HP announces e-print and share service for AutoCAD WS

I interviewed Emre Ozguc, the worldwide Designjet Marketing Director at HP at the Autodesk University in Las Vegas last month. Here is a summary of the interview.

Sanjay: What are you showing here at your booth?

Emre: We are featuring the web connected e-printer line up. We think this is one of our biggest innovations that we have brought to the market in a long time. The real news this week is that we are sharing two things. One is that we have a new mobile app that allows architects, engineers, and designers to access their drawings from the cloud and print directly anything they have stored in the cloud.

Our E-print and share service allows you to store your drawings, print any drawings in the cloud and access them whenever you want. So this new mobile app that is now available is running on the iphone, and the ipad that we just launched in October. We are demoing that, and again it allows you to access and print the drawings anytime and anywhere.

The second thing that we announced is a collaboration with autodesk on AutoCAD WS. AutoCAD WS has been a very successful application with more than three million downloads. But, up until now you haven’t been able to print from AutoCAD WS. What we announced today is a collaboration with AutoCAD that will be available soon, sometime in the spring time frame. Where you will be able to print from an AutoCAD WS while utilizing HP cloud printing capability, this e-print and share service. So we are establishing a cloud to cloud connection between Autodesk’s cloud and our cloud, so if you are a Autodesk AutoCAD WS user you can simply select print, choose one of our web connected printers and print. No matter where the printer is.

Sanjay: Are these printers owned by the customers? Or is there a network of service areas like kinko’s where people can print?

Emre: They would primarily be owned by customers. So these are printers that range from $3000 to $9000. There is a line up of three different printers that are designed primarily for architects or designers for small-medium business. You could also find them in the Kinko’s environment. We haven’t yet established a network where you could locate them automatically, but if you know where one is, you certainly could do that. It certainly is a business model that Kinko’s or someone like that could establish.

Sanjay: There are a whole lot of graphics companies like Arc Technologies with thousands of printers around the world, would people be able to also access that directly?

Emre: Yes. These printers are not directly designed for graphic companies; they are more designed for SMBs (Small to Medium Businesses). But those companies that own one, they could deploy that type of service, and in the future I believe that it would be very viable.

Sanjay: Tell me also, you launched this product on iphones and ipads, is there an android version coming out?

Emre: It’s in the works, it’s nothing I can announce at this point, but we’re certainly looking at this too.

Sanjay: Any new printers that you might have recently announced that you want to talk about?

Emere: Again the printers that we have announced, we announced back in May. This is the Designjet T790, the T1300, and the T2300. The service that we are announcing today works on these web connected printers.

Sanjay: Lastly, you mentioned with AutoCAD WS, people will be able to print from that sometime in spring?

Emre: Yes, we don’t have an exact date yet. Right now we have a beta that we are demonstrating at the booth here, but we believe it should be tested and finalized sometime in the spring.

Sanjay: How can people find out more about these new capabilities, these new applications, and also about your partnership with autodesk?

Emre: The best way would be to go online to HP.com/go/eprintandshare.

Tags: AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, cloud services, eprint, HP

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