Top 5 Trending MFP & Printer Solutions

Those of us in the know are always trying to catch on the latest and greatest MFP & Print solutions.  Here's my top 5 from the last year with a short overview on each. When was the last time you hugged your copier solutions rep, cause if they are bringing these solutions to the table then you owe it to them to reach out and hug them!

1) PretonSaver:  Need to get more bang for the buck out of your toner cartridges?  Take a gander at Preton Saver software, Pretonsaver will eliminate those pesky little extra pixels of toner and can offer toner savings of up to 25-45%!

Hey, maybe it's not a bad idea to go back to selling maintenance agreements, not include the toner, but do include licenses of PretonSaver.  Just think about the talk track to the end user.  You buy the toner, we'll do the service/maintenance but we'll also sell you "x" licenses of PretonSaver that can save you 25-45% of your toner costs for your MFP and your printer fleet!  Thus you would have the extremely low cost per page of service/maintenance coupled with an almost 50% savings on the toner.  Look at it this way, if manufacturer is stating 6% coverage for toner, and the toner cost is $32 for 8,000 pages that puts the retail toner cost at .0032, using PretonSaver you could lower that cost to .00144.  That's a savings of .00176, over the life of the MFP if you printed and copied 400,000 pages you would have a savings of $704 and that's only for one MFP! Can you image the savings on the fleet? 

2) Print Audit:  I've always been a fan of Print Audit, even before they became a Print4Pay Hotel sponsor.  Plain and simple their software works, day in day out, simple to use, simple to install and the ease of use is second to none.  Print Audit has a wide variety of print management software that is designed for the end user of the office equipment dealer.  I can't tell you how many calls I get from customers claiming "my color volume has gone through the roof", "this machine is costing me more than the payment on my car", and those customers are right. They have no way of controlling printing, whether it's color or black. It's not the dealers fault, nor is it the manufacturers fault, the end user needs to take some accountability and place limits on printing or re-direct printing to lower cost devices.  Print Audit 6 will do all of that plus more, and it's done behind the scenes, once you set the print rules it like "set it and forget it", Print Audit 6 will insure that limits are enforced and re-directing to lower cost devices is now the norm. Copier Dealers, there's never been a better time to become a Premier Print Audit partner, everyone is looking to reduce costs, prints and their Premier SaaS model allows you to sell software by the click, by the seat or just a flat monthly fee!

3) Doculex: Doculex has been a mainstay in the office equipment industry for many years. Doculex my first introduction into Document Management Software. If you had to ask me name the first document management company that comes to mind then it would be Doculex.  By no means am I document management guru,  however Doculex has roots in the MFP industry, long before other DMS companies were soliciting their wares to MFP dealers Doculex was already there with a very impressive channel of MFP Dealers.  "By becoming a DocuLex Reseller, you can provide your customers a complete document management solution, increasing your recurring revenue and customer retention. Attract new customers and add value to your existing customer base. DocuLex can provide direct support for you and your customer, and customers can get started with the DocuLex Archive Studio Content Management Software solution for as little as $ 40 per user per month."  Just and FYI Doculex is a sponsor for the Print4Pay Hotel and we'll have a guest blog posted for them soon along with webinars for our members.


4) Nuance:  In particular their ecopy paperworks, sometimes you just need simplicity right?  I just love showing ecopy paperworks to my existing customers and potential new accounts. eCopy paperworks is one of those rare software programs that you can fully understand all of the icons and master after 5 times.  With ease you can whiteout/blackout text, add lines with arrows (color lines too), highlight an area in different colors, add digital notes, add signatures, OCR a document (drop back into word or excel), .pdf a document, use the TWAIN scan feature, draw freehand notes, move pages, delete pages, cut, copy, paste and even add hyperlinks to a document.  I use ecopy every day and can't think what I would do if I did not have paperworks anymore.   Over the years I demo'd this product many times and I've never had someone tell me that they didn't like it. Take it from if you're in need of software that will convert documents to .pdf's and you need to do markups on documents the ecopy paperworks is the best I've seen in years!

