(Weymouth, MA) March 13, 2006… The economics of creating, managing, producing, and distributing print are changing. Service providers must add capabilities to their offerings to continue to meet emerging customer needs. Chief among these is the ability to conduct business anytime anywhere via the vehicle most convenient to the customer. Implementing some form of e-business infrastructure will be critical for survival. InfoTrends projects a global growth rate of over 18% for print e-business software by 2009.

InfoTrends considers integrated customer-facing tools such as print e-business to be a critical component of the super-efficient organization. In fact, almost one thousand document owners and print buyers indicated that over 20% of their total print expenditure was being conducted via a workflow that incorporated Internet-enabled tools, and they expected this to grow at double-digit growth rates.

InfoTrends’ new product compendium, Production Workflow Solutions Product Compendium: Print e-Business Infrastructure, provides an overview of products and vendors in this product category. The document highlights the differences and variations in the primary features and focuses on any unique features that differentiate these products from one another and thereby contribute to their market position.

The products and services contained in the compendium are off-the-shelf solutions that a print service provider could use to implement e-business capabilities. Companies that provide an e-procurement interface and printing services but do not license their technology to other printers are not included in this review. The software solutions discussed all contain certain common, must-have features, all accessible via a Web site. Each company presents these features at varying levels of complexity, flexibility, and robustness.

“When we last provided an in-depth review of this market in 2002, we highlighted the growing functionality of these systems and their increasing acceptance in the market,” commented Steve Adoniou, Consultant at InfoTrends. “Since then, the market has matured significantly, most large vendors offer customer-facing tools as part of their product assortment, and the range of capabilities these companies offer to support the online ordering, management, production, and distribution of printed and non-printed materials continues to expand.”

The compendium is available immediately to clients of InfoTrends’ North American Production Workflow Solutions Consulting Service. For more information about the report or to make a purchase, visit our online store or contact Nicole Shown at ext. 207 or .