HP's Ecosystems

There are two basic troubles. First, the laser printer ecosystem from HP is a real headache for corporate network administrators. There is no doubt that HP is the market leader in laser printers. But there are millions of different models, drivers and toner piece parts to keep track of. Now, mind you, I have nothing against the HP product per se -- I have been using one of its LaserJets for many years and it works like a top. But if I had several hundred or several thousand printers on my network, I wouldn't be a happy camper.

The problem is that it is a real complex ecosystem. Administering all this gear isn't easy, especially when each printer is attached to a particular print server queue and you are migrating your users from one operating system to another, or from one network server to another. The problem isn't that the printers have network attachments -- they do. It is that their queues that collect their print jobs are so difficult to configure and maintain.

We heard from a network administrator at American Express at our briefing. Rather than try to administer his collective printer population with Novell's directory service or some other software tool, he plunked down nearly $2 million to buy a bunch of HP's Print Server Appliances. This is a piece of hardware that can automatically push the right drivers to the right clients (provided they are Windows clients; our mostly Mac network here at CMP wouldn't benefit from this solution). It can also run the print queues without any need to set up the network file server for this purpose. I got to see the appliance at the event and walk through its paces with one of the HP product managers, and I would agree that it is a pretty slick device. It saved Amex all sorts of time in support calls and certainly made it easier for deploying their printers across their worldwide network.

My problem is since when does a major manufacturer have to create a mess and then offer a nice way to clean it up? One could argue that this is Microsoft's business model in a nutshell. But I thought HP was more above this kind of behavior. So much for the printer ecosystem needing to vote a few printers off the HP island.

Let's move on to the imaging ecosystem that covers digital photography. This has its own complexity. Those of you who are heavily into digital photography should know what I mean instantly. Getting the pictures out of the camera and into your computer is the first challenge. Getting them printed is another challenge. Sending them via e-mail is a third. Coming back to the "roll" of film that you took several years or months ago to find the picture with the file name DSC00051.JPG is another. Should the PC be the center of this ecosystem? Or the camera? Some service bureau that stores all your photos? Or some other device? Hard to say.

HP showed us gear that allows a user to view photographs directly on a TV, then print proof sheets and select individual photos without ever having to mess around with a PC. Of course, you have to mess around with a bunch of different cables to connect all this stuff to your camera. And you have to mess around with a bunch of nested menus that would make Alice glad to leave Wonderland with all of their complexity. This is an improvement? I am not so sure.

A friend of mine is trying to fix some of this complexity with software called Preclick Photo Organizer (it, too, only works with Windows; luckily the Mac universe has a pretty solid solution with iPhoto). This solves the organization problem once the photos land on your hard drive, but the transportation issues for the photo ecosystem are still almost as vexing as trying to learn your way around the Tokyo subway system. There are plenty of ways to get from here to there, and the trains are prompt and plentiful, but if you don't understand the language, you may never figure it all out

Still, I give HP points for trying. In the meantime, if you have some other ecosystem story you want to tell me about, I am all ears.