Purchasing InSite/ Prinergy. Advice much appreciated

[dgust]

Hi all...I am an owner of 24 year old mid sized sheet fed company that is trying to survive in our industry`s new economic reality. To those ends I am about to purchase the Prinergy work-flow and InSite store front and e-commerce solution.  I appreciate my prepress manager's input and opinion so I am hopeful for the opinion advice of those of you who have implemented and are familiar with this system.

We are replacing a 10 year old ArtWorks Nexus RIP.  It currently produces 1 bit tiffs which we send to a Purpup-Eskofot 8 up plate driver and to an Epson 9800 impo and contract color proofer.  We intend to keep both of those devices online. 

The package I have been offered from Kodak is as follows:
- Server
- Prinergy Connect Refine and Output Software
- Low Resolution Output for 8 up and VLF - 1 Additional Engine
- PDF Batch Trapping - 1 Engine
- PDF Trap Editor
- Preps Plus 6.x Floating License Edition
- US&C PSG - Rules based work-flow automation service
- Rules-based Automation
- InSite Storefront for Prinergy Connect - 2 customers
- InSite Storefront add unlimited customers
- InSite Storefront add Cyber Source Transations
- InSite Storefront add FedEx Shipping Quotation
- Includes all training

Is this list complete for a successful Prinergy implementation?
Should I be concerned about archiving capabilities? 

Is there anything in this list I do not need?  Fed Ex module? 

I would be most grateful for any insights or advice you can give me as I finalize the negotiations to purchase Prinergy and InSight. 

Thanks!

DG

[Joe]

We switched from Nexus to Prinergy as well a little over a year ago and havent regretted it.

We do not have Storefront though as we only got the Insite Prepress Portal so I really can't comment on that part.

We did get the disk based archiving option and love it but you will need a lot of storage space for it if you decide you want it.

That list looks pretty complete. There are a lot of options you can add to that list but I assume you have discussed it with Kodak and you have decided you don't need things like digital blueline, the Illustrator PDF Editor plugin, the versioning options, etc...What you do have listed there should get you going nicely.

[Joe]

Oh, we don't have the PDF Trap Editor and that hasn't been a problem for us. I know others that use it and swear by it.

[dgust]

Thanks for your input Joe.

The Kodak sales rep has  represented that the server being installed has enough storage and redundancy to handle my archiving needs. I have my doubts/concerns and am investigating to confirm that.

I intend to learn about the Digital blueline and Illustrator PDF Editor plug ins..they sound useful. I`m holding off on Versioning and the more robust Variable Data plugs ins until which that business segment demand grows enough to warrant the cost. Our Darwin software in front of our small Cannon 5500 will have to suffice for now.

[Joe]

Was your sales rep talking tape archiving or disk based archiving? I think our Prinergy server only came with a 250 gb HD for data. It certainly wasn't enough for disk based archiving. We set up an 8 terabyte RAID 5 for archiving. After setting up RAID and formatting that gave us 5.45 terabytes of usable space for our archiving. And I can see that will be full in about 5 years.

[born2print]

Thanks for your input Joe.

The Kodak sales rep has  represented that the server being installed has enough storage and redundancy to handle my archiving needs. I have my doubts/concerns and am investigating to confirm that.

I intend to learn about the Digital blueline and Illustrator PDF Editor plug ins..they sound useful. I`m holding off on Versioning and the more robust Variable Data plugs ins until which that business segment demand grows enough to warrant the cost. Our Darwin software in front of our small Cannon 5500 will have to suffice for now.

We love Prinergy Connect here as well, just upgraded from 4.1 to 5.1 yesterday with very little trouble. We do not have the versioning license but we did recently buy the PDF file editor and it will in fact fix things in PDF files that Acrobat or even Pitstop can not. IMO, you will need an archive solution, off the top of my head I'd say do not buy the AIT jukebox (that's what we have now) but instead use Archive-to-disk and buy a 5-10 TB server (what we plan for the future)
and Welcome!

[G_Town]

Ugh I'd rather take a cheese grater to my shins than use preps for my impo, they'll have to pry artpro and powerstepper from my cold dead hands.

[Chilbear]

Here is another idea. Rather than buy what you seek from Kodiak, have you looked around for another company (possibly for sale) that is already operating and has a better workflow? That way you will have more sales, less overhead and have the workflow. Owner to owner discussions over a lunch can be very successful. No broker fees and this is assuming you take the initiative and contact others not necessarily for sale (yet).

Of course this is assuming someone close is for sale or struggling. Now is a very good time to buy a struggling operation. It is all about cash flow not about the toys we have. There has been discussion on this forum and in my city where plates were made and driven across town til the merge occurred.

Is there anyone who knows how to find out who is a local Kodak client? For sure the sales rep will not venture this information. Perhaps if dgust tells us what state/province you are in, maybe another user in an adjoining state can ask their rep. Sneaky aren't we.

[gnubler]

Ugh I'd rather take a cheese grater to my shins

You too? We're a lot alike.

[Slappy]

RE: StoreFront
Unless you have plans (and a competent sales staff that's familiar with e-commerce) be wary of the capabilities Kodak claims StoreFront can bring to the table. We've had it for a few years and haven't had much success with it farther than a glorified Inventory management system, and even that is wrought with bugs & missing features.

I won't enumerate the issues, I honestly don't have the time or patience right now. Head over to the GUA forums, it's specifically for Kodak users, and although it's monitored by Kodak it's independently run so you're likely to get more "straight" answers from people using the products. If you have any particular questions, feel free to ask me here or in a PM and I'll see what info I can provide. Good luck!

[Farabomb]

Be aware and check 4 times about whatever the Kodak salesman says.

[youston]

Be aware and check 4 times about whatever any salesman says.

Fixed.

[Farabomb]

Valid point.

[dgust]

Thanks Born, Chill Bear, Slappy and Farabomb.  I`m gonna post an updated post.

[Tracy]

We are looking into prinergy evo again.
boss got them to strip out some things to bring the price down.

They are offering Preps 6 in the package, Have there been problems with
Preps 6 and should I get Preps 5 instead?

and any preference on a new mac and pc?

What kind of a server? I don't think we are going to get the one from kodak.