– Industry legend, Efraim (Efi) Arazi, passed away at 76 last week:
- Born in Israel on 4/14/1937, in 1950s, even though he did not finish high school, at 16, he enrolled to study electronics in the Israel Defense Forces at the Air Force Technology Academy in Haifa, Israel.
- Earned an engineering degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1960s
- During college, assisted NASA to develop a digital camera, and used income to pay for his MIT education.
- In 1968, returned to Israel to found Scitex Corp., which launched world’s first digital prepress computer system, along with other graphic arts equipment.
- Launched the revolutionary “Response 300” system at the DRUPA (German acronym combining “druck” which means print, and “papier” which means paper) show in 1982.
- In 1988, left Scitex to start Electronics for Imaging (EFI) in San Francisco, CA area.
- What is left of Scitex is now the Creo division of Kodak
- In 1989, became the exclusive licensee of the W.F. Schreiber U.S. Patent 4,500,919, which was result of 8 years of work from MIT. This patent is basis for print controller technology for digital color devices, and named after his MIT professor and coauthor, Paul Schreiber.
- In 1991, launched the original Fiery print controller, to connect digital color copiers to computers as printers.
- In 1994, Canon signed agreement with EFI allowing it to relabel the Fiery product as “ColorPASS” products.
- Now 20 million users of Fiery systems worldwide
– Xerox launched the Color 8250 production color laser system featuring:
- based on engine from iGen, but lower quality output
- inline (built-in) spectrophotometer
- base MSRP of $585,000.00, with color cpc of $0.02 to $0.035
- volume target of 800K/month to 3 million/month
- top speed of 137.5ppm
- 2400x2400dpi with 110lpi line screen (low bit depth)
- Driven by Xerox FreeFlow print server
- compatible with IPDS, PDF, PCL, Postsript, TIFF, FRF, VIPP and LCDS data streams
- comes standard with 4 paper drawers holding up to 10,000 sheets
- handles media from 60gsm to 220gsm only
- Optional paper roll feeder from Lasermax, for up to 50,000 sheets
- can add 4 more paper drawers (each holds 2,500 sheets)
- minimum paper size of 7”x7”, maximum paper size of 14.33”x22.5”
- optional inline finishing systems
- C.P. Bourg Document Finisher
- C.P. Bourg Booklet Maker
- Duplex DBM-5001 Booklet Maker
- CEM DocuConverter (cutter)
- GBC FusionPunch II
- Rollem JetSlit System (score, cut, slit and perforate)
– Xerox announced it will hire 100 people for a health insurance call center in Kentucky.
– Xerox announced it sold a Xerox Color 8250 Production color system to Matrix Imaging Systems of Sanborn, NY.
– Xerox announced it sold two J75 production color systems to Jyske Bank of Denmark.
– Xerox announced it sold a Color 1000 production color system and a D125 production b/w system to the CRD at the University of Arkansas.
– Xerox announced it will relabel Nuance’s Scan to Cloud solution as Xerox ConnectKey Share to Cloud.
- integrated to panel option for its EIP equipped WorkCentre MFPs
- scan to MS Office 365, MS SharePoint Online, Google Docs, Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox and Salesforce.com
- OCR to convert to searchable PDF, MS Word or MS Excel
– Xerox in hot water with consumers in Virginia. Apparently, the state contracted with Xerox to handle the distribution of state tax refunds. Rather than mailing out tax refund checks, Xerox sent many citizens a debit card with the refund on it. However, citizens are upset when they found out that Xerox collects a $2.50 fee for cash withdrawals from many ATMs.
- “outrageous that taxpayers should have to pay somebody to get their refund back”; stated Del. Scott A. Surovell (D-Mount Vernon)
– Xerox announced it signed an agreement with the National Print Owners Association (NPOA) to provide special pricing for its members on equipment, service and solutions.
– Fuji of Japan, which makes most Xerox-branded MFPs and printers, stated that it expects sales in China to grow its business:
- “China has to take the lead.”
– Fuji announced it sold JetPress 720 production color inkjet system to Arian Printing of Gleisdorf, Austria.
– Ricoh announced it has filed a lawsuit against Kodak, accusing the company of infringing of 7 patents related to printer technology.
– Ricoh announced it sold a PRO C901 production color system to KPM Printing of England.
– Ricoh announced it has invested in software from Marketo Inc., to produce email marketing campaigns to generate leads for its 5,500 direct branch sales reps, using data from their Salesforce.com CRM system.
– Ricoh announced that it won a Westbrook Technologies Fortis document management solution contract from Harris Ranch Inn & Restaurant in California.
– Ricoh announced that it will use a PRO C901 production color system to print the daily newspaper for all visitors to the North Print & Pack international trade show in England in 5/14-16/2013.
– Ricoh last week conducted an event to showcase its products and solutions to end users, called “Ricoh Business Information Solutions Conference”
- held at the Lyric Opera House in Chicago, IL
- was on 4/18/2013
- guest speaker was Scott Klosoky, author of The Velocity Manifesto: Harnessing Technology, Vision and Culture to Future Proof Your Organization.
