IBM Corp. Ports Infoprint Manager to NT/2000 - Product Announcement

ENT, Feb 23, 2000

IBM Corp. is porting its Infoprint Manager production print server from its own flavor of Unix to the Windows NT and Windows 2000 platforms.

Announced earlier this month, Infoprint Manager will be available in late March. It is listed as Windows 2000 Ready, and IBM (www.ibm.com) expects to earn Windows 2000 Certification later this year.

With Infoprint Manager, IBM aims to allow cross-platform use of printers, and ratchet up the volume of printing the server can support.

"We have observed for many years that customers will frequently buy a printer that's attached to their 390 mainframe or AS/400. That type of a single-use, single-platform type of device tends to be under-utilized," says Jeff Calhoun, manager of global software and services marketing for IBM Printing Systems. "This allows you to share multiple printers from multiple platforms."

Meanwhile, Calhoun says many customers running print servers on Windows NT run into problems maintaining rated speed on more than 20 or 30 printers when they've got all the printers running at once.

"We are stating with the announcement of the product that we will support up to 50 [printers running at rated speeds]," Calhoun says.

The print solution primarily relies on TCP/Ip communication for cross-platform print jobs, including most communication with mainframes. For customers who need an SNA receiver, IBM integrates Infoprint Manager with IBM SecureWay to provide connectivity.

Other features of Infoprint Manager include Java GUI notification clients and support for the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). Infoprint Manager assigns the print queue its own IPP address. "In the NT world today, you have to get an IPP driver in other places," Calhoun says. "We're providing that support directly into the server."

The base price of the server is $5,995. The cost doubles for users who need support for a printing rate higher than 100 pages per minute.