5) UDOCX:  A couple of years ago before I even knew that web browsers could be used in MFPs, I had a thread posted on the Print4Pay Hotel forums from the marketing person for UDOCX. The thread pointed out that in Europe on Ricoh devices with enabled web browsers users could now scan2sharepoint, scan2MS365 without the need to have a software installed on a server. This was genius, the UDOCX is software as a service, users would pay a monthly fee and you were off and running with a powerful web based scanning solution (with no server hardware or software to maintain) from the MFP. Now, web enabled MFP browsers took a little longer here in the states, but at least with all of the new Ricoh MFP's you're good to go.  It's my understanding that you can also use the UDOCX service with Xerox, Sharp & Canon systems.  UDOCX will also support cloud printing and scan2fax.  Scan2fax, think about it, no MFP fax option to purchase, no telephone line charges, no call charges, no taxes and no FCC charges.

-=Good Selling=-

Daily Document Management Industry Notes from Around the World! 2/28/2012

ColumbiaSoft engineered compatibility into its document management system for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 prior to the release of the new database platform. Document Locator, a leading Windows document management software system, is ready for SQL Server ...
See the story on this topic»

... Alfresco and Jive release a connector for socialized content, Treeno released v4.0 of its enterprise content management system, Varonis joins McAfee partner program, while Cintas and ScanMd get together for medical documents.
See the story on this topic »

"Designed with the reliability demanded by business users, and a price point attractive to home users, the USB powered MobileOffice S410 scanner and document management solution converts paper documents, rigid embossed cards, expense reports, ...
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Digiscribe New England, a leading provider of document scanning services and document management services in the Boston area, joins Neponset Valley Chamber of Commerce. This is an exciting endeavor for us to share our experiences and expertise with ...
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"Document imaging is one of today's most in-demand solutions, and many organizations identify the managing of information as being critical to their long-term growth and ability to scale," said Wendy Maurer-Linsky, vice president of Peripherals Product ...
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The Board of Maxima Holdings plc (AIM: MXM), the IT business systems and managed services company, today announces that in line with its previous statement to dispose of non-core assets, the disposal of the Document Management Services ("DMS"), ...
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Nuance PaperPort Anywhere can serve as a standalone cloud-based document manager, an extension to PaperPort Professional 14 on the desktop, or both. If you're familiar with desktop document management programs, you're probably acquainted with Nuance ...
See the story on this topic

-=Good Selling=-

Daily Managed Print Service Industry Notes from Around the World!

Like other printing companies, Lexmark has placed a heavier focus on providing so-called managed print services to help offset headwinds in traditional hardware and supplies businesses. Under such services, printing companies are typically contracted ...read more here

One might not think much when clicking on the print button and taking a printout about how much energy was consumed in the process. This leads us to question how aware Indian enterprises are when it comes to the concept of Green Printing? Is it just a buzzword or is it morphing into reality, albeit slowly. ...read more here

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Feb. 1, 2012 -- Building on its reputation as a leading managed print services (MPS) provider, Mosaic Business Solutions was named as one of 'The Best Places to Work' in South Florida by the South Florida Business Journal. The organization, along with the other honorees, will be recognized at a special event on February 23rd...read more here

Nuance is a company with a plethora of products covering voice recognition, document capture and print management. As Nuance has largely grown through acquisition (about 50 in the past 10 years) it is probably better known by its product names, which include established brands such as PaperPort (desktop productivity), OmniPage (OCR), Dragon Dictate (voice recognition), eCopy (document capture and workflow) and Equitrac (print management) – its most recent buy....read more here
In its latest report on the print market, analyst firm IDC says that, after a flat trend in 2010, it now expects home and office print volumes in Western Europe to slow down even further, declining at a CAGR of 0.6 percent from 2011 through to 2015. IDC says the increasing popularity of IEMDs will contribute to this slow decline.

