Print Solutions from Atac

Newsletter for Asia-Pacific Region

Third Quarter, 2002

Atac Pty Ltd

Australasian Distributor for Barr & Emtex

• Emtex Distributorship

• Barr DOS to NT/W2K upgrades

• Take advantage of the AUD exchange rate

• Barr EPS test results

• Barr/VKM (Visual Knowledge Manager)

• Frequently Asked Questions

• Have your say

• Receive the latest catalogue

• Who else should get this newsletter?

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Your feedback is valuable to Atac and helps us provide the high standard of service which you have come to expect from us, and which we are proud to deliver.  Whether you have questions about our product range, a story to share regarding your experiences, or you would like to comment on our newsletter, just click here to send us an e-mail.

Following extensive research in the field of Print Data Transformation, Atac is pleased to announce that it has been appointed as Distributor for the Emtex range of Transformation and Document Enhancement software.  This software is known as Emtex VIP (Virtual Intelligent Presentation) and can transform IBM AFP, Xerox LCDS/Metacode and Adobe Postscript data streams into AFP, LCDS/Metacode, Postscript, PDF, XML, TIF, IPDS, IJPDS and PCL.

• Emtex supersets the features of vendor specific solutions such as IBM PSF, IBM InfoPrint Manager, Oce Prisma, Xerox DP Server and Xerox EOMS V-Services.

• Emtex VIP has an industrial strength, high performance, multi-tasking, client/server architecture, processing data at up to 10,000 pages per minute.  This enables a print centre to produce electronic documents and drive multiple printers simultaneously using a single point of control.

• Emtex VIP is the key enabler for transforming “legacy” datastreams into formats which can be used via the Internet.

• Emtex converts print data into a common text-based format, with associated Fonts, Images and Overlays.  This intermediate format can be viewed with complete fidelity, indexed, searched and programmatically enhanced as well as used for full or partial reprints.  Naturally, the intermediate format is fully printer independent.

Emtex are based in England and USA.  Currently there are over 700 Emtex VIP systems globally at sites including Lloyds TSB, Medical Sickness Group, National Westminster Bank, Scottish Amicable, Cornhill Insurance, AXA Group, Sun Life, Egg  (Prudential Internet Banking etc), Hays (was AXIS Resources - Vodaphone & One to One Billing), Lexicon (Yellow Pages), Nissan, EDS, BNP & Salmat.

Currently the largest Emtex customer is OTS (was International Billing Services) in the USA driving over 100 production printers including Xerox, IBM and OCE.  Oce’s Prisma solution is actually an OEM version of Emtex’s Metacode to AFP product.

Although there is some overlap between Barr and Emtex, Atac sees Emtex as complimentary to the Barr product offering.  We are now able to offer the best-of-breed TRANSPORT and TRANSFORMATION products in the marketplace.

David Kirk and Peter Wright from Atac recently attended Emtex training sessions in the UK. David had the following to report:

"For the first few days I was very impressed with Emtex's ability to transform data with complete fidelity, at well in excess of production printer speeds.  On day three, I was given training on the Virtual Document Enhance (VDE) component of Emtex.  We took a "dirty" legacy print stream, cleaned it up and mail-sorted, indexed, enabled some intelligent inserts and inserted colourised currency conversion lines, all on the fly.  We then printed the resulting data, split into clean-mail with postal barcodes and mail without, on a Xerox highlight colour printer.  I was really blown away when I considered the possibilities for organisations looking to merge/take-on disparate print streams, and produce consistent enhanced output on existing print platforms.

The possibilities for print bureaux to differentiate themselves by adding real value to a print stream, struck me immediately.  With complete resource management, any-to-any data transformation and the ability to manage spoils feedback from IPDS printers and/or mail machinery, this product can provide complete end-to-end ADF (automated document factory) functionality."

For more information, contact David Kirk of Atac today.

Barr DOS to NT/W2K Upgrades Under Way

Existing Barr DOS customers continue to migrate their systems to the NT/W2K platforms.  One of the most common offerings under DOS is BARR/RJE (Remote Job Entry functionality), which allows large corporate clients to ship print data around the world, for local printing in branch offices.  The NT/W2K offering provides a direct upgrade path, with no changes necessary on the HOST.  Several clients have managed this transition recently while still meeting print deadlines, and are now experiencing the enhanced functionality provided by Barr’s NT/W2K product.

The easiest way to enable this transition is to arrange a Trial NT/W2K Barr system, which we will deliver, configure and support for free while it is being evaluated in your environment.  So far, ALL Trial Upgrade systems have been kept at the Trial conclusion, and the general comment from users is that it was “a simple upgrade”.

All DOS limits are blown away by the NT/W2K product offering – you now have access to practically unlimited memory, storage, printers and significant speed benefits, while also bringing Barr into the NT/W2K Security model, which utilises existing Users and Groups.

