EFI Building Important Industry Presence with Connect

By Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor

July 14, 2005 -- Having had an opportunity to reflect on the information that EFI and its partners shared with the media and users during Connect 2005, EFI's 6th annual users' conference, held in Miami Beach, it strikes me how large this annual event has become and the increasing cross-section of the industry it has come to represent. While it started, of course, as the users’ group for Printcafe’s print MIS solutions, it has now grown far beyond that in just the two short years EFI has been driving the event, and it will continue to grow, according to Guy Gecht, EFI’s CEO.

This year's conference was attended by 1,200 people, the largest number of attendees in the conference's history, including members of the press from publications around the world. WhatTheyThink published an overview of the activities of the first few days of the conference during the event, including the keynote address by famed astronaut Captain James Lovell.

Next year, Connect will be back in Las Vegas , at the Venetian in early May, and Gecht hopes to see at least 1,500 attendees and more partners, bolstered by the company’s plan to incorporate formal Fiery and VUTEk user groups into the event. Not only has Connect become an important networking and educational venue for printers and vendors alike, but the scope will now cover the gamut of the printing industry, from packaging and flexo to superwide format and the office/quick/digital printing worlds, in addition to the original core of general commercial and packaging printers.

As EFI has assembled its portfolio through both development and acquisition, the primary challenge, as it would be for any company going down that path, is to assemble a range of diverse organizations and technologies into some semblance of a unified whole. At this year’s Connect, based on conversations with users and partners, as well as with EFI executives and the media-specific presentations I attended, I could begin to see it coming together, even the most recent acquisition of VUTEk. The disparate parts are melding into a unified whole in some interesting ways. Now the real challenge for EFI will be in making sure its sales and marketing efforts reflect an easily understandable and holistic go-to-market strategy.

In the general session on Day One, Marc Olin, VP/General Manager of EFI’s Commercial Printing Systems, spent time going through each of EFI’s software offerings, giving the audience an overview of all of the improvements that have been made in releases of the various products just prior to Connect, at Connect, and continuing through Print 05. He also shared the latest news on Fiery and OneFlow, as well as Balance, a product designed to network Fiery color devices and non-Fiery Black & White devices, including a color splitting capability. Olin indicated that EFI will be JDF enabling Balance this summer to create a connection point between digital devices and MIS solutions, saying it will work like AutoCount does on analog devices. A live demo during his talk showed the real-time monitoring capability Balance offers to better enable the management of digital devices.

Olin announced an array of impressive improvements to the MIS packages. For more detail, you can read the press releases on WhatTheyThink or visit www.efi.com. The bottom line is that significant progress has been made on the company’s goal of building a common development architecture for its Web and print MIS solutions while still maintaining the identities of the original systems. This approach makes it much easier to deploy new features and functionality more quickly across the various solutions. To the extent EFI can continue to leverage a common development platform across its entire portfolio, these enhancements are likely to roll out more quickly.

Printchannel, acquired by Printcafe prior to its own acquisition by EFI, is still kicking around with about 150 faithful print service provider users. EFI expressed its intent to continue support for the product until, at some time in the future, it makes sense to migrate these loyal users to a new platform. This is, in my opinion, a smart investment on the part of EFI in customer loyalty and is sure to pay dividends in the end.

Fiery, of course, continues to be enhanced, especially as it relates to functionality important to the graphic arts industry. Expect to see some interesting announcements there at Print 05. And the company’s proofing solutions, with over 40,000 customers worldwide, widen the target market to include not only commercial printers and the corporate market, but also ad agencies and newspapers. Interestingly, the company has no specific plans for implementing monitor proofing solutions, other than PDFs displayed on calibrated monitors. With the are enhanced annotation and other capabilities being added to PDF, as well as the increased ease of calibrating computer monitors, there is certainly a place for this level of solution. But it would seem to make sense for the company to invest in more sophisticated offerings in this arena. Hardcopy proofing is not going away anytime soon, but there are those who believe that the adoption of monitor proofing will soon begin to rapidly escalate and, according to one industry pundit, “will change the world, allowing closer liaison with creatives and showing them early in the process what can be expected and what they perhaps can’t achieve.” This is something to be prepared for; the link between creatives and Production is one area that many industry participants continue to struggle with.

And the company’s workflow products and JDF enablers continue to develop as well, with nearly 200 installations of OneFlow in its various channels to date, as an example. It is in this area that EFI, with its acquisition of VUTEk, can also perhaps play a leading role in the superwide format market, which to date has little, if any, workflow offered by the manufacturers of these devices. At least one major customer was already making this connection prior to VUTEk’s acquisition by EFI, having had large purchases from both companies underway at the time the deal was announced. Like any other part of our industry, to the extent the production process can be streamlined and automated, thus increasing efficiency, the service providers will be stronger and more profitable.

It is, overall, a pretty interesting picture. EFI seems to be good at the cultural integration required to successfully assimilate acquisitions. And the company also seems to be pretty good at finding, developing and retaining a broad base of appropriate partners. Connect provides its development community with a target for announcement and/or release of new products and capabilities. And it appears that an increasing number of users will take the opportunity to attend this event next year and beyond to learn how they can better leverage their technology portfolio, even beyond EFI’s offerings, to improve their profit picture and remain a viable and growing part of a dynamic, rapidly evolving industry.

This report was written by Cary Sherburne. She can be reached via email at cary@sherburneassociates.com, online at www.sherburneassociates.com and by telephone at 603-430-5463.

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