HP Launches New MPS Program

HP is pushing its managed print services (MPS) through partners to target SMB and enterprise customers. The company has launched the HP Bundled Page program which offers an all-inclusive bundle of supplies, maintenance and services.
Partners can offer enterprise-grade MPS to their customers in two models.
Explained Nitin Hiranandani, Director, Printing, HP, PPS India, “Partners can provide supplies, consumables and software-based services while the customer owns the hardware. Or partners can buy hardware through HP Financial Services and offer it to customers on base charges per month on hardware and click charges on actuals.”
The program enables partners to access the HP ExpressDecision Portal which provides them with proposal and quotes for cost-per-page pricing, client invoicing and reporting, device monitoring, and account and contract management. “We will provide presales and implementation support. Moreover, the HP Services team will support partners in areas where they don’t have a presence,” Hiranandani added.
HP has rolled out the program in Delhi and Mumbai, and will extend it to other metros by 2013-end and other top 10 cities in 2014. Said Hiranandani, “SMBs are now demanding MPS because it allows them to move from a capex to an opex model and provides savings of up to 20 percent.”
The company has enrolled about 15 partners so far and is looking for more with a services mindset.
IDC says the APEJ MPS market was worth $530 million in 2010 and is expected to reach $990 million by 2014, while, according to the Photizo Group, India is the fastest-growing market for MPS in APAC.
Meanwhile, AMI Partners believes that about 18 percent of the total printing business from SMBs in India comes from MPS, and that by 2015 almost 60 percent of the printing business will transform into MPS.

---By Amit Singh, CRN, Aug 13, 2013

ASP.NET - Working with Themes

ASP.NET themes are a collection of properties that enables to define the appearance of Web pages and controls on the website.
A theme can include skin files, cascading style sheet files (.css files), and graphics. By applying a theme, one can give Web pages a consistent appearance across the website.

Creating a Theme
A theme is used in Web applications by creating a skin file and attaching it to the Web pages on which the theme has to be applied. Skin files are used to define the property settings for ASP.NET Web server controls. Skin files are created and stored in a theme folder. This theme folder is placed inside the folder named App_Themes. All the themes in a Web application are placed inside the App_Themes folder. This folder is placed inside the top-level directory of the Web application.