Tennant & Russell, LLC, a consulting company specializing in strategic moves for software companies within the printing industry, announced this morning the acquisition of Online Print Solutions (OPS), its client, by Electronics For Imaging, Inc., a world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation.  

OPS is a leading innovator in the areas of web-to-print, dynamic publishing and cross-media marketing solutions.  OPS brings a decade of experience developing and deploying applications developed specifically to manage the unique needs of corporate storefronts, retail sites and online design to variable data and cross-media solutions. Its customers include many commercial printers throughout North America, Europe and Asia. While financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, the transaction is not expected to be material to EFI's 2012 results.

"We were very pleased to be working with another solid company like OPS", said Tennant & Russell, President, James McCarthy. "The acquisition process can be very involved, time consuming and complicated, and we were delighted that we could help move the process very quickly from offer to closure.  Mark, Joanne and their team were a pleasure to work with. They have a strong company and will be a great addition to the EFI team."

"We are very pleased to bring OPS into our growing web-to-print customer community and combine our world-class offerings in the market," said Marc Olin, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EFI's Productivity Software division. "With our track-record of providing the industry's largest and most comprehensive cloud offering, EFI has seen web-to-print expand and become a standard way of doing business around the world. We see great potential in continuing to expand our offerings in web-to-print and further leverage our unique ability to provide an integrated workflow with our MIS systems and our industry-leading Fiery controllers."

OPS software will become part of EFI's Productivity Software portfolio. EFI intends to continue to offer both Digital StoreFront and OPS products to the market, and in the near future, integrate key OPS features and technologies supporting cross-media marketing and variable data printing into the EFI Digital StoreFront platform, as well as with EFI MIS software. EFI also plans to integrate the OPS platform into its industry-leading Fiery digital front ends, so that OPS clients may enjoy seamless connectivity to the wide range of Xerox, Ricoh, Canon, Konica Minolta, and other Fiery driven printers available on the market today. In addition, EFI plans to combine the two platforms over the coming years so that OPS and Digital StoreFront users will have an easy migration to a platform incorporating the best of both technologies. EFI will provide this new platform to all clients with current maintenance contracts on either system at that time.

"The OPS team and I are very excited about joining EFI, a clear leader in MIS/ERP and eCommerce software for print," said Mark McGowan, the founder of OPS. "We look forward to sharing our expertise in the areas of web-to-print, cross-media marketing, and variable data printing to enhance EFI products. We are committed to continuing to provide the next generation of web-to-print and marketing solutions."