Printable Technologies Inc., reportedly announced it has entered in to contractual agreement with DirectSmile to forge a joint venture whereby DirectSmile’s namesake image personalization solution is integrated within several of Printable’s Software as a Service, or SaaS (News - Alert), solutions that deliver printing and media personalization from the World Wide Web.

“Printable is the first turnkey SaaS workflow for image personalization with our business partner DirectSmile, the leader in this space” said Dustin Ritter, director of marketing at Printable Technologies. “Now organizations of all sizes can create marketing campaigns with personalized images that can dramatically increase response rates at just a fraction of the cost. We will continually seek solutions that facilitate a greater return on investment for our clients.”

Collaborative efforts, such as this one between Printable and DirectSmile, are in keeping with one of the seven mantras of the time, which dictates that organizations must make serious efforts to reach out and work with each other. The seven guidelines for succeeding in current economic environment are collectively called the CES (News - Alert) 7 and were pronounced and initiated at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2009.

Printable officials claim that the first collaborative solution will be its MarcomCentral, formerly known as Fusion Pro Web, a SaaS Web to print solution with DirectSmile embedded within, and being a SaaS solution requires only Internet connectivity and reasonable computing power (a laptop will do), and the better the screen resolution, the clearer are exploratory visuals and eventual screen outputs.

The mutually beneficial route of SaaS gives customers the freedom to use and pay for only select components of their choice from software suites, and the flexibility to add other requisites as and when the need arises. Prior to this innovative customer driven request for ‘a use and pay when required only’ approach, entire solutions had to be bought and installed at a significantly higher one-time cost.

It is a Web-based application, which allows customers to use software via the Internet, freeing the customer from costs related to downloads, upgrades, software version control, and dependency on internal hardware. Another up-front double whammy factor that earlier compounded financial woes was either the high price of a single license for an entire enterprise, or the available alternative which was cost per licence per device or user.

IT support resources such as staff, network equipment, installation fees and annual maintenance contracts are kept to a minimum, if not eliminated. With lesser pre-installed information to wade through, systems become more agile and corrective measures require lesser bandwidth, are more focussed and can be done remotely.

Gartner’s March 2007 SaaS market research forecasts in its press release titled, “Gartner (News - Alert) Says Service Providers Must Prepare Now for the Software as a Service Wave” found that the worldwide SaaS market reached $6.3 billion in 2006 and is forecast to grow to $19.3 billion by year end 2011, and this figure is more than three times the revenues accrued in 2006.

“Printable’s highly flexible output formats and SaaS delivery model fit the long-term goals of DirectSmile,” said Ed Ickowski, director of business development for DirectSmile. “Users will have more options for outputting their image personalization files through Printable and we know the SaaS model will extend our reach into the marketplace.”

Printable officials claim that eventually all the company’s VDP (variable data publishing) products including FusionPro Desktop, FusionPro Direct, and FusionPro Server will offer DirectSmile as a part of the solution to its existing 14,000 customers and new clients that choose to use the innovative SaaS offerings.

The company said that customers will be able to use a familiar interface and rules wizard to produce dynamic templates with image personalization and, to protect its business interests and revenue streams, output formats will only be available through products with server composition including FusionPro Direct, FusionPro Server, and MarcomCentral.

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