Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!- One solutions vendor buys another. Visionet Systems, a business process outsourcing firm in Cranbury, NJ, announced it has acquired eDoc Synergy of Chesterfield, MO. eDoc was founded by Affan Waheed, a former employee of Express Scripts, and provided a service to digitize medical records.
- Microsoft is set to launch Windows 7 operating system on 10/22/09. According to IDC’s Director of Vertical Industry Practice, Mark Walker stated; “The operating system is meaner and cleaner than its predecessor. It has gone back to the first principals.’
- The falling value of the US Dollar continues to pummel the MFP industry. For example, Zacks Investment Research said the following about Canon; “We believe the sharp appreciation of the yen is eroding Canon Inc’s revenue and profits. The company expects to improve profitability through product launches and cost-cutting efforts. We expect revenue in 2009 to be hurt by weak consumer spending and worsening global economy and believe the company will struggle to meet expectations in fiscal 2009. We maintain our SELL recommendation on Canon shares.”
- In an unusual effort to increase sales, Riso is running ads for its new high speed color inkjet systems in a electric utility’s website. The eCatalog is from BC Hydro, a large electric utility in Canada.
- Offset press maker, Heidelberg of Germany, announced it will cut an additional 1500 jobs to boost profitability.
- DocuForce, a dealer in Kansas, won a copier bid from Butler County for color and b/w models. Total revenue not announced.
- Buyers Labs Inc. (BLI) gave a 5 Star rating to PrintAudit 6, a rules based managed print services software package.
- Document management use in healthcare can help avoid costs in an audit of Medicare payments. Since the government started their audits (called RACs), in just 5 pilot stated, $993 million in Medicare overpayments has already been recouped. The RACs expand to all states in 2010, and supposedly require 5 times as much research as a traditional audit.
- A federal judge in Texas has dismissed Hewlett Packard & Lenovo from an inventor’s lawsuit accusing them of infringing on a patent related to modems used in the company’s computer product line.
- Hewlett Packard is apparently considering making another acquisition, after is just swallowed EDS for $13 billion. Industry authors believe the company will buy Brocade Communications Systems Inc., which makes routers and switches for blade computer servers, as well as software. Some analysts place Brocade’s value at $4 billion.
- Is getting rid of all paper files a good idea? The U.S. National Archives announced that based on its testing, CD/DVD experiential life expectancy is only 2 to 5 years, even though published data life expectancy is often cited as 25 years or longer. Why is this? The dyes that record data in the CD/DVD material can be impacted by the environment, and lose their data. The phenomenon is called “Bit Rot”.
- The City of Denver’s faulty printer allows drunk worker to keep his job. Apparently John Delgado, who was caught drinking on the job, could not be fired when the printer attached to the Breathalyzer machine failed to print out the test results.
- Lexmark now shipping the T656dne, which is an A4 b/w desktop b/w laser printer, with a 7” touch screen color LCD, and 55ppm for $1999.00.
- Lexmark won a managed print services bid from RC McLean & Associates, which is a medical practice management company that provides billing and other professional services to anesthesiologists and other medical specialists across the U.S. Lexmark claims the contract will save RCM over $120,000 per year.
- Statistics from Lexmark on healthcare industry in the U.S.:
- $7 billion per year is spent on processing insurance claims
- Average cost for a medical practice to process an insurance claim is $10-$15 per claim
- Turnaround time for claim is 30-90 days
- Paper claims take average of 35 minutes to process
- Paper claims are rejected 30-35% of the time
- Only 1% of electronically filed claims are rejected
- Another use for inkjet printers. Students at UC Berkeley have invented a way to grow biological cell cultures, but squirting glucose using inkjet heads in a low cost printer, into grooves dug into CD-ROMS that contain the cells. They are hoping to perfect this technology to offer an alternative to normal $30,000 systems that labs have to acquire to do the same thing.
- Toshiba was notified that it will be fined the European Union over claims that it conspired to fix pricing of electric power transformers.
- Toshiba previewed a new high definition television, called the Cell Regza, which is a 55” flat screen model that displays 8 different channels at the same time in 8 windows on screen. It uses the same computer that is in a Sony PlayStation video game. It can also record all 8 channels nonstop for 26 hours on an internal hard drive. Suggested MSRP of $11,000.00.
- Toshiba announced it has implemented Web Content Management software from Autonomy Corp. for its office equipment website for dealers and end users. Unknown the cost of the contract.
- In another acquisition of a computer network services company, Emerson Electric Co. announced it had purchased Avocent Corp. for $1.2 billion.
- Another example; Sykes Enterprises of Tampa, FL, paid $263 million for ICT Group of Newtown, PA. ICT Group provides services to contact centers in the U.S.
- InnerWorkings Inc. of Chicago, IL, announced it won a managed print services bid from InterContinental Hotels Group. This is apparently a mulit-million dollar contract.
- The Graphic Arts Show Company announced that the total attendance for PRINT 09 was 18,999, not including vendors.
-=Good Selling=-
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