CoCoCo, which launched today (2 May), was founded by Andreas Aplien, John Maxwell, and Karl Ciz. The trio said the new company will follow an open business approach to reach its goals, offering connectivity for existing assets in print shops.

Its products will be vendor and manufacturer-neutral, meaning users “will not need to make a new investment, but can simply connect their existing setup”.

Its product plan is based on three components; a platform called CoCore, and two products called CoConnect and CoCollab.

CoCore is an AI-enabled open platform and data storage that forms the base of CoCoCo’s offering. CoConnect will connect any software and machine on-site or in the cloud, while CoCollab will enable rule-based job routing.

The platform is ready to use, and printers are able to sign up for a waiting list now.

Heidelberg-owned business Zaikio, known for its cloud-based data and app platform, went into liquidation last month.

Ciz told Printweek: “The [CoCoCo] technical team bring four years of learning from Zaikio, and have worked tirelessly to create a whole new and exciting architecture based on those core Zaikio learnings.”

He added: “We believe that we’re free now to concentrate on what really matters, and going back to the core concepts of connectivity, compatibility, and collaboration – hence the name CoCoCo.

“Our business model has also changed – we can now provide the connectivity for machines. Rather than waiting for the machine operators and vendors to integrate with CoCoCo, we’ve actually got those connectivity pieces already established for the machines and for the software.

“So it’s no longer partners who will integrate with a platform, it’s the platform that will integrate with partners, and that allows us to scale more quickly, and be completely vendor-agnostic, which allows us to work with all partners equally.”

Ciz said the company’s platform runs with a subscription model that has simple pricing.

“It’s £100 per connection – simple as that. There is a fair usage policy for data within that; within each connection 1,000 jobs will go through completely free of charge, and then there’s a fair usage policy on top of that on a per-job basis.”

Ciz said the company anticipates taking on hundreds of customers this year.

“We have quite aggressive growth plans but we’re also seeking investment from industry partners – so it would be slightly dependent on how the customer base develops and how investment scale goes.”

The CoCoCo team said it hopes to attend Drupa and that there will be “exciting news” about that coming up.