MFP Weekend Industry Notes 4/26/10

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- More proof of economic recovery for copiers. The Copier Network of San Leandro, CA has noticed an increasing trend for copier repossessions and other general office equipment in the United States due to the tough economic times. As a nationally established asset recovery company The Copier Network has the privilege of foresight to predict the economy’s coming up’s and down’s. However, recently, Copier Network has noticed a slight decrease in the number of repossession assignments, which may suggest the economy is recovering. (Preliminary forecast for Repo assignments in 2010 is to be about 15% less than 2009.)

- Fujitsu battle with its former president, Kuniaki Nozoe, continues. The latest allegation is that Fujitsu’s board allegedly offered the president “hush money” of $2.9 million, if he would resign quietly.

- Fujitsu launched a computer keyboard that is made with biodegradable plastics, called the KBPC PX ECO keyboard.

- Fujitsu announced it will spend $537.3 million to upgrade its data centers to offer cloud computing (possible price of 30 cents per hour)

- Fujitsu hired John Hanley as Application Division Managing Director, who will be tasked with 3 year plan to double revenue from custom customer applications.

- Pitney Bowes announced it will expand its relationship with Riso to sell the Riso ComColor color inkjet systems. These Olympus made models will be marketed through Pitney Bowes offices nationwide (which may be why Riso is apparently closing its own branches in the U.S.)
- Some customers still prefer the TIFF format for scanning instead of PDF:
o TIFF stands for “Tagged Image File Format”
o works well with CAD programs, and geographic info systems
o file structure is simpler
o originally developed by Aldus Corp, in 1986 (which sold out to Adobe)
o bitmap format
o files are very difficult to alter
o suitable for storing many pages of a single fax in a single file
o better compression algorithms to make files smaller

- Clearwell Systems announced it sold an eDiscovery software package to Wyatt Tarrant & Combs, a 200 attorney law firm with 7 offices in South Central U.S. and Colorado.

- Kodak’s CEO, Antonio Perez, stated that he plans on Kodak generating $250 million to $350 million per year in patent licensing revenue. Details:
o Program actually started during tenure of former Kodak CEO, Dan Carp.
o Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975
o Kodak has reported only one full year of profit since 2004 (in 2007)
o Kodak filed lawsuits against Apple Computer and Research in Motion Ltd. (makers of Blackberry) for patent infringement.
o Apple countersued claiming that Kodak is using its digital processing technologies
o Received $550 million from Samsung to settle lawsuit
o Received $400 million from LG Electronics to settle lawsuit
o Has 30 licensing agreements now in place, including Nokia, Sony, Motorola, etc.

- In the court case “Ghods versus Citicorp”, the judge ruled that just because a copier experienced service problem, the customer (Ghods) is still responsible for making lease payments.

- Nuance announced new features for eCopy ShareScan:
o Document Conversion Extender which enables customers to turn paper documents into fully-formatted Microsoft Word, Excel and RTF (rich text format) files
o The OCR (optical character recognition) engine has been improved to offer 50% more accuracy
o The OCR engine is now 30% more accurate than other middleware solutions
o Forms Processing Extender enables customer to route and process paper forms, including ability to extract data and perform automated database look-ups ($995 per MFP)
o Available OCR SDK (software developer kit) & API (application program interface) making it easier for other software vendors to connect to eCopy
o Support for 3D capture for book scanning
o Export to over 100 formats, including eBook and audio book
o Scan-to-redaction allows keywords or phrases to automatically remove sensitive information with results printed to redacted copy or sent to user as redacted PDF file
o Scan-to-highlight results in a paper-search feature that finds and highlights info hidden within stacks of paper, with highlighted document either printed or sent as PDF

- Zoran Corp. of Sunnyvale, CA, which makes print controllers for many MFP manufacturers, announced a new controller called the “Inferno” offering:
o Uses Linux with Quatro RISC processor
o 10/100/1000BaseT ports
o Zoran also makes controllers for DVD players, digital cameras, cell phones and cable TV boxes.
- Toshiba announced it is launching a new series of hands-on workshops to teach its dealers how to sell Managed Print Services and Professional Services. Details:
o Classes held in Washington DC, Dallas, Irvine & Chicago
o Speakers include employees of Toshiba, HP, Lexmark and Strategy Development
o Launched by Toshiba’s VP of Marketing, Bill Melo
o There is no charge to attend

- Toshiba announced that it won four awards in the 2010 BERTL Readers’ Choice Awards:
o Total Solution Provider in the Overall Manufacturer Award Division
o Environment Sustainability
o Workflow Integration
o Output Quality for the Toshiba e-STUDIO5520c/6520c/6530c series.

