DUSSELDORF, Germany - January 29, 2004 - EFI, the world leader in digital imaging and print management solutions for commercial and enterprise printing, today announced plans to showcase its newest line of Fiery print servers at Drupa in May. The power-packed Fiery S300 and Fiery S500 servers are designed to drive mid-range and high volume production print engines at full speed. The Fiery Q4500 is available for color production class engines and digital presses. Also included in the Drupa server line-up will be the Fiery QX9000 server, the fastest Fiery in the world, which is specifically designed to drive the new Kodak Versamark 2000 page-per-minute, full color variable data ink jet printer. "These powerful servers deliver impressive performance and make them the solution of choice for mission critical, production print environments," said Guy Gecht, CEO, EFI. "EFI's Fiery server sets new industry standards with unmatched output, extensive variable date support, powerful production workflow management features and the familiar Command Workstation interface." The Fiery S300, S500 and Q4500 servers offer exceptional performance and color quality with the comprehensive Fiery System software, which was named Best Graphic Arts Color Software in the BERTL's Best(tm) 2003 Digital Office Awards. Key new features to Fiery System 5.5 include: The Bertl Award winning Command WorkStation(tm) for efficient management and manipulation of jobs; ColorWise for flexible controls to achieve the highest quality color output; and Fiery Scan for feature-rich scans that can be emailed, faxed, FTP'd or stored on a local hard drive. These new Fierys are also EFI Balance compatible, boosting productivity commercial and production environments. EFI's industry-leading variable data printing (VDP) capabilities are available for a complete VDP production workflow. EFI's flexible and open architecture allows users to choose any authoring tool and create static and variable elements. EFI offers the most extensive range of VDP languages, such as Fiery FreeForm(tm) and industry standard PPML, and a host of proprietary languages. Additional productivity-enhancing tools maximize throughput and streamline VDP workflow. Social and Health Services (SHS), an American based Marketing and Communication services company matched a Fiery Q4500 server with a Xerox DocuColor iGen3 Digital Production Press for speed, power and the familiar Command WorkStation interface. "Our experience with the Fiery has been great! The color quality right out of the box is the best there is and the interface is something our staff is used to - it's really easy to use. So to me it's a no-brainer," said Lewis D. Eigen, president of SHS. "It has increased our efficiency and profit margins but, what's more important, the Fiery allows us to deliver better customer service. We don't have to keep going back and forth to get approvals on quality. Along with saving us time, it's saving our customers' valuable time. That makes us easier to deal with." The Fiery Q4500 is built to drive color variable data at full engine speed regardless of print job complexity using dual Xeon Pentium 4 CPUs running at 2.8 Ghz and offers support for Gigabit Ethernet networking. The production class Fiery processes variable data print jobs at high speeds and offers extensive workflow tools to enhance productivity such as imposition functionality for VDP jobs, enhanced resource management, and subset and record-level finishing for automating production. The Fiery Q4500 currently drives the Xerox DocuColor iGen3(tm) Digital Production Press. Additional Fiery System 5.5 software features for the Fiery S300, S500 and Q4500 include: - EFI Impose(tm) (formally DocBuilder Pro) - EFI's PDF based imposition tool enabling operators to edit and assemble entire documents before RIPping the fileGraphics Arts Package - a suite of precision color management tools for graphic arts professionals - EFI Color Profiler - a color measurement solution that enables the creation of ICC profiles with CMYK digital printers - Fiery WebTools(tm) - for ultimate control in remote workflow management - Fiery Driver 2.0 - a flexible and efficient way to submit and monitor print jobs from a single, intuitive interface - Fiery networking technology - for seamless connectivity to the most popular network protocols - EFI Data Center Package - a program for host printing IPDS in IBM Mainframe and AS/400 environment EFI's feature rich Fiery servers offer leading edge technology combined with speed and an intuitive user interface to help customers achieve high quality results in high volume printing environments. To see EFI's server solutions please visit the company's booth at drupa in Hall 4, stands B34 & B40.