"New Internet-enabled mobile devices change the nature of users' relationship with documents," said Arnaud Gagneux, director, Imaging Hardcopy and Document Solutions, Western Europe for IDC. "This affects both consumers and businesses, and offers hardcopy vendors opportunities for growth in security, document solutions, and managed print services, to name a few."...read more here

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 3/13/2011

Everyone this will be my last blog until 3/24/2011, off to Aruba with the wife for President's Club!!! Yippe!

- Hewlett Packard officials are refuting a story being published in Asian newspapers that claims that the company is going to sell its hardware business to Samsung or Lenovo. HP executive, Bill Wohl said; “irresponsible reporting and should be dismissed as market rumor and speculation”

- A California judge ruled that HP may keep shielded from the public documents related to its summary judgement motion in a long-running class action suit over an alleged display screen defect in its Pavillion notebook computers.

- IDC reports that the worldwide printer and copier market grew by 7% in last quarter of 2010.

- ProSource, a Konica Minolta dealer in Cincinnati, Ohio, announced it acquired docuVision, a local document management systems dealer.

- ECi, which makes software used by copier dealers to run their business (OMD, LaCrosse, NexGen, etc.) announced it has acquired FM Audit, which makes managed print services software. Purchase price not announced.

- Thomas Reprographics, NRI and CallPrint have formed LINK Document Services Group, which will be a joint venture to provide managed print services to customers in the U.S. LINK’s first action was to acquire Sepialine, Inc. and its Argos software platform.

- Toshiba announced it will invest to expand its plant in Houston, Texas which makes electric motors for hybrid automobiles.

- Lexmark is preparing itself to be sold, according to Frank Voisin, of iStockAnalysis. The company has taken following recent actions that are common when a company wants to sell:

o amended its employment agreements

o ensuring continued employment and benefits for senior executives in case of change in control

o providing bonus if terminated without good cause following change in control

- Police in Gainesville, FL arrested Douglas Brian Osborne after he attempted to use fake $20 bills at a local Stubby’s restaurant that he made using a color copier.

- Police in Texas are searching the Alamo area for people who are using fake $20 bills made on a color copier to buy products from local Kmart, Walgreens and Lowes stores.

- Nuance announced the availability of a Macintosh version of its PDF Converter software.
- Kodak announced it has borrowed $250 million via a private placement of senior secured notes due in 2019. $50 million of these funds will be used to refinance a previous loan that was due in 2013.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 8/22/10

Special thanx to Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!Take a moment and join the largest group of copier professionals in the world. Here's the link for the P4P Hotel forums.

- The U.S. Commerce Department stated that businesses have boosted their spending on equipment and software by 21.9% in the second quarter of 2010. Related:
o KPMG stated its survey showed that 35% of manufacturing executives expect to increase spending on equipment/software in 2010
o 27% of service company executives will increase spending

- According to InfoTrends, color printing will gain share of revenue (equipment, supplies and service) from 65% to 77% in 2014.

- Muratec launches the MFX-2590 featuring:
o A4 b/w laser desktop MFP
o Actually made by Muratec
o 8.5” color LCD control panel
o Base MSRP of $3995
o 25ppm top speed
o 600x600dpi
o Copy/scan/print/fax standard

- Oce’, a division of Canon, announced it would relabel a Brother A4 b/w laser MFP, and call it the Oce’ VarioLink 3200x with top speed of 32ppm.

- Oce’ announced that it won a facilities management contract from Rolls-Royce Aerospace. Oce’ claims it is saving the firm up to 735,000 euros, and reduced the fleet by 100 machines.

- Office Products Analyst announced the results of its annual Color MFP End User survey. Details:
o based on respondents from survey sent to businesses across the U.S.
o users were ask to rate the performance and effectiveness of their color laser MFP in the following categories:
 total cost of operation
 operability/functionality
 image quality
 workstation/network compatibility
o The manufacturer that received the greatest number of first place ratings was
= Konica Minolta
o The manufacturer that received the highest overall average rating was
= Konica Minolta

-Ricoh apparently will be relabeling a Brother made desktop unit, and call it the FAX1190L for $595 MSRP. (manufacturer’s suggested retail price)

-A scientist from Argonne National Laboratory, named Mr. Vilas G. Pol, claims that he has invented a way to make toner from discarded plastic grocery bags.

