EFI PrintMe Emerges From Obscurity

Those of you who read this blog on a fairly regular basis may know that David and I have written a bit on the subject of mobile printing, notably from Smart Phones and Tablets. Our colleague Kin Lane, who is Mimeo's API Evangelist, joined forces with us this past winter to write a paper for TAGA, the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts, that provides an inventory of Cloud Printing technologies. The paper is primarily focused on Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print and HP ePrint, which are clearly the leaders in this area. That "semi-academic" treatise will be published in the TAGA 63rd Annual Technical Conference Proceedings, which will come out later in the summer. You can contact TAGA if you want a copy of it.

In addition to the things the "big three" are developing in this area, there are quite a few other smaller companies developing Cloud Printing technology and capabilities, and one we felt we had to at least mention in our paper was EFI. Unlike the three companies mentioned, EFI is not known for doing much in the mobile arena. But EFI actually invented the idea that has become the mobile component of "Cloud Printing", way back during the "dot com" era. They didn't use the term Cloud, because it hadn't been coined yet. Instead, they gave it a "fun dotcom" name, PrintMe. I'd venture to say that most people who ever knew about PrintMe don't know that it has continued to exist over the years since it's announcement in October 2001.



PrintMe was literally 10 years ahead of its time. It partnered EFI with leading companies like Adobe, who actually provided a button in Acrobat reader that connected to PrintMe, Sir Speedy, Xerox, and Yahoo, as well as early hotel Internet provider STSN (now iBAHN), and even Mimeo.com. For several reasons, including timing, the service never became as ubiquitous as would have befitted its innovative nature.

Perhaps in another post, we'll talk about all the reasons why PrintMe didn't achieve world domination the first time out, but let's focus on today and the future here. With the new excitement around the Cloud, and the emerging need for printing on mobile devices, it makes sense that EFI would restart marketing and make new investments in the development of this platform.

Originally, Printme was brought to market by a separate "Enterprise" team at EFI, with its own GM, etc. Today, according to a recent update from Cary Sherburne at Whattheythink.com, the technology is part of the Fiery group, led by Senior Vice President Toby Weiss. This should mean it will garner more resources, and be able to leverage EFI's world-leading technology, more than in the past 10 years.

In a press release from the original launch, PrintMe was described as “the first complete Internet printing solution that enables remote printing without requiring print drivers, cables or complex setup.” The company further described the solution as enabling "users to print documents from their personal computers, personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, two-way pagers and even cell phones by simply “dialing” in to any printer on the PrintMe Network.”

EFI has always been very forward-looking, and PrintMe is no exception. It was launched literally a decade ahead of its time. The message in that press release from so long ago is pretty much exactly what Google and HP are talking about in their Cloud Printing initiatives today. EFI could re-launch the service and pretty much just copy and paste the original press release into PR Newswire, with few edits!

PrintMe now appears to be poised to fulfill its original promise. A user sends their "print job" to PrintMe Cloud, and obtains a code which allows them to retrieve their output on a PrintMe enabled printer. This is similar to how other technologies are doing this now, although the need for a user to have a unique "code" that identifies their job, and requiring them to remember and enter that code somewhere is absent from other developer's implementations.

A unique feature of PrintMe is that it has a hardware component for the output device. EFI today says that "terminals" can be purchased for almost any copier/printer and can also be embedded in Fiery controllers. According to EFI, this makes the service brand agnostic, and allows it to work with any output device. Frankly I was surprised to read that this "feature" of the original service is still being offered today. In a world where every device is Internet-connected, and Printers have web browsers and touch screens, it seems a bit unnecessary and expensive to have additional hardware attached to a printer. Google Cloud Print, for example, offers similar support for legacy printers and can be supported with a tiny piece of software that can be embedded into any printer, as well. That same code snippet extends Google Cloud Print to other applications, as well, including opening it up to commercial printing applications-- something else EFI dabbled with back in the early days.

PrintMe is an enduringly cool idea and I am really looking forward to EFI's progress in this area. I hope they make the appropriate level of investment to get this adopted broadly because it is a huge opportunity. They invented this, and they deserve to capitalize on it. There is much more competition now from big companies who are similarly extremely innovative like EFI, so the bar has been raised.

EFI has proven over the years they are a tough competitor, so it's going to be interesting to see what they do!