CHICAGO--Sept. 10, 2007--IKON Office Solutions, the world's largest independent channel for document management systems and services, and EFI, the world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, today announced the Fiery PRO80 color digital print server for the 65 page-per-minute (ppm) IKON CPP(R) 650 digital press and the newly announced IKON CPP(R) 550, a 55 ppm color printing system. Designed to meet the demands of production environments, corporate reprographic departments, quick print environments and commercial printing operations, the Fiery PRO80 operates at twice the RIP speed of its successful predecessor model, and is the first digital front end to deliver Microsoft(R) Vista driver support. The Fiery PRO80 will debut at the 2007 Graph Expo, a print industry trade show conference, held September 9 through 12 in Chicago - EFI Booth 3000.
Based on the Fiery technology renowned for its intuitive user experience and winner of the 2007 BERTL's Best Award for Innovation, the new Fiery PRO80 features a new hardware design and a unique Visual Workflow that optimizes productivity for IKON customers by providing job progress at-a-glance. In addition, built in "how-to" guides address a wide range of operator expertise and the Fiery's ability to deliver flawless unparalleled color quality, outstanding performance, seamless workflow management, and new revenue stream opportunities.
"Over our long successful history together, EFI has delivered products that help our customers experience improved competitiveness, efficiency and profitability, and with the Fiery PRO80, EFI has advanced the industry-leading Fiery technology that's been extremely popular with our IKON CPP series customers," explains Brian Edwards, Senior Vice President of U.S. Sales and Services, IKON Office Solutions. "Designed to deliver maximum productivity, color quality, and profit potential, the Fiery PRO80 is a perfect solution for our customers in production environments."
"As a result of our most recent collaboration with IKON, customers will benefit from the combination of the IKON CPP 650's outstanding image quality and state-of-the-art Fiery technology from EFI," said Jim Kano, Vice President, OEM sales, EFI. "The Fiery PRO80 is designed to help print service providers in production environments print to win, by improving their ability to print more, higher quality pages."
Featuring a RIP speed that is twice as fast as the previously available Fiery for the IKON CPP series, the Fiery PRO80 provides advanced queue management capabilities designed to eliminate bottlenecks and minimize downtime, resulting in enhanced productivity and improved profitability.
The Fiery PRO80 utilizes MS Office Filters for Hot Folders that automate job submission, the powerful Visual Workflow, industry-leading open, flexible VDP workflow, and expert-level tools for graphic arts professionals that further ensure that customers get the most out of their IKON CPP series.
The Fiery PRO80 has the ability to produce perfectly bound books on demand at top speed on the IKON CPP 550 or 650 through the Booklet Maker 3.0, a workflow wizard to navigate and select booklet options. And to address the varying levels of expertise among operators, Fiery PRO80 features CWS How To. From the intuitive Command WorkStation (CWS) interface, users have web access to learn the entire functionality of the Fiery, from the most basic to the most complex workflows.
Underscored by EFI's being the only company to pass the stringent Altona Test Suite benchmark, the Fiery PRO80 enables most accurate, predictable color. Featuring EFI Fiery ColorWise(R), the EFI in-RIP color management system, the Fiery PRO80 delivers color that is consistent across applications, computer platforms, color spaces, and color file formats.
The powerful Fiery PRO80 also delivers new revenue stream opportunities such as high-value variable data printing (VDP), as the Fiery offers the most VDP options of any digital print server in the industry. EFI has forged partnerships with the leading third-party personalization software providers and supports such VDP languages as industry standard PPML (Personalized Print Markup Language), Fiery FreeForm(TM), and a host of legacy proprietary languages, ensuring that the Fiery platform readily integrates into IKON customers' existing workflows and delivers consistency regardless of whether the job is VDP or non-VDP.
In fact, with the Fiery open platform and compliance with industry standards such as JDF (Job Definition Format), PDF (Portable Document Format), and PPML, the Fiery PRO80 seamlessly integrates into customers' overall print shop operations, serving as a gateway to third-party technologies, and EFI solutions such as Colorproof(TM) XF for proofing and with EFI Print MIS solutions for optimal business operations management.
A unique modular structure ensures that Fiery PRO80 customers readily meet their present needs and are able to expand the system with optional packages that can easily handle more complex printing requirements to meet future needs.
Availability
The Fiery PRO80 for the IKON CPP 650 will be shown at EFI Graph Expo Booth 3000 and is available for order throughout the United States and Canada. More information can be found at http://www.ikon.com or by calling 1-888-ASK-IKON.