- Hewlett Packard announced it sold two Indigo 5500 digital color systems to L&L Printers of San Diego, CA. It also sold an Indigo 7500 system to ORWO Net of Germany.

- The Japanese government fined Hewlett Packard $270 million for underreporting its taxable income.

- A group of investors is suing former HP CEO, Mark Hurd, claiming his disclosures surrounding his resignation led to a drop in share value.

- Microsoft announced it will release a record number of patches for its operating systems next week. All told, Microsoft will release 14 security update bulletins, fixing 34 vulnerabilities.

- Offset press maker, Heidelberg of Germany, reported a net loss of 52 million euros and announced that it will lay off an additional 278 workers.

- Better Buys For Business magazine gave out its annual “Editor’s Choice” awards for high speed b/w systems to:
o Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 950
o Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1051
o Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1200
o Kodak DigiMaster EX series
o Canon imageRUNNER 7095
o Canon imagePRESS 1100 series
o Ricoh PRO 907/1101/1357
o Oce’ VarioPrint 4110/4120
o Xerox 4127
o Xerox Nuvera series

- ABBYY of Moscow, Russia, maker of OCR (optical character recognition) software, celebrated its 21st anniversary. It also celebrated its 10th anniversary of marketing its products in the U.S. (currently in court battle with Nuance and Iris of Belgium over validity of OCR patents)

- Kofax, maker of middleware software to connect MFPs and scanners to document management applications, announced it won a $2.3 contract from the U.S. military, for use in HR department. (Kofax competes with Nuance eCopy and NSi AutoStore)

- Sharp launched the “Portal Connector” for its OSA (open source architecture) equipped MFPs. Details:
o enables network scanning directly from MFP to key corporate applications
o scan to Microsoft SharePoint
o available to Sharp dealers who belong to the Sharp AIP (authorized integrator program)
o free for M283N, M363N, M453N, M503N, M623N and M753N models
o $349 for other models

- Sharp makes an executive change. John Herrington, formerly of LG Electronics, was named President of the consumer electronics division of Sharp USA, reporting to Toshihiko Tanimoto.

- Anvik, a Hawthorne, N.Y.-based maker of lithography systems, won a patent case against Sharp Corp., which could cost Sharp billions in damages.
o Originally filed in 2007, the suit said Sharp had infringed on Anvik's patents by importing liquid crystal display televisions that were manufactured using a method Anvik had invented.
o Sharp tried to get the case dismissed in 2009, saying that Anvik's patents did not apply because they were methods of use rather than manufacture. But Judge Stephen C. Robinson of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York disagreed.

- Samsung of Korea launched the world’s lowest priced A4 desktop b/w laser MFP, called the SCX-4623W, which will offer 23ppm for $249. Toner cartridge has yield of 1,500 pages (based on 5% per page coverage) and sell for $62.99. Dell announced it will relabel it and call it the Dell 1135N.

- Samsung announced a new option for its laser MFPs, called the SCM SCR3310, which provides a Common Access Card reader for $299.99.

- The State of Washington announced that an audit found that Office Depot overcharged taxpayers $306,017 over three months for office supplies.

