EFI has its own range of superwide inkjets, industrial label printers, and now even ceramic tile printers. It used to have but one product: the EFI Fiery RIP. One of the consequences of EFI growing in all areas of printing is that it competes with companies that use its Fiery RIP.
“Fiery’s fast RIP speed produces the best performance in all major printers including: VUTEk, HP, Epson, Canon, Mimaki, Mutoh, Roland and others.” It’s a quote from FineEye. It’s a given that some companies will work together with others on one level, and compete with them on another, but in EFI’s case, they can be working together and competing on the same product level, which is rather weird if you think about it.
“We used to have a Creo RIP with our Xerox. It was strong on color management and imposition. Unfortunately, it seemed to be a finicky RIP and very few Xerox people were well trained on it because most customers have Fiery rips. We now have a Fiery RIP. The newest version adds a great deal of features. We have the graphic arts package that includes color management and greatly improved imposition. It seems to deliver consistent results and overall we are very happy with it. We did little VDP on either one.” It’s a quote from a PrintPlanet forum thread dating back to 2009.
Most users on that forum thread agreed the Fiery RIP was superior to the other (Creo) one discussed in many respects. So, here you have a company that produces one of the best RIPs in the market and whose RIP potentially drives most of its competitors’ products as well as its own.
In some markets — superwide inkjets is one — it makes you wonder why printers would buy anything else but an EFI product. If you then know Heidelberg is an EFI VUTEk reseller, it’s sort of a surprise there are still printers who favour other brands.
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