Industry Notes

Sharp to source solution from ABBYY:

• Sharp announced it will offer a new embedded solution to provide OCR (optical character recognition) for scanned documents
• The OCR engine will be sourced from ABBYY of Russia (which competes with OmniPage OCR from Nuance)
• Ship date and pricing unknown

OpenText partners with SAP:

• OpenText, maker of document management solutions (DMS), enterprise content management systems (ECM) and fax servers, announced it is partnering with SAP, maker of enterprise resource planning systems (ERP)
• Will allow integration of OpenText Content Suite with SAP Commerce Suite

OpenText wins ECM contract from law firm:

• Won contract from Lindqusit & Vennum, a regional firm with 185 attorneys and offices in Minneapolis (MN), DenveCO) and Sioux Falls (SD).
• Uses DocSolid for document capture system.

Ricoh wins PPS contract from Baker Goodchild:

• Included three Ricoh Pro 8120S systems, with are 135ppm production print b/w systems
• Baker Goodchild is a commercial printer specializing in production of variable data direct mail in Birmingham, England

Ricoh makes an acquisition:

• Has acquired Peru Office S.A., a Ricoh dealer in the country of Peru
• Has 400 customers
• Purchase price not announced

Ricoh endorses envelopes for its PPS hardware:

• Blake’s Premium Office brand of envelopes are officially endorsed by Ricoh for use in its production print engines
• Envelopes have a specially strengthened window film that enables the envelopes to withstand the heat of the fuser section
• Pricing not announced

Ricoh wins award from Buyers Labs Inc.:

• Won the 2015 Line of the Year Award for Energy Efficiency
• Won for its new lineup of A3 devices and their energy saving features
• Includes MP C2003, C2503, C3003, 3554, C3503, 5054, C5503 and C6003 models

Ricoh to reopen a shuttered plant:

• Ricoh announced it will use a closed plant in Gotenba, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan to be a new R&D center for environmental business.

Ricoh again to allow Heidelberg to relabel production print systems:

• Heidelberg of Germany, maker of offset presses, will again market Ricoh made PPS hardware
• The new Ricoh Pro C7100X (90ppm) series will be named the Heidelberg Linoprint CV
• The new Ricoh Pro C9110 (130ppm) series will be named the Heidelberg Linoprint CP

Kodak on lookout for acquisitions:

• In interview with PrintWeek magazine, Kodak CEO, Jeff Clarke, stated he is; “hunting for microdigital printing and other new technologies that would give Kodak a second life”
• Clarke visited the country of Israel, and met with more than 10 companies, including firms involved with software, inkjet printing, inks, 3D printing and materials science.
• “I am here to look for companies that we can use to make Kodak bigger.”

Primera launches world’s smallest MFP:

• The Primera Trio offer print/copy/scan standard
• Is size of a hardcover book, weighs just under 3lbs.
• Prints on plain paper using color inkjet technology
• Battery powered
• Top speed of 14 pages per minute
• MSRP of $399.95

Samsung launches new phablet:

• The Samsung A7 smartphone offers a 5.5″ color AMOLED high definition touchscreen
• Two separate quad-core processors
• 33mm thick
• Runs on Google Android 4.4 operating system with 4G LTE connectivity
• 13 megapixel rear facing camera and 5 megapixel front facing camera
• 2GB RAM and 16GB storage

Hyland Software announced it will hire 200 more employees:

• Hyland is maker of award-winning OnBase enterprise content management software
• Currently employees 1,800 worldwide
• Added 300 employees last year due to growth

IBM captured the top spot in the annual U.S. patents granted in 2014:

• This is the 22^nd straight year that IBM won this award
• Received 7,534 patents in 2014, setting a new record
• Spends $6 billion per year on research and development

Nuance to be acquired?