- Nuance, owner of eCopy, announced its last quarter’s financials:
o net loss of $1.5 million
o net income grew to $91.3 million from $73.3 million
o operating margin rose to 32.9% from 32.6%
o revenue up 13.4% to $273.2 million
o revenue from healthcare and dictation solutions rose 16.5%
o eCopy division revenue up 102% to $35.8 million

- IBM announced it acquired Datacap Inc., maker of document capture software, and headquartered in Tarrytown, NY.
- More details on the PREO Printelligence software being offered as an option by both Xerox and Toshiba:
o used in conjunction with a managed print services program
o made in Calgary, Canada
o software claims it can predict toner usage/coverage per page for each color before end user actually prints the page
 it can only predict, as it does not actually measure the amount of toner applied, instead counts pixels
o software delivers balloon messages to end users’ PC to drive behavior, so end user is not guaranteed that the toner coverage stated is accurate
o collects data on printing behavior

- Adobe Corp. announced it has promoted David Wahhwani to Senior VP and GM of Creative & Interactive Solutions, reporting directly to COR, Shantanu Narayen. Senior CP John Loiacono has been appointed to lead the new Digital Media Solutions division, also reporting to Narayen.

- Long Island University announced it is giving all incoming freshman free Apple iPad computers. The same offer was also made by the School of Medicine at the University of California – Irvine.

-=Good Selling=-

Weekend MFP Industry Notes 2/26/10

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

Hewlett Packard announced its last quarter’s financials:

- Worldwide revenue up 8% to $31.2 billion
- Americas revenue up 9% to $13.6 billion
- GAAP operating profit up 20% to $3 billion
- Enterprise storage and server revenue up 11% to $4.4 billion
- Imaging and Printing Group (printers and MFPs) revenue up 4% to $6.2 billion
- Printer/MFP supplies revenue up 1%
- Total printer units up 16%
- Commercial printer units up 11%
- Laser MFP units down 44% (HP has yet to launch the full line of Canon MFPs)
- Services revenue down 1% to $8.7 billion
- Notebook computer revenue up 25%
- Desktop computer revenue down 16%

- Hewlett Packard announced it is working with Royal Dutch Shell to create seismic sensors to find oil and gas deposits underground.

- At the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show, Hewlett Packard launched the Photosmart ML1000D minilab. This product (which uses Edgeline color inkjet technology) will be marketed to photolabs (like those in local Walgreens, etc.). HP announced that it already won a large order for this product from Rossman, a chain store in Germany.

- Hewlett Packard announced ban on exports of non-working electronics to developing countries. (dead HP printers and MFPs can no longer be dumped in third world countries)

- Canon is preparing to launch 5 new b/w A3 MFPs, the imageRUNNER 2500 series. Details:
- will range from 20 to 45ppm
- will not utilize the new ADVANCE print controller technology
- will based on current imageRUNNER IR-3220 platform

- Canon filed a lawsuit that may hurt IKON. Details:
- Filed in Virginia Eastern District Court
- Patent infringement claim against Densigraphix of Montreal, Canada (office in New York)
- Densigraphix makes toner cartridges for Canon-made laser printers and MFPs
- IKON, a division of Ricoh, apparently recently became Densigraphix’s largest customer when IKON was cut off from buying toner from Canon when it sold out to Ricoh
- The patent in question, #7647012, describes design of a toner cartridge for a copier
- Densigraphix toners sell for 30% less than those made by Canon
- If Canon wins the lawsuit, IKON could be forced to buy supplies from Canon, most likely at list price

- Lockheed Martin won a $500 million contract from the U.S. Census bureau to scan in approximately 160 million paper census forms. Lockheed will use 45 each of the IBML ImageTrac IV high speed scanners. The scanners will be installed in Baltimore, Phoenix and Jeffersonville, IN.

- Kodak announced that it signed a new loan agreement with Citicorp and Banc of America giving it access to $200 million. With the new funds, it paid down $125 million in debt to other lenders.
- Kodak announced that it signed a multi-year contract with Ricoh.

