Management Print Services: Toshiba and Preo Partner

Toshiba is partnering with Preo in an effort to promote print management tools. The tools apparently are designed to help businesses manage printing, save on printing costs, and go ‘green’ by reducing printers’ environmental impact. Is this part of the larger managed print services trend? Here are some thoughts.

Refresher: Preo’s software works using a Rules Engine, which monitors and advises users of their print functions, along with optimizing existing print resources. Toshiba American Business Solutions (otherwise known as TABS) has inked an agreement with Preo to leverage the overall “Printelligence MPS Solution.” The agreement allows TABS to market Printelligence in the U.S., Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The focus is on end-user print behavior, and the goal is to shrink printing costs without effecting productivity.

Pros and Cons

Interest in managed print services seems to be growing — but it seems as if many MSPmentor readers have yet to jump on the bandwagon. On the upside, the North American managed print services market has a 27 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), according to Photizo Group, which runs MPS conferences across the globe. But on the downside, only about 29 percent of MSPmentor 100 survey participants offer managed print services to their customers.

Part of the challenge involves printer makers. In many cases, printer companies evangelize managed print services directly to their large enterprise customers. But frequently, those same printer companies overlook opportunities to promote managed print services to their channel partners serving small and midsize customers.

Still, we’ve seen signs of channel progress from managed print specialists like Hewlett-Packard, Ricoh and Xerox, just to name a few.

Additional reporting by Joe Panettieri. Sign up for MSPmentor’s weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. And follow us via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; and Twitter. Plus, check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com.