EFI™ (Nasdaq:EFII) and Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. today announced that Fiery® technology is powering the Konica Minolta bizhub® PRESS C8000 Color Digital Press, providing the highest processing power available for demanding production printing environments that have complex files, dynamic variable data jobs and heavy workloads. The blazing fast Fiery IC-3600 server comes bundled with EFI's most advanced job preparation workflow tools to maximize productivity and throughput.

"Partnering with EFI to power our next generation of color digital presses with the IC-3600 enables customers to realize tremendous performance gains in high-volume print environments with unparalleled speed, color quality and workflow enhancing features," said Kevin Kern, senior vice president of marketing, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. "Customers can count on Konica Minolta for performance that enables them to keep up with the demands for faster processing and quicker job turnaround."

"Together, Konica Minolta and EFI have been delivering market-leading solutions to a wide array of digital print providers for years, and recently received one of the first IDEAlliance Digital Press Certifications that certifies the Fiery controller paired with the C8000 press meets the highest industry standard for color," said John Henze, vice president of Fiery marketing, EFI. "The advanced Fiery hardware platform matches the impressive speed of the C8000 to create a high-throughput digital press that can handle the most complicated of jobs with superior quality."

The Fiery IC-3600 offers a robust, open, flexible and scalable variable data printing solution, supporting all leading VDP formats including PPML 2.2 and VPS 1.5. Fiery technology optimizes PDF and PS to guarantee printing at engine rate speeds, and works with all leading variable data print (VDP) composition software for seamless VDP workflows.

"We recently decided to upgrade our Konica Minolta press to the bizhub PRESS C8000 with a Fiery server, and during the testing we were extremely impressed with the speed — a large VDP file that took one hour to RIP on our old system took only 10 minutes!" said Oliver Zurfluh, manager of sports services at Datasport. Based in Switzerland, Datasport is a leading international service provider for sporting events, and as one of their services they print thousands of labels and other items each year. "This high level of performance, together with many other powerful Fiery features, means we can deliver even more top quality work for our customers," said Zurfluh.

Fiery servers are a great fit with EFI's market-leading portfolio of print MIS and workflow solutions, including PrintSmith™, Pace™, Radius and Monarch management systems and the EFI Digital StoreFront® web-to-print platform.

The award-winning Fiery Command WorkStation® 5.3 job management solution and user interface centralizes the entire print workflow, connecting to all Fiery servers on the network. Command WorkStation (CWS) reduces operator mistakes and waste, while shortening learning curves with an intuitive and flexible drag & drop operation. The Fiery Image Enhance Visual Editor (IEVE), a feature of CWS 5.3, allows editing and optimizing of each image in a job without the need for the operator to go back to the native design file, saving time and reducing costs.

Available standard on the bizhub Press C8000, Fiery Graphic Arts Package, Premium Edition provides expert users with professional tools for managing color, proofing and controlling workflow. The solution meets the color requirements of demanding customers and ensures accurate and repeatable color every time by letting operators have total control of color output quality.

Comprehensive imposition and composition tools come standard in Fiery SeeQuence Suite. Fiery SeeQuence Impose and Fiery SeeQuence Compose shorten job preparation times and last minute corrections by enabling users to do all document imposition, composition, and content editing with one intuitive user interface. A 3D preview capability further reduces waste by allowing operators to see exactly how the job will print on the digital press.

In these demanding print environments, operators need to be able to easily perform late-stage edits — colors may need to be adjusted, documents imposed into booklets, and files preflighted or postflighed to ensure the highest quality before printing. The Fiery server provides all these "late-stage make ready" capabilities, without the need for additional applications, making it an ideal solution for high volume, demanding, operator-led print environments.

This offering is available now through Konica Minolta Direct and Authorized Dealers. For more information on Fiery IC-3600, visit www.efi.com or contact 800-877-7177.