To discuss your options further, contact Atac.

After languishing at around US50c mark for an extended period, the Australian dollar continues to climb, and appears set to reach US60c in the near future.

This has had the effect of reducing our buy prices on Barr and Emtex products, by up to 15% recently.  Naturally, we pass this benefit directly to our clients by way of reduced sale and annual maintenance prices.

With signs the US dollar will continue to weaken on the back of major accounting scandals, this may be the best time yet to plan a Barr or Emtex acquisition.

Recently, Atac and Xerox managed to test some “slow” ONLINE Xerox data, via the Xerox EPS. When this data is sent via the normal Xerox ONLINE interface, the printer catches up with input and cycles up and down periodically.  Data formatted by the Barr/PRINT to EPS module was able to be sent at 100Mbps (Ethernet) to the Xerox Sun front-end and then on to the Xerox engine.  The job printed at full rated speed with perfect fidelity.

Does the Xerox offering spell the end of channel-driven printers?  With today’s data being ever more complex as print bureaux add graphs, bar-charts, icons etc. I see Xerox’s ONLINE interface struggling to handle the increased load.

A hardware limitation in the Xerox Online interface means it can only accept a certain number of records per second.  If the data density exceeds this limit, then the online interface becomes a bottleneck and cannot process and feed data to the Xerox “engine” fast enough to keep it busy.  The result is that the “engine” enters power-saver mode and takes an additional 45 seconds to resume operation.

Atac and Xerox are pleased to have successfully tested this new methodology for getting your LCDS and Metacode data printing at full rated speed.

Features and Benefits of Barr/VKM

Q.  We understand that an upgrade of the Barr Enterprise Print Server (BEPS) is available.  What is new in this version?

A.  Version 3.1 of Barr Enterprise Print Server has several new features and enhancements, such as:

• The BARR/RJE product will officially support JES3 and POWER, in addition to JES2.

• The BARR/AFP Viewer utility has several new features and enhancements.

• Documents can now be assigned user rights.

• USB hardware key support for Windows 2000 users has been added.

• A new “Send To” feature has been included to allow users to send documents from their Spool window to other viewers or editors, or even to a folder.

Q.  We recently purchased two Barr Enterprise Print Servers for use as a channel extension configuration.  One will be channel-attached to our existing mainframe and will send files over our TCP/IP WAN to the second BEPS server at our remote facility.  For data integrity, with this type of connection, is it better to use LPR or direct socket?  Also, what happens to file transmissions that are in progress if the network fails for some reason?

A.  While a direct socket connection will generally transmit files slightly faster, the Line Printer Request (LPR) protocol has better error checking and flow control features.  Therefore, we would recommend that you use LPR and set up the LPR printer to send control files.  If the LPR module of the local BEPS PC encounters any transmission problems, such as a network failure, it will automatically reschedule jobs that were interrupted.  The interrupted jobs will be set to “Retry” state and will be re-sent every five minutes.  This is the safest possible transmission mode for a channel extension scenario.

Q.  If the hard disk on our BEPS server runs out of disk space, what happens to incoming transmissions from JES or from other host devices?

A.  When the hard drive fills up on a BEPS PC, it will stop receiving data—plain and simple. The source of the data does not matter.  However, there are minimum free disk space settings within the BEPS software to protect the system.  These settings are used to alert the operator that the disk space is running low and to prevent the hard drive from filling up completely.

One setting is called the “soft limit” and is used to trigger a warning that the free disk space is nearing a critically low level.  The other setting is the “hard limit” which is used to shut down the BEPS software operations.  When the available disk space becomes less than the hard limit setting, all printing and receiving will stop.  These functions will resume once the available free disk space is greater than the soft limit setting.

Q.  When we double-click on the BARR/SPOOL icon to bring up the BEPS Spool Window, a dialog box pops up and asks, “Do you wish to save your windows settings?”  This repeats frequently—every time the Spool or Retain Window is opened or closed.  How can we get rid of this dialog box?

A.  This repeating pop-up occurs when version 3.0.x of the BEPS software is installed on a PC with a display resolution of 800 x 600 pixels.  However, the problem is easily corrected!  If you are using the Windows NT operating system, installing Service Pack 6a for Windows NT 4.0 will correct it.  Or, you can simply set the PC’s display resolution to a higher value, such as 1024 x 768 pixels.  The display resolution setting is located under Settings - Control Panel - Display - Settings Tab - Desktop Area.

Q.  Does Barr Enterprise Print Server support Windows 2000 or Windows XP?

A.  Windows 2000 is supported by Barr Enterprise Print Server version 3.0.20 and later.

Windows XP is not officially supported at this time, but is planned for later in the 3rd quarter of 2002.

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Atac is the distributor for Barr and Emtex in Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia.  Based in Melbourne, Atac consults, installs and maintains Print and Communications products for corporate clients.