It's all about the M.I.B. No, not Men In Black

Toshiba announced the availability of their new fleet management tool, EBFMS, yesterday.

At first glance, the reports about the system are favorable, but it seems detailed information regarding toner, service etc. are currently reserved for Toshiba gear - with some limited visibility into non-Toshiba units.

I "lifted" this off the Office Product News site which is a post by Corey Smith, from a BLI report at the 2008 Toshiba dealer show, back in March-

"...for larger settings, Toshiba will soon offer its e-BRIDGE Fleet Management System (eFMS), giving administrators the power of centralized monitoring while users benefit from improved availability of devices.

Key operators receive automatic first-tier alerting, while second-tier alerting is available to service organizations. Anybody with administrative access to the utility can clone settings and view meter reads. Via eFMS, administrators can assign costs to specific departments, as well as review device usage and consumables status. Dealers can use the utility to create cost and device streamlining proposals. eFMS can manage other brands’ devices, but only in a limited fashion.

This solution is still under development but should be available in late summer..."


In the beginning there was only WebJet Admin, then a slew of "newcomers" - @Remote,PrintAudit, PrintSolv, PrinteRx, rXpress, etc. and now EBFMS.


In the end, all these tools are beneficial in promoting control of the fleet and transparency of the real costs of printing - knowing how bad it is more than half the battle.