About Pharos Systems

Pharos Systems International, Inc. provides powerful and innovative print optimization software and services to educational institutions, corporations, and libraries across the globe. Pharos pioneered print control and management software in the early 1990s and continues to lead the industry today. Our solutions save customers money, enable greener printing, and make printing more secure and convenient.

Pharos Systems is a privately held company incorporated in the state of Delaware.  We operate out of two primary offices: one in Rochester, New York, USA and the other in Auckland, New Zealand, where the company was founded in 1992. The Rochester office serves as global headquarters, housing Pharos executive management as well as sales, marketing, finance, and a number of technical teams. The Auckland office serves as our primary research and development facility. In addition, Pharos has value added resellers located throughout the world.

Pharos Systems was named after one of the wonders of the ancient world: the Lighthouse of Alexandria. The lighthouse stood on Pharos Island off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt from the 3rd century BC until the 14th century AD. It was an important navigation landmark and one of the tallest man-made structures in the world for much of its existence.

The lighthouse became so closely associated with the island on which it stood that the Greek word “pharos” was used in Latin to mean "lighthouse". The word passed from Latin into the Romance languages, which is why “lighthouse” in French is “phare”, in Italian and Spanish “faro”, in Portuguese “farol”, and in Catalan and Romanian “far”.