On December 7^th, HP announced the acquisition of print MIS provider HiFlex, serendipitously, the same day EFI announced the acquisition of German-based Alphagraph.

WhatTheyThink spoke with Jill Peters, HP’s Worldwide Press and Analyst Relations Manager, to gain more insight into HP’s strategy with this acquisition. Perhaps the most surprising aspect, not addressed in the HP release, is the fact that HiFlex was not acquired as part of HP’s Graphic Solutions Business (GSB), as one might have suspected. Rather, Peters indicates that the primary driver for the acquisition was HiFlex’s cloud-based web-to-print module. She states, “The acquisition will be reporting into the Laser Jet and Enterprise Solutions Business. The driver for the acquisition was enterprise printing solutions, not GSB.” That being said, Peters asserted that the HiFlex solutions will be available to GSB customers in the printing segment.

HP has other partnerships in the web-to-print and MIS arenas, which will continue, according to Peters, who added, “This does not change our strategy in the graphics printing business. We will continue to work with a variety of different partners, and we are not changing those relationships. In addition to those, we will now be able to offer solutions that are based on HiFlex technology to both our enterprise customers and print service providers.”

Peters indicated that more details will be forthcoming in the future relative to new solutions for enterprise cloud computing based on the HiFlex platform. The company plans to continue to support existing HiFlex customers as well as to offer them new solutions going forward.

When asked whether HP was looking for additional acquisitions in this space, Peters commented, “Our strategy is definitely to continue building out the cloud printing ecosystem, and whether that will be through acquisition or through solutions we develop internally, it is too soon to say. But we will definitely continue to expand in the whole cloud printing arena so that we can offer solutions to enterprise customers who want to send content via the cloud to internal or external print service providers. We also will continue to offer solutions for print service providers enabling them to capture web-to-print volume via the cloud. Ultimately, what we are doing is connecting content with capabilities, whether it is a consumer that wishes to print a photo book or a business printing marketing collateral. We want to enable content providers to use the cloud as the vehicle for connecting them with the companies that have the capability to produce that material.”

Stay tuned for more information as HP makes them available.