Delivering 24/7 ‘on demand’printing services

Lightning Source, a leader in print-ondemand and digital fulfilment services, recently completed a substantial investment in new IT and printing technology at its UK headquarters in Milton Keynes. This included the installation of a 20KW APC Silcon UPS by on365 to provide a protected power solution that enables the delivery of 24/7 ‘on demand’ printing services. Lightning Source has one of the largest digital libraries
in the industry andhas printed over 3,000,000 ‘on demand’ books for more than 1300 of its publisher partners around the world.

As a pioneer in capitalizing on new technology by bringing successful ‘on demand’ printing services to market, Lightning Source is revolutionizing the options available to the industry in the secure conversion, storage, management, and distribution of digital content in the e-marketplace.

Electronically stored books can be delivered ‘on demand’ in either traditional printed format, or as eBooks in response to orders from booksellers, librarians, and publishers.

Books can be printed in less than three minutes, whether the order is for one, 100 or 1,000 books, and shipped within 24-48 hours in a range of high quality formats including hardcover and several trade paperback sizes.

eBook titles can be downloaded immediately. This process means that books need never go out of print and that many more lower-volume speciality books can be made available to the book-buying public.

Key to the purchase of the equipment was that it had the flexibility to provide whole environment protection
for Lightning Source’s entire UK data centre which uses Windows NT and Sun Solaris based platforms. It was also essential that the proposed UPS should offer a uniform approach to configuring and managing these disparate systems.

on365 was selected to deliver the protected power solution as it is one of APC’s leading High Power Partners in the UK and could demonstrate that it had experience of delivering and supporting similar installations in mission critical environments. In collaboration with Lightning Source’s IT staff, On365 designed and sized the UPS system to meet the required load of the digital content management system.

According to Andrew Crook of Lightning Source: “Having worked with APC equipment before, we felt comfortable with its operation and resilience. In addition, on365 has delivered and commissioned a first class solution that meets the needs of this rapidly growing organisation with an impressively short lead time.”