A Clustered Future?

"Cluster printing's architecture is scalable and can grow as the users' needs grow," says Pearl.

While cluster printing is not yet mainstream, a significant number of in-plants are migrating in this direction, reports Dennis Amorosano, of Canon USA.

"As more users start tying together multiple lower-speed engines to drive production output capabilities, more manufacturers will start developing this capability," he predicts. "Servers will become more comprehensive in their abilities and will be a lot easier to use. Ultimately, servers driving low-speed clusters will start to mirror the capabilities of single units and function like high-volume, high-speed front-end servers."