Print optimization specialist Pharos Systems introduces cloud-based print solution designed for integration with traditional products, saying solution prepares printers as industry moves toward tools for real-time access, big data, intelligent analytics

Aimee Bellah

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky , June 4, 2014 (press release) – Pharos Systems today introduced Pharos BeaconTM, a revolutionary print management and optimization platform for corporate, government and higher education institutions. The platform has been in development for the past three years at Pharos. "Beacon is a clean sheet platform designed to make print the way our customers want it to be," said Pharos CEO, Kevin Pickhardt. "We have the distinct benefit of one-third of our workforce working full time in collaboration with our closest customers, representing some of the largest corporate and educational enterprises in the world. This has given us a unique opportunity to design a system that captures the learning from our own customer consultants combined with more than 20 years of customer experience," added Pickhardt.

"We have seen very little change in the fundamental technology surrounding print in the last couple decades", commented Pharos' CTO Fred Schempp, "but we believe the next few years will result in dramatic change that will reset customer's expectations and experience of printing. We expect to be a catalyzing force for this change.”

"The Beacon platform has been in the market supporting OEM partners since 2013 rebranded for their needs," added Schempp. "We have already set a new bar for ease of use and scope of functionality." Pharos notes that they are in discussion with several other partner organizations looking to license and brand all or parts of the Beacon platform.

"Early customer feedback has been phenomenal. What took weeks before has been reduced to minutes. The world is moving quickly to real time access, big data, and intelligent analytics. Beacon has been designed to provide instant access to a master dashboard that integrates comprehensive printer, document and user data. The dashboard presents the most important metrics within a print environment and easy drill-down analysis of those metrics to help get at the core of what drives results ,“ added Schempp. Pharos notes that the Beacon platform scales up and down, opening up new channels for Pharos in SMB markets and with the dealers serving those markets.

Paul Reddy, co-founder of Pharos shared, "the best thing about our Beacon platform is that it is designed to integrate with our traditional on-premises products, Uniprint and Blueprint. We have thousands of customers who have been instrumental in the design of the platform. It is our intent to guide our current and future customers toward the path of best migration on-premises, cloud or hybrid. In the end, our customers have asked us to simplify and reduce their infrastructure. We are answering.”

Pharos is also launching Uniprint 9.0 today, with a new web based Student Print Portal that brings the power of print management to any connected device for the millions of students who use Uniprint today. Uniprint 9.0 is pre-enabled to integrate with our Beacon analytics dashboard, giving our university customers the ability to see what is happening in real time anywhere on campus.

"Beacon brings a new level of ease, accessibility and efficiency to print management software. It also presents an opportunity to leverage learning from one customer to another quickly and simply. Our customers benefit significantly anytime we can bring them together. With Beacon, we can bring them together virtually 24x7 and around the world," noted Pickhardt.

Full market availability will occur later this summer. For more information please contact Pharos Systems at dmcintyre@pharos.com.

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