- Organized by Terrie Campbell, Ricoh VP of Strategic Marketing
- Breakout sessions:
- Optimize Your Mobile Workforce
- Turn Legacy Data Into Usable Intelligence
- Speed the Flow of Business Critical Mail
- Leveraging Big Company IT Services for Small to Medium Sized Businesses
- Make Your Operations More Effective and Efficient with Managed Services
- Critical Trends with In-House Production Print
- Your Best Defense in Powerful Document Services for Legal Vertical
- The Paperless Maturity Model in Healthcare
- Driving 360 Degree Programs With Multi-Channel Marketing
- Event started at Noon with lunch, followed by breakout sessions, then guest speaker, and ended with cocktail reception.
– Xeikon announced it sold a Xeikon 8800 production color LED system to Colorfx Printing of Des Moines, Iowa for high volume variable data color direct mail.(top speed of 63 feet/minute)
– Xeikon announced that it has engaged in discussions with an un-named company to buy out the company.
– Sharp announced that the LCD manufacturing plant it jointly operates with Foxconn, reported a $76 million net loss during last fiscal year.
– Canon announced it had a large booth at last week’s Association of Legal Administrators (ALA) Annual Educational Conference and Exposition at the Gaylord Resort in Washington D.C. area.:
- claims that it has FM contracts with 26 of the top 50 AmLaw 200 law firms.
– Canon held an International Inkjet Days event at its R&D center in Poing, Germany, and invited industry analysts and customers to view its production inkjet technology (acquired when it purchased Oce’)
- claims that inkjet technology now accounts for 40% of all sales of continuous feed production print systems in the U.S. and 50% in Europe
- Main competitors are Ricoh InfoPrint, Hewlett Packard “T” Series, Kodak Prosper and Screen TruePress
- mostly used for transactional printing (statements, credit card bills, invoices, etc.)
- Thickness of print methods according to Canon:
- Offset ink = 4.5 microns
- Dry toner = 18 microns
- Hewlett Packard Indigo = 4 microns
- Water-based inkjet is 15 microns, but after water is removed is 1.5 microns
– Canon announced it will spend $13 million on an advertising campaign with theme of “No One Sees It Like You.” It will launch in Australia.
– Canon announced it has closed one of its CRDs it manages at the University of Texas – Arlington, due to lack of usage.
– Canon claims that its customers using Oce’ Prisma driven production print systems printed 68 billion pages in 2012 in the U.S., and believes this is 25% of the total market.
– Canon announced that its dealer in Texas, Zeno Imaging, won a contract from the CRD at the University of Texas-Austin including:
- two imageRUNNER ADVANCE C9075 production color systems
- two imagePRESS 1125 production b/w systems
- imagePRESS 1135 production b/w system
- imagePRESS 1110 production b/w system
- Oce’ VarioPrint 6320 production b/w system
- imagePROGRAF iPF9100 wide format color inkjet printer
– Kodak announced it sold a Prosper 1000 production color inkjet system to MPG Printgroup of Jonesboro, Arkansas.
– Kodak announced it sold a NexPress SX3300 production color LED system to the CRD at University of Oklahoma.
– Kodak announced it sold a NexPress SE3600 production color LED system to Mele Printing of New Orleans, LA.
– Kodak announced it sold its scanner and document capture solutions division to Brother of Japan for $210 million.
- Brother will also assume $67 million in deferred service revenue liability
– Taiwan authorities opened an investigation into allegations that Samsung hired students to post malicious comments about rival smartphone maker, HTC, on the Internet.
- HTC is alleging that Samsung hired students to write fake online articles bashing HTC products, and recommending users to buy Samsung products instead.
– IBM, which years ago sold off its laptop and PC computer business to Lenovo of China, is now apparently negotiating with Lenovo to sell its low-end x86 computer network server manufacturing business, hoping to raise $5 to $6 billion.
– The Equipment Leasing & Finance Foundation (ELFF) announced results of survey:
- 6.3% believe economic conditions will improve
- 9.4 believe economic conditions will worsen
- 12.5% believe that demand for leases will increase
- 12.5% believe that demand for leases will decline
- 25% plan on hiring more employees
- 9.4% expect fewer employees
- 31.3% expect to increase spending on business development
– Hyland Software announced that one of its resellers, DataBank Inc. (formerly known as OSAM Document Solutions) was named the #1 Document Scanning and Imaging Firm by Ranking Arizona Best of Arizona Businesses.
– Microsoft, according to The Wall Street Journal, is also developing a touch-screen smartwatch, to compete with products set to launch from Apple and Samsung.
- the company is also still testing a smartphone prototype
– docSTAR announced it won a document management system solution contract from Galpin Motors of southern California, which owns 10 different automotive dealerships.
– OpenText announced it will demonstrate its document management solutions for pharmaceutical and life sciences industries at the Comprehensive Process and Document Management Life Science Conference in Germany.
