President of HP Inc Canada, Mary Ann Yule, gives an insight to the profitability of the A3 market.
Channel Buzz reported on an article by Yule in which she stated that channel partners have “an enormous opportunity to capture a piece of a $55 billion (€49 billion) global market.” Yule also said that the A3 MFPs are now considered as part of IoT.
The article noted that MPS providers would benefit from the new technology such as the ability to “monitor and report on their own health, performance and security status” which allows providers to analyse the data and take action and that this would add profitability to channel partners offering A3 MFPs.
A3 vendors should promote the features of secure data and that less than two percent of the worlds printers are properly secure while solution providers should look for features that “protect endpoint devices through layered security” and that some A3 MFPs have BIOS and firmware that operate when the printer boots up and if it finds that the system has been corrupted will revert to safe mode as well as looking at user identities.
The article also suggested that success as an A3 solution provider “rests on value added services” and to look for vendors that are “making big investments in this area” which should include “rolling out new remote configuration and management capabilities, integration with data collection tools and device-specific training programmes”.
Those who are considering entering the MPS market should look to vendors who use cloud software and services that that integrate with a cross-section of printing and other end point devices customers are using” as well as products that allow for “custom control panel integration and support for remote configuration and remediation such as remote firmware upgrades and reboots”.
Yule also said that channel partners need to know what their customers are printing on a day to day basis and whether mono or colour to be able to offer affordable A3 printers with quality colour options as well as doing their own research into what each model offers.
As an example Yule said that the A3 portfolio from HP Inc includes “inkjets featuring PageWide technology of up to 80 pages per minute and that partners need to work out “performance to cost ratio” and energy efficiency.
In conclusion the article said that this is the IoT era and that A3 printers will evolve within this era and to watch the vendors that are investing and improving programmes.