Details:
- Ricoh & IKON branches will now be authorized to sell both Kodak Digimaster production b/w systems and NexPress production color systems
- Contract also includes Kodak Document Imaging Solutions and Unified Workflow Solutions
- Includes CREO print servers and PRINERGY production print workflow solutions
- IKON and Ricoh will offer service contracts for Digimaster products, but only Kodak can service the NexPress product
- Kodak claims to have 3,000 service technicians total in 120 countries
- Unknown how many RBS or IKON locations will have these products on display
- IKON, a division of Ricoh, at its recent open house at its San Antonio branch, had a guest speaker, David Cameron of Photizo Group, give a lecture on advantages of managed print services contracts. Also on hand was VP of Marketing for the San Antonio Spurs basketball team. Host was Craig Ruhland, VP of Sales for IKON.


- Ricoh now shipping the Aficio MP 4001 and 5001 digital b/w laser MFPs offering:
go here for Ricoh Aficio 4001 and 5001 'Spec Review"

- Ricoh announced pricing for the PRO C720, which is 72ppm version of the C900 production color system. More on this here P4P Suites

- Ricoh is preparing to replace the current Aficio MP C6000 and C7500 color MFPs with the new C6001 and C7501 featuring:

- C6001 has top speed of 60ppm for color or b/w
- C7501 offers 70ppm color and 75ppm b/w speeds
- 1200x1200dpi
- Optional EFI Fiery
- Scan speeds up to 82ppm
- pricing and ship date not announced


- Konica Minolta Europe announced it is offering an option for its MFPs to allow for wireless remote care:
- Partnered with KPM and Jasper Wireless
- MFP can be equipped with a KPN Global SIM with transmits data from MFP to Konica Minolta service center
- Can transmit supply order, service call and meter read
- Countries included in wireless service option from KPN are Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Spain & France
- Pricing not announced
- Konica Minolta UK (England) announced it will resell fax server software from Avanquest Solutions.

- DocuLex of Florida, maker of document management software, announced it won “Best Value for Price” recognition from BERTL.

- Qoppa Software of Atlanta, GA announced that it is offering PDF Studio 6.2 for Google Docs, allowing end users to create and edit PDF from Google Docs documents. MSRP of $95.00

- Equitrac announced that the new version 5 of Equitrac Professional cost recovery software will provide a “Scan to DMS” feature, allowing scanning directly into a document management system.

- Nuance Communications announced it has acquired MacSpeech, a maker of voice recognition software for Mac computers

- Solution software maker, Open Text Corp., (headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada), announced it plans on making multiple acquisitions in 2010. (Open Text in past bought Captaris RightFax)

- Nuance launched a free, downloadable PDF reader software, called “Nuance PDF Reader”. Nuance’s software is only 18MB, as compared to Adobe Acrobat Reader which is 45MB. It also is temporarily allowing end users free access to its cloud computing offering “Nuance PDF Document Conversion Service”, which takes MS Word and Excel files and converts them to PDFs.

- In a survey of businesses in Europe by BERTL, end users rated their favorite suppliers of managed print services. In order, here are top choices:

- Hewlett Packard
- Canon
- Xerox
- Ricoh

- Roger Mozda, of Taunton, MA, was arrested for attempting to use a fake $10 bill that he made on a color copier. Mr. Mozda has already served jail time in the past for the same crime.

- Kyocera announced it won “Excellent Value” recognition from Office Products Analyst for its FS-C5100, C5200 & C5300 desktop color printers.

- Kyocera (fka Kyoto Ceramic Company) announced it has designed a thermal printhead, the KLE series, for printing on rigid ID cards or credit cards in full color at 300dpi, at 50mm per second, faster than any other competitor.

- Toshiba announced it has completed its acquisition of Fujitsu’s hard drive business. As a result of the acquisition, Toshiba launched a 2.5” drive that can hold up to 600GB.

- Toshiba announced it will resell Digital Rights Management software from Fasoo, which will provide end users ability to encrypt and password protect documents. Pricing unannounced.

- Toshiba announced it now has supplied 35 hydro power generators to the country of Columbia, and will deliver 3 more by end of 2013.

