HP Quietly Suspends Web Jetadmin Plug-in Program

August 11, 2008 - With the release of Web Jetadmin 10 last year, HP quietly suspended the device plug-in development program that many third-party manufacturers (including Canon, Lexmark, Xerox and others) participated in to make their devices more fully compliant with HP’s popular network device management platform.

An HP spokesperson declined to elaborate on the fate of the plug-in program, other than to say that, “HP has discontinued the Competitor Plug-in program that provides new, non-HP printer and MFP device support for HP Web Jetadmin software. HP is in the process of defining a new program. At this time, there aren’t any additional details to share about the new program.” HP did note that multi-vendor device support remains important to some of its customers, and that HP Web Jetadmin continues to manage existing, supported non-HP devices.

But for new printers and MFPs, Web Jetadmin—like most other management utilities—will only allow administrators to monitor and manage settings available in the third-party devices’ public MIB (Management Information Base), not the more complete status information typically contained in the private MIB (for example, detailed meters), which was available with plug-ins.

Device makers BLI contacted were hesitant to speak on the record about the previous development program. BLI had heard unconfirmed rumblings that the price HP was charging for third-party device makers to participate in the program was “going up by a factor of 8x,” and that some device makers were rethinking their participation.

This article was originally posted at Buyers Lab.