Enfocus director of product management Elli Cloots said that the software now had an “engine prepared for the future”, which has made Switch a more robust product.
“For printers it is important to have constant throughput of files, so we split our core engine for Switch 10 to allow it to handle many simultaneous processes independently of each other,” she said.
“This means that if your FTP is causing problems or you have a specific third party application that is causing a problem that will not affect any other tasks – everything will process independently.
“That gives a lot more stability and effectiveness and that is really a step up for printers. Where it used to be just about automating a few tasks this is now a tool that you can rely upon and that will continue to process forever.”
Cloots added that the engine upgrade came about in response to users placing ever more dependence on Switch and by extension stressing the software beyond the developer’s original vision.
“We saw that much more stress was being put on the system than we ever expected and that happened a lot faster than we thought – we’ve got customers that dump 25,000 files on Switch and while counting those files, everything else that’s already in process still needs to continue,” she said.
“With the old engine you had one process, meaning it was doing one thing or something else, but now it’s really split up so if one of these processes is taking to much then it doesn’t have an effect on the other processes – they will continue to work as expected.”
New features in Switch 10 include a dashboard-style Workload Visualiser, that gives users visability of how heavily Switch is being used and flags up potential problems ahead of time.
The product will be available in Australia through Colour Process whose managing director, Yves Roussange, said: “Switch 10 will put bring a new level of efficiency to automation. The key element our clients have been waiting for was an improved SwitchClient application for PDF file delivery.”
The Switch 10 product family will be available from Enfocus during Q2. Switch clients with a maintenance contract will be entitled to a free upgrade.
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