Server printing software developer adds Alstom IT

German software developer and vendor ThinPrint has expanded its channel in Australia, adding Alstom IT as a distributor for its server-based printing applications.

Thorsten Hesse, regional manager for ThinPrint South Pacific, said the vendor had been working with Melbourne-based Infotronics, its only other distributor in Australia, for about a year but wanted to expand its channel here.

'I think it's good for resellers to have a choice, for one thing, and Alstom has very good channel connections and experience in the thin client area,' he said. 'We're in a process of global expansion.'

Hesse said that Sydney-based Alstom wasn't taken on to fill any particular distribution gaps, as Infotronics had a diverse customer base. However, ThinPrint expected to make inroads via Alstom's relationships with thin client vendor Wyse and other server-focused vendors such as Citrix, he said.

'Our products had been available through resellers here for about two years, but we actually started here in November,' Hesse said.

Greg Newham, GM at Alstom IT, said ThinPrint would complement its existing server-based vendor offering, particularly Citrix, Wyse, AppSense and Secure Computing.

'We were looking for a printing solution for our resellers to offer their server-based customers, and after researching a range of products, ThinPrint offered what we were looking for,' Newham said.

Hesse said ThinPrint's portfolio included its .print software which could compress print jobs such that they were only, say, 1.5MB instead of 17MB in size. Compressing the amount of data needed meant that networks could handle printing demands much more easily, he pointed out.

'It can be difficult to print ... [Especially] for example, if you work in a remote office and work with a server,' Hesse said.

.print is compatible with Citrix MetaFrame, Microsoft Terminal Services, Solaris Intel, Solaris SPARC, IBM AIX and Linux.

ThinPrint applications were designed to suit companies with one server up to farms of 800 servers. 'There's no particular size of customer, but usually it's big companies,' Hesse said.

ThinPrint also made Content Beamer mobile plug-and-play software for transferring content to different devices, and Public Printing, a provider-offered service which enables printing at public locations without installing drivers or application software on notebooks, mobile phones or PDAs.

ThinPrint has an office in Kirribilli, a suburb near North Sydney, NSW.