Enfocus director of product management Elli Cloots said that the software now had an "engine prepared for the future", which has made Switch a more robust product.

"For printers it is important to have constant throughput of files, so we split our core engine for Switch 10 to allow it to handle many simultaneous processes independently of each other," she said.

"This means that if your FTP is causing problems or you have a specific third party application that is causing a problem that will not affect any other tasks – everything will process independently.

"Just by doing that enormous step forward with our engine that gives a lot more stability and effectiveness and that is really a step up for printers. Where it used to be just about automating a few tasks this is now a tool that you can rely upon and that will continue to process forever."

Cloots added that the engine upgrade came about in response to users placing ever more dependence on Switch and by extension stressing the software beyond the developer's original vision.

"We saw that much more stress was being put on the system than we ever expected and that happened a lot faster than we thought - we've got customers that dump 25,000 files on Switch and while counting those files, everything else that's already in process still needs to continue," she said.

"With the old engine you had one process, meaning it was doing one thing or something else, but now it's really split up so if one of these processes is taking to much then it doesn't have an effect on the other processes - they will continue to work as expected."

New features in Switch 10 include a dashboard-style Workload Visualiser, that gives users visability of how heavily Switch is being used and flags up potential problems ahead of time.

"You could almost call it a health indicator," said Cloots. "It tells you when your disks are nearly full, or your network is running slow, or if specific processes are taking too much time. All of that we be visualised in this tool, so that the admin knows about it and can react to it."

Enfocus has also integrated support for Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and added a SwitchProxy module for users of FullSwitch and PowerSwitch to ensure business continuity.

"The option to add a proxy server means that you have continuity even if you have to do a reboot of the system, for an OS update for instance, so the client can still submit files," said Cloots. "That's a little more necessary with PitStop Connect in the picture, because you've got all these connectors that go to your creatives and when they start submitting files it needs to go flawlessly."

The Switch 10 product family will be available from Enfocus during Q2. Switch clients with a maintenance contract will be entitled to a free upgrade. For new users, product pricing, including a one-year maintenance contract, is as follows: LightSwitch 10 £818; FullSwitch 10 £2,727; PowerSwitch 10 £5,455.