Company history

Y Soft has participated in many projects such as:

• Internet encyclopedia CoJeCo (What Is What)
• Multimedia CD about Australia, “Australis: Terra Incognita”
• Free Internet hosting server “miesto.sk”  

In 2002, Y Soft was involved in developing an application for their local Kyocera distributor that sent a “release” command to printers based on card reader authentication.

This application was the predecessor of today’s print management system feature known as “pull print”. The idea of controlling access to printing by means of ID cards seemed viable, so Y Soft started to invest its resources in developing this technology. Gradually, a new hardware development team was formed, which joined the existing software development team.

In 2003, Y Soft introduced the first version of its software (then called “SmartQ”) for print and copy control.

This early version of the software already supported blocking of the copy function, accounting for prints and copies, and true server-based pull-print and follow-me functions. This product included three key innovations, exclusive to Y Soft. These innovations drove sales during that during period because:

• First, print jobs were no longer stored at the printer itself, but on the server. This expanded the capablilities of print environments because printers did not have to be equipped with (at that time) very expensive hard disks and also because this solution was independent of specific printer/copier vendors.
• Second, the Y Soft solution stored print jobs on the server and routed them to the relevant printer at the time of authentication. People were thus able to pick up their prints anywhere, using only a single print driver.
• Third, Y Soft provided a new method of accounting based on SNMP communication with the device. The result was very exact accounting and reporting. Y Soft was the first company in the world to introduce this technology and for many years, no other competitor was able to deliver similar accuracy in reporting.

Because Y Soft and the local Kyocera distributor were not able to negotiate an agreement and a local partner registered the trademark SmartQ, Y Soft renamed its solution “SafeQ”.

The next big innovation came in 2004, when Y Soft introduced the new YSoft SafeQ Terminal Professional.

The first Y Soft terminal in the print accounting market, this terminal had a large, black-and-white touch screen display and an internally integrated contactless card reader. Even though Y Soft discontinued work on all business other than SafeQ, revenues grew to €460.000.

Quickly, the YSoft SafeQ Terminal Professional became a bestseller and orders increased to the point that, in 2006, Y Soft purchased its own production line.

Also, the volume of terminal sales allowed the company to switch from an industrial plastic casing to a casing custom-designed by Y Soft. Further firmware innovations such as favourite jobs and a new design drove sales even higher.

In the software field, Y Soft introduced its first embedded terminal for Ricoh machines. This first embedded terminal did not support card readers—only PIN identification—but it was the first time that
Y Soft software code was integrated directly into a multifunction printer. 

In 2007, Y Soft began working on new enterprise-level software to leverage YSoft SafeQ strengths for companies with large branch networks (typically banks).

“SafeQ RS” (SafeQ Remote Server) was introduced to the market. This technology enabled companies to spool print jobs locally at their various branches, with completely centralized management and reporting.

Also in 2007, Y Soft launched an embedded accounting and follow-me solution for Konica Minolta (which had been in development since 2006).

Still in this year, Y Soft opened its first affiliate company in Hungary.

Y Soft co-founder and CEO, Václav Muchna, was awarded the title “Start-up Entrepreneur of the Czech Republic of the year 2006” in the competition of the same name by Ernst & Young.

In 2008, Y Soft launched USB card readers connectable to multifunction printers, which enabled SafeQ Embedded Terminals to use card authentication.

The year 2008 saw a massive Y Soft expansion around the globe. During this year, Y Soft launched companies in Japan (for Asia and Pacific) and Israel.

At the end of 2008, Y Soft made its first acquisition when it bought the US company Xpert Image, later renamed Y Soft Americas.
The “Remote Server” technology was unique, but because it was completely online, scalability was somewhat limited. The maximum output it could handle in a single environment was about 100 million pages per year.

This was not enough for our largest customers, so, in 2009, Y Soft released “SafeQ ORS” (SafeQ Offline Remote Spoolers).

SafeQ ORS is not vulnerable to WAN outages and improves the performance and scalability of YSoft SafeQ. 

Our largest end user has been able to produce 150 million pages per year without any performance issues, but the software is regularly stress-tested to handle more than 300 million pages a year.

Another SafeQ embedded platform was launched – this time for Xerox. For the first time, Y Soft integrated the SafeQ Web Interface directly into a multifunction printer.  

The year 2010 (due to a shifted fiscal year) was the year of the worldwide “Financial Crisis”.

Y Soft introduced a new version of the YSoft SafeQ Terminal Professional, with an improved design and a colour display. Also, Y Soft introduced a new terminal, the YSoft SafeQ Terminal UltraLight, which addresses the needs of price-sensitive customers. In addition, the YSoft SafeQ Terminal Embedded for Sharp was launched.

Y Soft initiated strategic cooperation with Konica Minolta headquarters in Japan. The first global contract for select parts of Y Soft IPR sublicensing to Konica Minolta was negotiated.
Y Soft co-founder and CEO, Václav Muchna, was named a “Technology Entrepreneur of the Czech Republic of the year 2010” and the “Entrepreneur of the Year of South-Moravia” region. Revenues grew to €5.5 million, the lowest growth for Y Soft since the year 2003.
The growth Y Soft missed in 2010 came during 2011 (note: fiscal year 2011 ended 30 June 2011). 

In 2011, Y Soft worked on major worldwide technology innovations that will be launched in 2012.

Major investments went to the Quality Assurance Department, and the first part of a special super-server dedicated mainly to enterprise-level testing was acquired. The final configuration of this super server is 192 processor cores, 3 TB of RAM, and a constantly growing half SSD storage disk array.
Y Soft also established another affiliate company in the USA (Miami, Florida) which took over business for South and Central America. This company was named Y Soft Latin America and Y Soft Americas was renamed to Y Soft North America.
In the international field, Y Soft has become the first company in its segment that covers the world and all time zones directly through its own subsidiaries. This is a unique benefit to global customers who decide to integrate output management solutions across multiple continents.

Watch for what’s coming... We are going to launch new worldwide technology innovations in 2012.