. is expanding its Total Print Management strategy for the enterprise with new multifunction printing devices and management software.

The Palo Alto, Calif., company last week unveiled several multifunction devices that will ship later this month.

For enterprise workgroups, HP's LaserJet 4345mfp can print and copy at 45 ppm (pages per minute) as well as scan and fax. Pricing starts at $2,599.

Also new are the LaserJet 9040mfp and 9050mfp, which can print and copy at 40 and 50 ppm, respectively, as well as scan and fax. With higher duty cycles and more paper-handling capabilities than the 4345mfp, these models are geared for larger enterprise workgroups. Pricing starts at $9,999 for each.

HP also rolled out a new color multifunction device, the $12,549 LaserJet 9500mfp, which can print and copy in color at 24 ppm as well as scan and fax.

With the new products, HP is trying to help customers control printing and imaging costs.

HP's Imaging and Printing Group is shifting its focus toward offerings that combine services and hardware. Click here to read more.

"They really want to significantly change the cost structure of their printing and imaging environment and to improve the productivity of their knowledge workers," said Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HP's Imaging and Printing Group, at an event in Frankfurt, Germany, to unveil the new offerings. "Customers ... want a significant, maximum return on IT investments. In fact, a lot of these customers did not know how much they spend on the printing and imaging environment."

The University of Lincoln, in Lincoln, England, which installed 85 LaserJet 9000mfp machines across its campus in September 2003, reduced printing and imaging costs by 20 percent in the past year. "We had an aging, diverse copier fleet, and we also had queues and availability problems," said Andrew Wheal, the university's director of learning and information services, at the HP event."In the words of one student, printing was 'quite chaotic,' and output was being lost. We also had a management problem. Printing was free, so students did quite a good deal of it, and we saw a lot of waste."

Multifunction devices enabled the university to "pool our printing, where, rather than printing to one device, this allows students to print to a pool, so they could walk up to any machine on campus, key in their details and print their output," said Wheal. The university reduced document output volume from 20 million to 16 million, and paper usage was reduced by one-third.

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