Myfujifilm.com Relieves IT BurdenMyfujifilm.com Relieves IT Burden

Fuji Photo Film U.S.A. is changing its image by providing printing professionals with the Internet-based applications they need to migrate their work to online media and manage these digital assets. Monday's launch of Myfujifilm.com is designed to offload IT responsibilities from publishers, advertising agencies, and designers, allowing them to concentrate on the more creative aspects of their work.

Rather than devote its own internal IT resources toward creating Myfujifilm.com's Web-based proofing, formatting, collaboration, and E-mail notification components, the North American subsidiary of the $12 billion Tokyo Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. outsourced the application development and ongoing operations responsibilities.

"When your business isn't developing, hosting, and managing applications, it doesn't matter how big you are," says Kirk Brauch, director of technology for Myfujifilm.com, a new division within Fuji Graphics Systems. Myfujifilm.com consists of software from Engage Inc. as well as Group Logic Inc.'s MassTransit file transfer and Imagexpo collaborative proofing applications integrated with Markzware Inc.'s MarkzNet formatting tool. Breakaway Solutions Inc. will monitor and manage the Myfujifilm.com site, perform ongoing capacity testing, and offer online storage capacity for Fuji's customers.

For Brauch, having the right development and service-provider partners means the difference between success and failure. The printing industry is moving away from migrating to digital images available only through a private network, Brauch says, citing Wam!Net Inc. and Vio Worldwide Ltd. as examples of competitors who have either adopted an open, Internet-based model or gone out of business. Vio, an online file transport and workflow vendor backed by British Telecom and Scitex, said in April that it would cease operations by the end of the third quarter.

All four Myfujifilm.com customers are North American publishing or printing firms that are in the process of migrating from a beta to a production environment. Brauch says Fuji hopes to make Myfujifilm.com available to the European market in time for the April 2002 Ipex print exposition.