Philadelphia, PA - Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta), a leading provider of advanced imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop, and EFI, a world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, today announced that Fiery technology is powering the new bizhub PRESS C8000 from Konica Minolta. Ideal for meeting the unique needs of commercial print, print for pay and in-plant markets, the Fiery IC-306 server delivers the highest performance in its class for demanding operator-led environments, superior color, strong Variable Data Printing (VDP) capabilities, intuitive job management and JDF workflows to increase return on equipment investment for Konica Minolta customers. This unique combination will be on display in the Konica Minolta booth (#1324) at the ON DEMAND Conference & Expo taking place April 20-22 in Philadelphia.

"Once again, our industry-leading Fiery server is paired with the latest powerhouse press from Konica Minolta," said John Henze, vice president of Fiery marketing, EFI. "We are providing customers in demanding production environments with the latest productivity-boosting features to reduce job handling time and waste, new color control capabilities for best–in-class color for the first and every page, and job management tools to ensure operational efficiency."

"Customers in high volume environments are poised to realize tremendous performance capabilities with the bizhub PRESS C8000 featuring Fiery server's color quality and workflow enhancing features," said Kevin Kern, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. "The Fiery IC-306 server is the ideal solution for this new digital press, and we are again pleased to offer the efficiency, quality and reliable functionality that EFI promises to ensure that our customers can always count on Konica Minolta to meet their digital imaging needs."

The Fiery server has intuitive and integrated make-ready tools so that document management and preparation can be performed quickly and effectively with minimal waste. The Fiery Command WorkStation 5 job management solution and user interface centralizes the entire print workflow, connecting to all Fiery servers on the network. The advanced queue management capabilities eliminate bottlenecks and minimize downtime, raising the productivity and profit potential on every job.

Embedded JDF technology resident on the Fiery server enables seamless and powerful integration with third-party prepress, other workflow applications, and EFI web-to-print and MIS solutions. Customers can easily integrate their JDF compliant applications with their Fiery-driven workflow without the need for additional software or hardware.

EFI's VDP solutions for the C8000 offer scalable tools for producing effective one-to-one marketing campaigns, and lead the print industry in speed, ease-of-use and flexibility. The optimized solutions work with all industry and legacy languages, including PPML.

With this release, customers have new scalability with the most popular Fiery options, including Color Profiler Suite (CPS), Fiery SeeQuence Suite, and Graphic Arts Package, Premium Edition. Fiery Color Profiler Suite provides complete color quality control at every stage of the printing workflow. CPS offers its users simple, yet professional functionality that ensures color accuracy and consistency, while increasing productivity and return on investment. Integration of profile making directly into the Fiery-driven printer reduces the time needed to optimize color quality and decreases the possibility for errors while enabling color matching of multiple engines in a production environment.

Fiery SeeQuence Suite is comprised of document composition and imposition functions that simplify and automate labor intensive document preparation tasks via a newly redesigned interface that is more integrated and intuitive. Fiery SeeQuence Impose and Fiery SeeQuence Compose work independently or in a tightly integrated workflow through Fiery Command WorkStation, allowing operators to accurately set-up jobs and soft-proof.

Another popular option available to bizhub PRESS C8000 users is the Fiery Graphic Arts Package, Premium Edition, which provides expert users with professional tools for managing color, proofing and controlling workflow. The integrated solution meets industry standards and ensures accurate and repeatable color every time by letting operators have total control of color output quality. The newly integrated FOGRA control bar is just one example of how users can check and validate print output for conformance to common industry standards such as SWOP and Gracol.

The Fiery Fiery IC-306 and other EFI solutions designed for Konica Minolta customers are available now through Konica Minolta's North American direct sales, authorized dealer and value-added reseller channels.