Y Soft has signed a definitive agreement to acquire EveryonePrint. Michelle Ryder spoke to CEO Vaclav Muchna, to find out more about the rationale behind the deal and the company’s go-to-market strategy moving forward
This isn’t the first acquisition for Y Soft, over the years it has leveraged investments and acquisitions to expand its footprint globally, as well as advance its go-to-market reach. For example the acquisition of a majority share in Czech 3D printer maker be3D, enabled it to integrate 3D printing technology with its business strategy.
This latest deal reinforces the company’s cloud-first strategy and will undoubtedly extend its routes to market. Y Soft’s solutions reside predominantly on-premise and in the private cloud, while EveryonePrint’s Hybrid Cloud Platform (HCP) is a cloud-native solution. Y Soft has an extensive global footprint and is particularly strong within the enterprise sector – 80 per cent of licences are provided to firms with 600+ employees, and many of its customers are Fortune 500 companies. EveryonePrint on the other hand, has
a deep understanding of the channel this experience and expertise will be a value-add for Y Soft, while being part of a much bigger organisation will enable EveryonePrint to scale globally.
Muchna said that Y Soft chose to acquire EveryonePrint because of its robust cloud architecture, long-standing and diverse SaaS, cloud and channel expertise, and strong focus on end- customer value and simplicity.
“Through this acquisition, we are strengthening our position for our customers and partners as the leading provider offering an integrated print management and document capture platform for cloud and on-premise deployments. It also means we can unify and leverage our combined 40 years of experience dedicated to print management and workflows,” he said.
Commenting on the acquisition, Robert Palmer, Research VP for IDC’s Imaging, Printing, and Document Solutions group said: “Y Soft continues to strengthen its position in the print management market through innovation and acquisition.
“With its acquisition of EveryonePrint, Y Soft gains significant MIF, technology assets, and resources to bolster its cloud strategy and drive expanded capabilities for customers and partners looking to enable a secure, productive, and effective cloud print ecosystem for the hybrid office.”
Complementary technologies
One could argue that while the technologies are complementary, both companies are competitors. “To an extent that’s true, but we are targeting quite different markets with different value propositions,” Muchna said. “EveryonePrint is focused on migrating the on-premise print infrastructure to the cloud, while Y Soft’s mindset is to enable organisations to manage, optimise and secure their print and digital processes and workflows in the cloud.”
He continued: “HCP essentially removes the burden on IT. Where it excels for example is across ease of deployment, a single print driver enables easy set-up on client workstations, it’s easy to use and enables end-users to print to a secure cloud print platform. Y Soft solutions complement this with many more features around pull print, scan etc. Together we now cover the two biggest cloud platforms AWS and Azure, so the acquisition is a strong step forward in us establishing a leadership position in cloud solutions. That is our ambition, and this deal is fast tracking that.
“There is also a shared vision and shared passion, which makes for good chemistry. We have a shared commitment to make life simple for our customers and our partners, all of which makes for a smooth transition,” he added.
Cloud-first strategy
Muchna explained that when Y Soft established its cloud-first strategy, the intention was not to simply ‘lift and shift’ its existing on-premise solution to the public data centre. “Our cloud-first strategy means we really see the future in the cloud and the plan was to develop a solution that is truly natively cloud, but also has the same rich feature set as our on-premise offering.
“I’ll admit when we set out this strategy, I thought it would take one to two years, but I underestimated that. To a large extent, given my software development background, I looked at it from more of a product standpoint. But cloud is not only about the product, it’s about transforming the entire company, how people think, it’s about the business model, about marketing. It’s about go- to-market. It’s about value proposition. You need to transform support, you need to transform literally everything. And for a company that has 20 years of legacy building an on-premise solution, it is much easier to build these things from scratch. I see that today, but I didn’t see that back in 2019.”
In order to transform the entire company, Muchna realised he had to achieve what he describes as critical mass. “Building up that critical mass takes time,” he said, adding: “But by acquiring EveryonePrint, we have achieved what I consider critical mass in terms of mindset change – by that I mean a 60-strong team of people with a 100 per cent cloud focus and mindset. We are now aligned on the same vision, so this makes the path to more innovations an exciting journey. We welcome our new EveryonePrint team members as YSofters and are now united as one company focused on solutions that prove the road to digital transformation and cloud printing is paved with benefits and opportunities.”
Continued support
Y Soft will continue to sell, service, and support both EveryonePrint’s Hybrid Cloud Platform and YSoft’s SAFEQ cloud product family. “We are thrilled to be adding EveryonePrint’s technology to our roadmap. Y Soft will continue to support EveryonePrint’s products on a global basis. We’re going to be adding more functionalities to the product, and we will maintain a flexible licencing model. Our customers can be assured that our commitment to support any future features/releases will be fully unified and embraced by Y Soft,” Muchna said.
Within the next few months, Y Soft plans to integrate EveryonePrint into
its own organisation. The technological synergies between both companies
will ensure that customers from both companies will benefit from new and exciting cloud innovations that can be delivered even faster, more seamlessly and efficiently, taking advantage of each company’s strengths.
“We are integrating our sales and support teams and we will continue to support the existing HCP customer base. Looking to the future, we want to keep
a simple entry-level product that is a good fit for a certain type of market – it is possible we may keep the two different brands, but we haven’t decided that yet,” he explained.
Muchna doesn’t rule out keeping some element of its on-premise solutions. “We’re taking the approach that anything we develop for the cloud will
be available to customers preferring an on-premise infrastructure. That’s why we’re a cloud-first rather than cloud-only company,” he concluded.
