Q: Alan, you’ve spent decades in the printing industry. What are printers really worried about right now — beneath the surface?
 

Stability. Always have been.

Printers don’t wake up hoping for excitement in their workflow. They wake up hoping everything behaves exactly as it did yesterday. Most production environments are finely balanced ecosystems that took years to get right. When software vendors force change — forced upgrades, forced subscriptions, forced platform moves — that’s not innovation. It’s disruption for its own sake.

And I’ve yet to meet a printer who enjoys that sort of surprise.

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In fact, I have seen quite a few examples of Print Service Providers actively NOT installing the next great release of software for fear it will disrupt operations. Yes, some people I know are still running systems on Windows 5 – let alone Windows 10!

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What I hear over and over is: “We just want it to keep working.”

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That’s not fear of progress. That’s experience talking.

 

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Q: Xitron is very open about leading with perpetual licensing. Why does that still resonate?

Because ownership still matters.

Printers understand capital investment. They buy presses, platesetters, finishing equipment—things they expect to use for a long time. Software should be treated and behave the same way.
Perpetual licensing says something very simple: you own what you paid for. Which feels like a fairly reasonable expectation.

Subscription models change that relationship. Suddenly someone else controls your costs, your upgrade schedule, and often your risk. Printers don’t particularly enjoy renting the backbone of their production.

At Xitron, we’re not anti-modern. We’re anti-nonsense. Simply select the best-of-breed and keep it running. And watch out for sneaky cost increases disguised as “extended warranties”.

 

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Q: You’ve talked a lot about RIP stability. What actually causes failures in real pressrooms?

It’s rarely the RIP itself.

Most production issues come from people (both inside and outside the Print Service Providers’ walls) changing things that were working perfectly well — often late on a Friday afternoon, which is never a good thing.

Operating systems churn. Platforms change. Hardware being declared “end of life” while it’s still earning its keep. Licence servers that insist on phoning home at inconvenient moments.

Plenty of RIPs would run quite happily for another decade if they were just left alone. At Xitron, we design around that reality. Stability isn’t an accident — it’s a choice.

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Q: Xitron often highlights customers running older hardware. Isn’t that counterintuitive?

Only if you assume newer automatically means better. In printing, that’s often not true.

Some of the most profitable operations I know are running equipment that’s been around a while. They know it inside out. It’s paid for itself. It does exactly what they need it to do.

Telling a printer to rip out hardware that still makes money is a brave conversation—especially if you’re not the one paying for it.

Our view is straightforward: if your kit’s doing its job, the software shouldn’t get in the way. Quite the opposite, really.

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Q: You’ve described Xitron’s approach as “adult supervision.” What do you mean by that?

We don’t create drama where none is needed.

If a workflow’s doing its job, nobody should be talking about it. If people are talking about it a lot, something’s probably gone wrong.

Printers don’t need hype. They need predictability. They need vendors who understand that downtime costs money, sleep, and sometimes friendships.

Our job is to make workflow boring — in the best possible way.

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Q: Final question — what makes K2 click once printers really understand it?

It gives them control back.

Control over licensing.
Control over upgrades.
Control over timing.
Control over their own operation.

Once printers realise nothing’s being taken away from them, they relax a bit. And relaxed printers tend to make very sensible decisions.

That’s usually when things get interesting—in a nice, quiet sort of way.