It’s been a really interesting week chatting to vendors and the press about our new software and services package for inkjet. In case you missed it, we’ve called it Fundamentals because it combines essential software components and engineering expertise that press vendors need to build a Digital Front End.
What’s the big deal you might say? Well, The Times They Are A Changing to quote Bob Dylan both in terms of the progression of inkjet technology and the swing towards digital printing in the labels and packaging sector which is where we have focussed our initial offering of Fundamentals.
Thanks to our lengthy graphic arts experience – we’ve been supplying software to drive digital presses since 2002 – we are regularly approached by inkjet press vendors either to intervene at some point in an existing workflow or because they’re starting from a blank sheet of paper and need to figure out how to build a Digital Front End for a new press.
If they have an existing DFE a press vendor might be stuck on output quality, or maybe they can’t get the throughput in speed that they need. If they’re building a new press they might not know where to quickly source the components they need. Or often they can’t allocate enough engineering resource to the DFE when they need to. Plus it takes a very special skill set to know how to wire it all together.
How do we know all this? Because vendors tell us so. And Fundamentals is our response to this market demand. It offers best of breed software products with an engineering service that allows the press vendor to address their specific applications.
It will grow, of course. We are already looking at a Fundamentals software bundle for industrial inkjet for example. But the good news for press vendors is that we can do all of the above and then some!