About Us

Who we are:
The AFP Consortium is an international group of more than 30 companies across the print industry dedicated to the continued development of the Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) architecture. 

What we do:
The AFP Consortium facilitates open collaboration among members, typically partners and/or competitors in the marketplace, to ensure this stable, efficient, flexible architecture continues to thrive as the world of printing changes. This includes responsibility for maintaining and updating a number of architecture references and other publications.

Our history:
The Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) architectures began as the strategic, general purpose document and information presentation architecture for the IBM® Corporation. The first specifications and products go back to 1984. Although all of the components of the architecture have grown over the years, the major concepts of object-driven structures, print integrity, resource management, and support for high print speeds were built in from the start.
 
In the early twenty-first century, IBM saw the need to enable applications to create color output that is independent from the device used for printing and to preserve color consistency, quality, and fidelity of the printed material. This need resulted in the formation, in October 2004, of the AFP Color Consortium (AFPCC). The goal was to extend the object architectures with support for full-color devices including support for comprehensive color management. The idea of doing this via a consortium consisting of the primary AFP architecture users was to build synergism with partners from across the relevant industries, such as hardware manufacturers that produce printers as well as software vendors of composition, work flow, viewer, and transform tools. Quickly more than 30 members came together in regular meetings and work group sessions to create the AFP Color Management Object Content Architecture (CMOCA). A major milestone was reached by the AFP Color Consortium with the initial official release of the CMOCA specification in May 2006.
 
Since the cooperation between the members of the AFP Color Consortium turned out to be very effective and valuable, it was decided to broaden the scope of the consortium efforts and IBM soon announced its plans to open up the complete scope of the AFP architecture to the consortium. In June 2007, IBM's role as founding member of the consortium was transferred to the InfoPrint® Solutions Company, an IBM/Ricoh® joint venture; currently Ricoh holds the founding member position. In February 2009, the consortium was incorporated under a new set of bylaws with tiered membership and shared governance resulting in the creation of a formal open standards body called the AFP Consortium (AFPC). Ownership of and responsibility for the AFP architectures was transferred at that time to the AFP Consortium.