JDF BASICS -- It's Just the Ticket

The consultant also questions how many companies will be in a position to tweak their JDF implementations to make them better than somebody else's for marketing purposes. "A vendor has to have a broad enough product line for the claim to make sense," he points out.

Littrell expects printers to push the vendors to make JDF work. "My sense is that system integration will end up being part of the manufacturer's installation and setup," he says. The consultant adds that he expects it to be one to three years before the industry sees true (end-to-end) integrated solutions come to market.