• According to Asian Sweeper magazine, Nuance could be acquired by Baidu of China
• Baidu is a large web services company (estimated.value of $78 billion) that is looking to expand its speech recognition technology
• Nuance, maker of solutions like eCopy & Equitrac, also makes Dragon and Siri speech recognition solutions

Epson launches new desktop scanner:

• The new Epson WorkForce DS-760 scans in color or b/w
• Top speed of 45opm
• Scans both sides of original at same time
• Document feeder holds up to 80 originals
• 600x600dpi
• Bundled with OCR software
• MSRP of $899

IDC reports on PC sales:

• Global PC shipments fell 2.4% in Q4 to 80.0 million
• Apple’s unit share is believed to have risen to 7.1% on shipments of 5.8 million units
• Lenovo is the market leader with shipments of 16 million units
• Tablet cannibalization remains a major issue

Maryland school district awards managed print services contract:

• Washington County Public Schools awards contract to Centric Business Systems (dealer for Ricoh, Sharp, Kyocera & HP)
• Will reduce costs by $116,290 over term
• $15,,638.64/mo on a 63 month lease
• School was spending $18,000 per month in toner
• Includes a cost recovery solution that forces jobs with more than 100 pages to be printed on large MFPs instead of desktop printer

Toshiba announces promotion:

• Larry White was promoted to Senior Vice President of Sales in the Americas
• Will oversee all channels of distribution of printer, MFPs, and solutions
• Started with Toshiba in 1996, after he left Savin

Toshiba wins award for the eSTUDIO 360LP/RD30 system:

• The 360LP/RD30 is the MFP with erasable light blue toner, so sheet can be used over again
• Won a “Most Innovative Product of the Year” award from Best in Biz

Piper Jaffray published results of IT spending survey:

• Overall spending up 2.6%
• 66% will boost their budgets in 2015
• Most of the boost is for cloud services , as cloud budgets are up 2%
• 75% expect to spend more on data security
• 62% will spend more on mobile tech

Xerox to become a reseller of Kofax solutions:

• Kofax is maker of document capture solutions
• Xerox had recently signed up as reseller for Hyland OnBase ECM
• Many OnBase installs also include Kofax solutions

Xerox announces PPS win:

• Placed a Color J75 production color system and D125 production b/w system in the CRD at Iowa Bankers Association
• Will be used to produce newsletters, conference promotional materials and marketing brochures
• Reasons given for choosing Xerox was ability to run card stocks, and key operator can change drums and fuser without having to wait for service

Hewlett Packard announces big PPS win:

• HP announced it won order for 20 each of its Color Digital Web Presses from Quad Graphics
• Quad Graphics is a large commercial printer, headquartered in Wisconsin, with locations around country
• First 5 units to be installed in 2015
• Will be used to produce books on demand

Another HP exec unloads shares:

• William Veght, an HP EVP and GM, announced he has sold 200,000 shares at $41 per share
• Also, John Schultz of HP sold 5,415 shares at $37.20 apiece in December

MaxxDocs can now be integrated into Sharp and Kyocera MFPs:

• MaxxDocs is a New York-based maker of document management solutions, including a cloud version

Google stops public sales of Google Glass:

• Moves the product from its research lab to a separate business unit led by former fashion eyewear designer, Ivy Ross
• Will supposedly launch a new version in 2015

Google, Apple, Adobe and Intel settle lawsuit:

• The 4 companies have agreed to pay $415 million to settle a class action case that produced evidence showing they worked together to avoid hiring each other’s employees, in effect stifling competition

Samsung to make large acquisition?

• According to Reuters News Service, the company is considering an acquisition of Research in Motion, maker of Blackberry mobile devices
• Potential purchase price of $7.5 billion

Is an office devoid of paper unproductive?:

• Famous author, Malcolm Gladwell, stated “In the tasks that face modern knowledge workers, paper is most useful out in the open, where it can be shuffled and sorted and annotated and spread out. The mark of the contemporary office is not the file. It’s the pile?

