In what’s been a busy few days for HP Inc., the company has continued the momentum and unveiled four major solutions at its global partner forum, HP Reinvent, held this year on Sept. 12 in Chicago, with a goal of reshaping the printing industry for an increasingly digitized world.
HP’s latest solutions will help better secure printers, allow customers to print via the cloud, improve workflows, and leverage the power of the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and big data.
“HP is empowering our partners to deliver amazing experiences for customers by reinventing printing for an on-demand world,” Enrique Lores, president of imaging and printing at HP Inc., says at Reinvent. “As the cyber landscape evolves and the path of work transforms, we will drive partner success with innovative new services and solutions for printing easily and securely, enabling increased services and revenue opportunities.”
The four solutions include:
HP Connection Inspector – an intelligent embedded security feature built into HP printers that can detect anomalies in outbound network connections where malware attacks often begin to fester. It determines what is normal to stop suspicious activity, and if compromised, the software automatically triggers HP’s SureStart self-healing procedure by rebooting to its original state, all without IT intervention. It will be available “later this year” but no other details were given.
HP Roam – this cloud feature allows mobile professionals to print anytime, from any location or device that is Roam enabled. Using Bluetooth or GPS, users can find Roam-enabled printers via their HP app wherever they are – public spaces or in private offices – and if they are authenticated, they can print. Owners of printers will have the ability to turn Roam on or off whenever they wish, set their range of discovery, as well as authentication requirements. This service will be available in the spring of 2018 to enterprise businesses first, and then smaller companies and consumers further down the road.
HP Solutions Hub – an open platform cloud and mobile-centric architecture that is designed to scale and customize to workflows in different business environments and for partners that need to differentiate their services. It includes connectors and templates that make it easy to turn HP multifunction printers into custom work environments. This will be available in spring 2018.
HP Smart Device Services (SDS) 2.0 – a set of cloud tools and device-based sensing capabilities that enhance service experiences and enable partners to achieve high uptime and low service costs. It features part failure prediction that monitors device components and gives real-time chance-of-failure predictions to optimize service calls and parts planning, as well as enhanced diagnostics that can detect scanner dust, print engine failures and core engine issues, all while delivering more efficient problem analysis for unresponsive devices. SDS also offers fleet optimization in remote remediation actions for USB connected devices, enhanced data collection and billing, and device health alerts, which gives customer the ability to choose which events trigger real-time alerts, detect when long life consumables service counts are not reset after replacement, and report a problem features. This will be available in spring 2018 via existing industry-led third party fleet management software for HP resellers.
“People take one look at all our new announcements and innovations and actually tell me that the future of printing is exciting again,” Lores says. “We live in a hyper mobility world with more than five billion smartphones globally. We want to make it simpler for our customers to print with their phones securely, and manage their devices in a safe and efficient way.”