The HP man continued, saying that legal counsel and HR companies “hold and share a wealth of commercially sensitive and protected data,” and a growing number of corporate firms are demanding that their law firms take steps to guard against security breaches and intrusions. “In addition, there are numerous regulations governing how professionals must use, store and access the information they hold. Failure to be compliant can lead to fines of potentially hundreds of thousands of euro and harm to the organisation’s reputation,” he said.
“Sectors which rely heavily on the availability, security and compliance of their documents are typically the biggest users of our service,” Stanley commented. This includes, he said, the “legal sector, pharmaceuticals, large technology companies and local government to name a few.”
Public sector
Datapac’s Kickham told TechPro that multinationals with Irish operations and the public sector “continue to be two key sectors that realise the clear benefits of having a managed print strategy and service in place.” However, looking at the company’s “growing managed print customer base,” Kickham said that there is a much broader range of customers on-board now from “every conceivable business model.” All of these businesses, he said, now realise what a managed deployment and subsequent managed service can do to reduce costs, streamline operations and achieve security compliance.
“From a technology point of view, some of the more significant innovations include more ‘tablet like’ interfaces on office print devices. Many office printers are also becoming smaller, faster, less noisy and use less electricity than their predecessors,” Rob Stanley, Ricoh
As for Jones of IPS, he said, “we see our market ranging through all market verticals both from SME to large enterprise accounts.” Tackling the former he that that use of “smart on-box or cloud-based print solutions” within the SME market is continuing to grow as many of these businesses have, through both necessity and choice, been early adopters of cloud technologies.
Reduced need
Looking towards the next 12 months, and moving away from the client and back towards the industry itself, Stanley was quick to admit that “new technologies will continue to reduce our need for paper.” The Ricoh Ireland business development manager said that while consumer devices like tablets are the most “obvious tools” in this respect, “more business focused technologies also exist with larger screens designed for collaboratively reviewing documents, editing in physical or virtual groups, and reading much as you would paper.”
Stanley continued, “Virtual whiteboards allow you to write up notes during meetings and brainstorms, across multiple offices where required, which are immediately saved, converted to digital text and shared. Such technology is transforming our working environment and reducing our need for paper. Business processes will become increasingly automated so that all information is digitised and can be accessed from anywhere at any time.”
Though he did add, that alongside all that, “another growing trend” will be to enable employees to more effectively and securely print from their own devices. “Standardisation of wireless printing is on the agenda for all of the major print vendors at present,” he added too. O’Reilly also said wireless printing will be a growth area, with companies becoming more interested in the idea of a device not having “to be on the corporate network to interface directly to the office printer.”
3D printing
For Ergo’s McGarrigle “3D printing is rapidly evolving as it becomes more mainstream and affordable.” Referring to Gartner figures which predict a rise in 3D printer shipments to 217,350 units this year, up 108,151 on 2014, he said “cheaper materials for 3D construction will become more available to the market as more companies will invest in the technology with the rise of units sold, through this the overall cost of the printer may stay at same price but the running costs may become much cheaper.”
The medical industry, he said, will benefit most from this “as the technology will allow for more prosthetics and benefits for their client base.” Kickham too, said that “additive manufacturing, or 3D Printing as it is more commonly known, will become more available and in demand as we look forward.” He also said that document and workflow solutions that enable multifunctional devices to, “simplify many time and resource consuming business processes will make more of an impact,” over the coming year.
“A managed print service is particularly important for the financial and legal sectors where the confidentiality of information is paramount,” Les O’Reilly, HP
Security
While McGarrigle also made the point that the next year will see “more focus” fixed upon security and cloud-based printing solutions. “These will become more affordable and easier to manage making more of an impact in the industry,” he predicted.
For IPS’ Jones, “emerging true ‘smart multifunction printers” (MFPs) which will ‘mirror’ the smart phone market are the development to watch out for. They will, he said, enable the client “to interrupt paper-based processes with capture, route and index of documents with solutions that do not require large IT infrastructures to maintain.” Jones was quick to add too that “it is not only technologies that need to make an impact.”
He said, “MPS consultants must now learn to understand the customer environment from a completely different perspective. The MPS consultant must have an understanding of cloud technologies, ERP, CRM solutions, business processes design and compliance.”
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