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There is an unfortunate myth circulating the Australian printing industry that XMPie software only works with Xerox printers — I've had several conversations with different organisations over the past couple of months, who are surprised to learn that XMPie works with non-Xerox printers!
This rumour was probably spurred by Malcolm Auld's recent article in Print21 Direct, which states, "Since it [XMPie software] is a Fuji Xerox software, it is optimised to work with the company's base of printing companies. While that is the largest digital printing base in the country, it still leaves out a number of opportunities."
While Xerox may own XMPie, their technology is definitely not limited to printing on Xerox devices. In fact, there are a number of local XMPie users here in Australia who only have non-Xerox printers, including HP Indigo, Xeikon and NexPress.
I can't think of any VDP software today that is restricted to a specific vendor. Suppliers have woken up and realised that printers don't want to be tied to a specific vendor or platform. For example, DirectSmile only used to output JLYT (an HP Indigo proprietary file format), but has since expanded support to include PPML (which is now supported by all production printer suppliers). Also, Xerox opened their VIPP platform a few years ago through the VI Interpreter Open Edition licence, enabling VIPP/VPC projects to be interpreted by non-Xerox (CPSI-based) RIPs.
The future of VDP definitely isn’t limited to Xerox devices or any other vendor platform. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Posted on Thursday, 6 December 2007 at 8:54 AM | TrackBack: http://www.veedeepee.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/65