- Staples, the office supply superstore chain, announced it will now start selling IT services (to compete with Best Buy’s Geek Squad and others). The company’s VP of Finance, Joe Kalinoski, stated that the new Staples Technology Solutions division has:

- 400 employees
- access to certified specialists for Cisco Systems, Citrix, Linux, etc.
- onsite and remote support
- desktop support for PC, Macs and Linux devices
- managed print services
- data center assessments
- target market is SMB (companies with 1 to 250 employees)
- Candy Murphy is now CP of Staples Contract Technology Solutions
- result of Staples’ acquisition of Thrive Networks of Boston, MA (which has 90 employees in MA)

(Thrive Networks was started in basement by three people in 2003)

- More troubles for Canon’s attempt to buy Oce’. Sparinvest, a Danish investor group which holds Oce’ stock, announced it will join with Hermes and Orbis (two other investor groups) in opposing the bid, in an attempt to force Canon to increase its acquisition offer. Together, the three groups hold 18.5% of Oce’s stock. So far, Canon has purchased 28% of the shares.

- KnowledgeLake Inc., which develops products for Microsoft SharePoint users, announced it is partnering with ReadSoft of New Orleans, to deliver automated invoice processing and document classification to SharePoint ECM (electronic content management) market.

- Fujitsu announced an option for its SnapScan desktop scanners, that allow users to scan directly into EverNote. Details on EverNote:

- data storage using could computing
- basic service is free, but end user must view advertisements when they store or retrieve files from their personal repository accessed via the Web
- For $45 per year, there are no ads, and can store up to 500 megabytes

- Fujitsu and Canon announced that they will partner in Japan to offer cloud computing-based managed services for printing and IT equipment. The joint program will bundle Canon’s Managed Document Services (managed print services) and Fujitsu’s Workplace LCM (managed IT services) to businesses in Japan. If successful, the company may launch in other parts of the world. Pricing unannounced.

- Fujitsu announced that its scanners can now connect to fScanX software from Elevated Software Development. The software supports speeds up to 90ipm, and offers ability to automatically run common tasks without writing code.

- According to research firm, NelsonHall, the document management services market (which includes managed print services) will grow to more than $45 billion worldwide by 2013.

- Sharp announced that it may close its LCD plant in Barcelona area of Spain due to high labor costs. This will impact 430 union employees, as production would shift to factories in China.

- ExactCODE of Berlin, Germany announced production scanning software for the Apple Macintosh computers. The new ExactScan 2 software can process up to 120 images per minute with color correction, OCR, auto crop, deskew and compression, and supports up to 200 different document scanners.

- Astro-Med Inc. announced it won a $1.4 million contract from Boeing to make thermal printers that will mount in airplane cockpits.

- Pitney Bowes announced that its Government Solutions division won a facilities management contract from the Department of Justice. The length of the contract, its value, and amount of MFPs included were not announced.

- Global Industry Analysts Inc. predicts that the US photocopier maker will reach 1.5 million units by 2015. This includes all segments.

- Giant offset press makers, Heidelberg & Komori, announced that they will NOT have booths at the upcoming Graph Expo show in Chicago, due to declining sales. Show is held 10/3-6/2010.

- In an article in FORTUNE magazine, titled “Paper Chase”, prints produced on A3 b/w copiers are expected to drop 50% by the year 2013.

- IBM announced it has acquired Intelliden of Menlo Park CA, which makes network management software. IBM claims that 60% of all network outages are caused by manual configuration errors. IBM has made more than 50 acquisitions since 2003.

- Fujitsu changed its mind and apparently will now have a booth showing off its scanners

- Kodak also changed its mind and will have a scanner display

- Canon, IBML, BancTec, OPEX & Plustek will also be showing their newest scanners

- AnyDoc Software, Kofax & ReadSoft have pulled out of event

- Recent survey of businesses conducted by AIIM revealed:
- 62% of important paper documents are still archived as paper
- 25% are photocopied beforehand “just in case”
- Less than 33% of paper originals are destroyed after scanning
- 70% feel that paper records are needed for legal reasons (which has not been the case for 20 years)

-=Good Selling=-