Employment in commercial printers falls:

• The U.S. government reports that commercial printing employment decreased 1.4% in 2014
• Decrease of 6,199 workers

Canon announces promotions:

• Joe Warren promoted to Executive HP and GM of Human Resources
• Mason Olds promoted to Senior VP of Business Imaging Solutions
• Hiroyuki Imamura promoted to VP and GM of Business Imaging Solutions
• Ellen Pitchford promoted to VP and GM of Imaging Technologies
• Eliott Peck is now chairman and CEO of Canon Information Technology Services
• Kenji Kobayashi promoted to Senior VP and GM of Canon Latin America

Canon announces PPS win:

• Sold an Oce’ ColorWave 650 color wide format printer (which uses melted wax technology)
• Installed in CRD at the Ohio Office of State Printing and Mail Services facility
• Will be used to produce event posters, directional signage, process flow charts, photo enlargements and permanent interior display signage

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Another ObamaCare official resigns:

• Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS), announced her resignation, with no reason given
• She oversaw the launch of the ObamaCare website, and also exaggerated the amount of people who signed up for the program.

Doctors being forced to switch EHRs

• Due to a large number of independent clinics (ambulatory) being acquired by IDNs (integrated delivery networks), doctors are required to use same EHR as IDN
• Most claims that the new EHR does not improve productivity
• Only 39% are happy with new system
• Most common system that doctors were forced to switch to is Epic

eClinicalWorks wins EHR contract:

• Tulane University Medical Group of New Orleans, Louisiana, announced that its ambulatory clinics will use the EHR

Healthcare job growth rebounds in 2014:

• The U.S. government reports that 36,000 jobs in healthcare vertical were created in last quarter
• 2014 ended with 14.9 million jobs total, or 10% of entire workforce

Athenahealth acquires RazorInsights:

• Athenahealth is an EHR vendor who previously only focused on the ambulatory market
• The acquisition of RazorInsights will company to expand to hospitals with under 50 beds
• Purchase price not announced

Google to enter the bidding for EHR contract:

• The Department of Defense will be awarding an $11 billion EHR contract
• Current bidder is IBM/Epic partnership
• Google announced it will partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers to submit solution

Charging patients for EHR access may violate HIPAA:

• According to the American Health Information Management Association survey, as much as 25% of those who charge patients for access may be violating HIPAA rules by doing so
• Many are charging a fee of $1 per page, but this conflicts with HIPAA’s; “reasonable, cost-based fee”

HIPAA/Data Security update:

• The Buzz Westfall Justice Center of St. Louis, Missouri notified an unknown number of current and former inmates that their PHI was emailed to a former employee’s personal email address.
• Walgreens ordered to pay $1.4 million to settle lawsuit filed by a patient. A former Walgreen’s pharmacist broke HIPAA law when she provided the prescription records of the woman to her ex-boyfriend.
• BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is being accused of illegally accessing the PHI of 80,000 members of TRH Health Plan, when it was implementing a direct mail campaign.
• SafeWay Foods reached a $9.87 million settlement after it was accused that 500 of its grocery stores illegally dumped paper employee medical records.
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed into law a new requirement that forces health insurers in the state to encrypt PHI that they store in their computer
• Ponemon Institute released results of survey of corporate America:
  • 71% of end users have access to data they should not be able to see
    • 54% characterize that access as frequent or very frequent
  • 47% say that organization does not strictly enforce its policies against the misuse or unauthorized access of company data
  • 45% say they are more careful with data than their superiors
  • 22% say their company can tell them what happened to lost data
  • 80% say their organizations do not enforce a strict least privilege data model
  • 34% say their organizations do not enforce any least privilege data model
  • 73% believe that growth of email, presentations, multimedia files has vey significantly affected their ability to find and access data
  • 22% believe their organizations place a high priority on data protection
  • 51% of IT managers believe that C-Level executives consider data protection a high priority
  • 73% of IT managers take data protection very seriously
  • 47% believe employees take necessary steps to make sure that data is secure
  • 76% of employees say there are times when it is acceptable to transfer work documents to their personal computer device of public cloud
  • 57% of end users say that their company’s efforts to tighten security has a major impact on productivity
  • 64& believe that insiders are unknowingly the most likely cause of company data leakage