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EFI acquires Streamline Development

Press release from the issuing company

[Be sure to see extended coverage of this on Print CEO]

Foster City, California - Electronics For Imaging, Inc., a world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, today announced that it has acquired Streamline Development, LLC ("Streamline"). Streamline is the provider of PrintStream ERP/MIS software focused on mailing and fulfillment services for the printing industry.

"As our market continues to evolve, we are committed to providing a portfolio of industry leading products allowing customers to choose the right solution for their environment with the consistency of delivery needed for long term success," said Marc Olin, GM of EFI's Advanced Professional Print Software division ("APPS").

The addition of Streamline's customer base and core technology of PrintStream, will allow EFI an even greater focus on providing the industry's most preferred solutions.

"While PrintStream is the first product we have acquired as part of our new consolidation strategy, we will be actively seeking out additional Print ERP/MIS solutions world-wide to consolidate." added Olin. "By concentrating our investment and efforts on Monarch, Radius, Pace and PrintSmith, we can insure that the largest development and support teams in the industry are delivering the best possible solutions to give our clients the best chance to succeed in today's challenging business environment."

"The PrintStream team and I are very excited about joining EFI, a leader in ERP/MIS," added Laurence Snyder, CEO of Streamline. "We look forward to sharing our expertise in the areas of mailing and fulfillment requirements to enhance EFI products."

PrintStream (now "EFI PrintStream") has several key features and technologies including direct mail and warehouse management/fulfillment tools. EFI will leverage these strengths by offering the PrintStream Warehouse Management/Fulfillment module as an add-on module to a number of EFI's existing ERP/MIS products. In addition, Laurence Snyder, the foremost expert on mailing and fulfillment requirements in the printing industry, as well as the rest of the PrintStream team, are now part of the EFI family, and will assist in the development of EFI's core platforms going forward. EFI PrintStream will continue to be supported, but no longer offered to new customers. Instead, EFI will offer new clients these four ERP/MIS platforms:

- EFI Monarch - for larger single and multi-plant operations looking for full workflow automation with specialization in publication, book, direct mail, transactional and large commercial printing operations;

- EFI Pace - for mid-market digital, offset, hybrid, wide format and specialty printing operations;

- EFI PrintSmith - for on-demand, copy shop and small commercial operations;

- EFI Radius - for labels, folding cartons and flexible packaging operations.

EFI has historically supported all of its ERP/MIS offerings for many years even after it stopped actively selling them. For example, the PSI, Logic and Covalent software systems are all legacy ERP/MIS applications that EFI continues to support. For PrintStream clients that wish to move to a new platform, EFI will be offering special incentives to encourage them to transition to one of our four platforms, as well as transition assistance to help make the move as seamless as possible.

The EFI annual user conference, Connect, will now include a track for PrintStream customers, covering detailed roadmap information about upcoming releases and what new features and functions are planned over the coming year. Connect takes place April 26-29 at Wynn Las Vegas and more information is available at www.efi.com/connect.

Discussion

By Clint Bolte on Feb 24, 2011

EFI has put agonizing effort into trying to link any of its Print MIS systems into mailing and/or fulfillment business applications and failed miserably. PrintStream, as the name implies, started w Print and immediately created data bridges to both FF and mail so that fully integrated jobs can be seamlessly tracked, costed, and invoiced.

EFI has never seemed to be able to integrate best of industry apps from/to any of its PrtMIS packages. So it will be interesting to see if they can figure out how Streamline Solutions FF & Mail can play nice with any of their PrtMIS beginning with PrintSmith and heading north.

It would be a boon if they could do it!

 

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