FOSTER CITY, Calif., Sept. 6, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) –
EFI™
(Nasdaq:EFII), a world leader in customer-focused digital printing
innovation, today announced that it has established an agreement with
Osaka, Japan-based Sharp Corp. to develop versatile, integrated Fiery
digital front ends (DFEs) for high-quality production printing.
As a result of this new agreement, EFI will provide its Fiery® DFE
with Sharp® Pro Series Digital Color Document Systems. These Fiery
Driven™ production systems will make their worldwide debut September
8-12 in Chicago at North America’s largest printing trade show, Print
13, in the EFI booth, #2602.
The Sharp® MX-6500N and MX-7500N Pro Series products are the first in the industry to offer full control of EFI’s
Fiery Command WorkStation®
job management interface right from the print engine operation panel.
Sharp’s unique, 15.4-inch, high-resolution touch screen display serves
as the primary operation panel for the Pro Series, giving operators
convenient access to the Command WorkStation interface.
“This integration combines Sharp’s unique feature set with EFI’s
high-performance Fiery technology for a complete solution to fulfill the
demands of today’s print professionals,” said Mike Marusic, senior vice
president, Marketing and Business Solutions Group, Sharp Imaging and
Information Company of America.
“We are excited about the alliance with Sharp in the development of
innovative new products in the production space,” said John Henze, vice
president, Fiery marketing, EFI. “We have worked closely with Sharp to
create the ultimate integrated printing platform for on-demand print
environments that need precision job management.”
Unmatched versatility with Fiery’s powerful, flexible foundation
Sharp’s flagship Pro Series consists of two models, the MX-6500N and
the MX-7500N, offering the Fiery Server MX-PE10 running the latest Fiery
FS100 Pro system software. Designed for busy in-plant and on-demand
production environments, these new models’ Fiery servers provide a
powerful and flexible platform for managing environments with
distributed operations, demanding turnaround times and different
operator skill levels. The printers – which offer edge-to-edge printing
for professional, full-bleed work and an exclusive, triple air-feed
paper handling option supporting a wide range of media – help businesses
produce more jobs in-house and improve profitability.
This new EFI/Sharp integration lets operators easily manage and
prepare jobs at the press and virtually eliminates the need for multiple
workstations for job management. The operation panel integrates a
tactile keyboard with a touchpad-pointing device for PC-like operation.
The display itself has the look and feel of a large tablet with
flick, tap and swipe operation. With this touch-screen operation, users
can drag and drop print jobs, select print attributes and perform other
actions. The tactile keyboard and touchpad offer more precise control
over advanced workflow tools such as Fiery Image Enhance Visual Editor,
Fiery Impose or EFI’s new Fiery JobMaster PDF-based job-preparation
software.
Fiery Ticker, accessed directly from the display, gives operators
control to set alerts for other operators for unattended printing and
allows them to see warnings about the engine, including alerts to load
media, when away from the engine.
The Fiery Server MX-PE10 includes Adobe PDF Print Engine (APPE)
support for PDF preferred printing environments. Plus, the DFE supports
industry color, variable-data print and JDF standards and seamlessly
integrates with EFI web-to-print and MIS solutions, third-party prepress
solutions and other existing environments.
The new Sharp Pro Series MX-6500N and MX-7500N Digital Color Document Systems will be available from Sharp in September 2013.
For more information about EFI Fiery Driven products, visit
www.efi.comor contact 800-875-7117.
About Sharp Electronics Corporation
Sharp Electronics Corporation is the U.S. subsidiary of Japan’s Sharp
Corporation, a worldwide developer of one-of-a-kind home entertainment
products, appliances, networked multifunctional office solutions, solar
energy solutions, LED lighting and mobile communication and information
tools.
About Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America
Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America, a division of Sharp Electronics Corporation, markets the advanced,
color MX Pro Series document systems that help companies manage workflow efficiently and increase productivity. Sharp® document systems feature the
Sharp OSA® development platform, which seamlessly integrates network applications to create a personalized MFP that can meet virtually any business need, and
Scan2 technology,
which scans two-sided documents in a single pass to enhance scanning
reliability and preserve document integrity. To keep documents safe from
unauthorized users, Sharp is a leader in the MFP industry in
security by offering the most secure suite of MFP applications.
For more information about the complete line of Sharp workgroup
document systems, contact Sharp Electronics Corporation, Sharp Plaza,
Mahwah, N.J., 07495-1163. For online product information, visit
www.sharpusa.com/documents.
About EFI
EFI™ (
www.efi.com) is a worldwide
provider of products, technology and services leading the transformation
of analog to digital imaging. Based in Silicon Valley, with offices
around the globe, the company’s powerful integrated product portfolio
includes digital front-end servers; superwide, wide-format, label and
ceramic inkjet presses and inks; production workflow, web to print, and
business automation software; and office, enterprise and mobile cloud
solutions. These products allow users to produce, communicate and share
information in an easy and effective way, and enable businesses to
increase their profits, productivity, and efficiency.
Follow EFI Online:
Follow us on Twitter: @EFI_Print_Tech
Find us on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/EFI.Digital.Print.Technology
View us on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/EFIDigitalPrintTech
NOTE TO EDITORS: The EFI logo, Fiery and Command Workstation are
registered trademarks of Electronics For Imaging, Inc. in the U.S.
and/or certain other countries. EFI and Fiery Driven are trademarks of
Electronics For Imaging, Inc. in the U.S. and/or certain other
countries. All other terms and product names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective owners, and are hereby
acknowledged.
Nothing herein should be construed as a warranty in addition to the
express warranty statements provided with EFI products and services.
This news release contains forward-looking statements, that are
statements other than statements of historical fact including words such
as “anticipate”, “believe”, “estimate”, “expect”, “consider”, “plan”
and similar, any statements related to strategies or objectives of
management for future operations, products, development, performance,
any statements of assumptions or underlying any of the foregoing and any
statements in the future tense. Forward-looking statements are subject
to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual or future
results to differ materially. For further information regarding risks
and uncertainties associated with EFI’s businesses, please refer to the
risk factors section in the Company’s SEC filings, including, but not
limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and its quarterly reports on
Form 10-Q. EFI undertakes no obligation to update information contained
herein, including forward-looking statements.
“The new MX-C300P is a powerful color desktop printer that is big on features and small on size,” said Mike Marusic,
Senior Vice President, Marketing and Operations. “Sharp’s space-saving
design enables this device to be placed in virtually any size office or
workgroup, helping users to work more efficiently.”
Sharp Electronics Corporation is the U.S. subsidiary of Japan’s Sharp
Corporation, a worldwide developer of one-of-a-kind home entertainment
products, appliances, networked multifunctional office solutions, solar
energy solutions, LED lighting and mobile communication and information
tools.
