H-P Is Acquiring 'Managed Printer' Printelligent

25.05.2011
In a major step to build up its "managed printing" service to small and medium-sized businesses, Hewlett-Packard will acquire Salt Lake City-based Printelligent, .

Under their agreement, H-P will acquire all privately-held Printelligent's assets, including infrastructure, software and workforce, with H-P combining the assets with its existing sales channels and broader services. Terms weren't disclosed, but the companies said the deal is expected to become final in H-P's fiscal third quarter this year.

H-P had said in 2009 that to boost managed print services, creating a program to help business customers reduce printer hardware. The company already offered some printing services at the time, but it began increasing its dedicated business unit to add to that focus.

The Printelligent deal provides H-P with leverage for offering clients unified management of large numbers of copiers, printers and . The target is businesses with hundreds of employees, which often outsource this type of work, using managed printing services to organize documents, reduce hardware dependency and increase work efficiency.

Printelligent has clients in 728 U.S. cities in 39 states, and manages about 500 million printed documents annually -- about 5 billion pages -- the 23-year-old company says on its website.

Buying Printelligent should strengthen H-P's services particularly for small and mid-sized business clients, Vyomesh Joshi, company executive vice president, said in the company's statement, adding that he expects to add to Printelligent's business "a level of technology and experience that is unprecedented in the industry."