Andy Stento
US IPG Enterprise Marketing Director

Over 100 Public Sector customers braved the snowy weather in our nation's capital yesterday to hear the latest from HP's Imaging and Printing group. I was there also - and pleased to see the enthusiastic response to HP's presentations on the recently introduced HP CM8060 MFP with Edgeline Technology, Secure Printing, and Print Management offerings. Several of the customers I spoke with confirmed that they are printing more - and copying less in the office - as reported by IDC's continued tracking of this office trend. Do you see this playing out in your office as well? And how is this trend impacting your office equipment procurement decisions?  It was also affirming to hear that customers are using their MFP devices primarily for 8.5 x 11 printing, as also reported by IDC, and, that customers are truly recognizing that many of their large departmental devices and features are largely underutilized causing them to commit to smaller, printing centric MFP devices upon lease expiration of their existing copiers.

IDC's research has played a large role in HP's MFP product development strategy and, thankfully, customers have responded enthusiastically to our approach of providing "printer based" MFPs that have the right feature set to handle the majority of our customers’ print, copy, fax and scanning needs at breakthrough prices. The recently announced HP CM8060 MFP with Edgeline Technology is the latest addition to HP's MFP product lineup. It was fun to see customers’ reactions to the disruptive color pricing for this device, as well as the response to the award-winning control panel - including live video for end-user friendly diagnosing of problems should they occur. Have you seen this product? If not, I'd highly recommend visiting http://www.hp.com/go/edgeline to learn more about this amazing MFP, and potentially even order a demonstration if you are in the market for a breakthrough, departmental color device.

Changing gears, I was duly impressed with the number of Federal, State and Educational customers who have internalized the risk that unsecured network printers and MFPs can play and have already taken action to secure these devices on their network. How is your organization addressing this security risk? Are your printing and MFP devices secure? As noted in this Computer World article, security breaches through network based peripherals are becoming more and more prevalent.

Finally, several customers mentioned to me yesterday how they are managing their printing environments more efficiently with HP's print management tools - including the recently updated HP Web JetAdmin 10.0 and HP’s Universal Print Driver. HP’s Web JetAdmin is powerful management software that can alleviate the majority of printing related help desk calls that your IT organization receives - so check it out and download it for free. In addition, Universal Print Driver will free up your organization from the task of managing multiple print drivers. I'd encourage you to check out this innovative application for consolidating your printer drivers into one. Let us know what you think.

Technorati tags: enterprise printing, edgeline, edgeline technology, hp, Hewlett Packard, multi-function printer, MFP, web jet admin, universal print driver