- Toshiba expects to report a big loss in the financial year just ended:
o expects a net loss of ¥20 billion (US$215 million) for the fiscal year that ended in March
o Sales are expected to come in at ¥6.38 trillion, which is a slight drop from the ¥6.4 trillion that was predicted in January

- Microsoft released results of a survey that showed:
o Most small and midsize businesses (SMB) will be spending more on IT in 2010
o 64% stated that they will spend more, compared with 23% in 2009
o Overall spending expected to increase 16% over 2009 levels
o 19% expect to use cloud based services
o 74% will use more remote workers
o 52% admitted to storing a document on a company server and never finding it again
o 39% state that their company does not have any guidelines for storing documents

- Copier data security in the news. CBS network TV affiliates across the U.S. are airing investigative reports reporting to the general public that many copiers with hard drives that companies have traded in, still have confidential information stored on the hard drive, that may wind up in the wrong hands when the copiers are remarketed to new customers. Sample of customers that inadvertently exposed data when they traded in their copiers:
o Buffalo, NY Police Department (Toshiba copiers)
o Tommy Bahama stores
o Affinity Health Plan of New York
o The copiers involved were all made prior to 2008, which means they were made before most vendors introduced hard drive encryption or disk overwrite features

- Rochester Software Associates (RSA) won “Best of Show” awards during the current OnDemand trade show in Philadelphia:
o RSA WebCRD Web-to-Print software
o RSA KDKPrint SMARTBOARD conversion software (converts Kodak proprietary format to PS or PDF)
o RSA SurePreview previewsa job onscreen as a finishied product using WebCRD

- Cason Research predicts that digital color page volume in North America will grow from 10% of all digital pages in 2008 to almost 50%, more than 325 billion pages, by 2017.

- According to BuyerZone, here is average street pricing of document management software systems:
o $3,000 for entry level system with less than 10 users
o $6000 for small system with 10+ users
o $25,000 to $80,000 for mid-sized system with up to 100 users
o $500,000 for enterprise level (hundreds of users)

- United Stationers Supply Co., a large nationwide office supply distributor headquartered in Illinois, announced it has made a minority investment in NER Data Corp., which refills toner cartridges, offers generic printer parts, and provides a Managed Print Services program.

- Apple Computer has filed a patent application for a color computer monitor that will use special filters to display CMYK, instead of traditional RGB. Unknown when and if product will actually be launched.

- Rosetta Technologies announced it will sell MICR (magnetic image character recognition) toner that supposedly will work in 90, 110 & 135ppm Ricoh production print b/w copiers.

- Ricoh announced that in Australia, it will resell EFI PrintSmith MIS software, which is used by printshops to manage their business. EFI normally sells this product directly to printshop owners, so Ricoh is testing this in one country, and may offer it in the future in the U.S.

- Ricoh gave out some details about its last fiscal year end performance:
o operating profit is 44% larger than originally forecast due to cost cutting measures (massive layoffs)
o operating profit of $697 million

- Equitrac announced it has hired Eric Rodriquez as its VP of Direct Professional Sales, focusing on selling to the legal vertical market. Details:
o Eric started his career at IKON in Chicago
o Then worked as sales manager for C2 Legal
o Founded and become CEO of Ribstone Systems (since he now left Ribstone, some are reporting that Ribstone is going out of business, which would be bad news for all the law firms in the U.S. that bought Canon imageRUNNERs with Ribstone/MEAP embedded)

- Carlson Marketing reported results of a survey regarding building relationships with customers:
o Average company loses 10-30% of its customers every year
o Average company loses 50% of its customers every 5 years
o 50% of buyers claim they’d never do business with a company again if it took more than one day to resolve one of their customer service issues (i.e. billing, etc.)
o Proactively soliciting feedback from customers provides 15-20% more cross-selling and upselling opportunities
o More than 66% of companies that communicate with their buyers via weekly or monthly newsletters increase loyalty
o Buyers who receive regular contact are 4 times more likely to recommend a business to a friend or collegue

- Samsung puts convict back in his job. Even though he was convicted of criminal tax evasion charges in connection with massive slush fund and bribery network scandal, South Korean President lee Myung-bak pardoned Lee Kun-hee, former Samsung chairman. Samsung announced that he was rehired and given his title back.

- Kyocera has hired Peter Cybuck, formerly of Ricoh and Sharp, to lead new data security initiative for future MFPs.

- Kyocera’s president and CEO, Mike Pietrunti, announced that the company is looking to add dealers in Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix and Houston. (it lost dealers it had in last couple of years due to acquisitions)

- More data security issues. A vendor survey of more than 200 hospital executives finds instances of health information data breaches and medical identity theft continue to increase despite new federal regulations like the breach notification rule and the Red Flag rules

o Identity Force, a Framingham, Mass.-based vendor of identity theft prevention services, conducted the survey between March 30 and April 13 among members of the American Hospital Association. The company received e-mail outreach assistance from the AHA, which previously endorsed its services. Survey findings include:
 Some 41.5 percent of responding hospitals have 10 or more data breaches annually, up 121 percent from a similar survey done in 2009. Twenty percent of respondents have at least 20 breaches annually.
 Fifty-six percent of respondents believe the health reform law either will not change or will increase instances of medical identity theft. Yet, 71 percent of the hospitals, on average, investigate fewer than 50 possible cases of misuse of identity each year and 34 percent don't keep good patient ID records.
 Only 15.7 percent of respondents believe they are in good compliance with security provisions of the HITECH Act; 48 percent don't know if their vendors and business associates are in compliance.

-=Good Selling=-