– Some industry publications are reporting issues with Kyocera devices staying connected on Microsoft Server 2008 operating system and/or MS Windows 7 networks.
– Hewlett Packard announced it won an Autonomy enterprise content management solution contract from All Nippon Airways of Tokyo, Japan.
– Hewlett Packard will incorporate gesture-based technology into its new laptop computers, using technology from Leap Motion Inc.
– Hewlett Packard announced it sold a T230 production color inkjet web press to World Bank’s CRD in Landover, Maryland. Shop also owns:
- two Kodak NexPress 3000 production color systems
- Canon Oce’ ColorStream 10000 production color inkjet system
– The Buffalo Law Journal publishes an article on MFP data security, entitled; “Be Wary of the Office Copier”:
- “Copiers are basically smart machines, much like your cell phone is a smartphone where they have memory capabilities and data storage capabilities. Copy machines now run emails through them and can scan and photocopy documents and I think a lot of that material is maintained on those hard drives. So that would be another place that a litigator would want to look for potentially discoverable material.”; stated Kevin Cross, a partner at Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman LLP.
– The bomb squad in Richland, Washington was dispatched to inspect a suspicious looking briefcase reported by a worker at the Associated Physicians for Women Clinic, however it turned out to a toolkit belonging to a copier technician.
– InfoTrends reported results of study of those who use variable data direct mail:
- 29.2% for personalized one-to-one marketing
- 37.4% for mass marketing (one to many)
- 33.4% for segmented marketing (one to a few)
- value of color variable data printing to grow from $10.3 billion 2011 to $18.6 billion by 2015.
- Currently, only 31% of print service provider’s digital color print volume is variable
- Only 20% for inplants
– NetDocuments of Utah announced it won a cloud-based document management contract from Yale University of Connecticut.
– What happens to print cartridges that are not recycled? According to Cartridge World Inc.:
- HP ships more than 52 million printers per year
- most consumers buy 3 to 4 ink cartridges per year for home printer, or 600 million empty cartridges per year
- 8 million print cartridges are thrown away per second in the U.S.
- it takes about a gallon of oil to make one laser print cartridge
- average laser print cartridge contains 2.5lbs. of metal and plastic
- 70% of used print cartridges are not recycled
- it takes up to 450 years for a laser cartridge to decompose in a landfill
– Okidata announced it won a contract from the State of New York for:
- desktop color LED printers
- desktop b/w printers
- color MFPs
- b/w MFPs
– Okidata announced it has signed agreement to allow Neopost, maker of mailing equipment, to relabel its print-only devices, as “Neopost HD Office Printers”. Neopost sells and services using branches and dealers across U.S. Unknown if Neopost in future will also sell MFPs.
– Toshiba launched three new Okidata-made color A4 MFPs, the eSTUDIO 287C/347C/407C series featuring:
- LED print technology (instead of laser)
- pulverized toner technology
- 600x1200dpi (does not offer true 8 bits per pixel imaging)
- 287C offer 30ppm, 347C offers 37ppm and 407C offers 42ppm
- base MSRPs of $2899 to $4499
- 60 second warmup time
- 10,000/month recommended max duty cycle
- document feeder scan up to 40opm at 300dpi (does not scan both sides of original at same time)
- fax board option
- comes standard with one 530 sheet paper tray and 100 sheet stack bypass
- can add three more 530 sheet paper drawers or 2,000 sheet large capacity tray
- auto duplex standard
- handles up to 120lb. index
- paper exits from back to front
- base engine weight of only 112lbs.
- 120v/8amp
- optional inner finisher (no stapling)
- built-in print controller
- actual maker unknown
- PCL, PS and XPS print drivers standard
- 10/100/1000BaseT port
- hard drive comes with disk overwrite and data encryption
- optional IP SEC security kit
- optional color profile and color matching kit
– Toshiba last week conducted an event related to Earth Day 2013:
- held at Vanderbilt Hall, at Grand Central Terminal in New York City
- on display was the eSTUDIO 306LP copier that reuses same sheet of paper with special blue toner
- new Toshiba tablet PCs and LED lightbulbs
- Guest speaker, Mario Armstrong of CNN, with topic; “Strategizing for Superstorms”
- new ideas to safeguard cities against future natural disasters
– In a strange move, Toshiba announced that it will allow a printer and print cartridge distributor to sell its eSTUDIO A3/A4 MFP product line to independent dealers in the U.S.
- “By adding Supplies Network to our existing distributor channel, we are able to expand the support of our Toshiba Business Products Center partners and other authorized dealers by outfitting these companies with an array of robust A3 and A4 imaging devices,” said Tom Walter, director, aftermarket sales, marketing and operations at Toshiba America Business Solutions. “In turn, our sales partners are now able to transition their small-to-medium sized business users from lower-performing printing devices to top-shelf MFPs to further enhance their customers’ return on investment.”
- Supplies Network is headquartered in St. Louis, MO
- unanswered questions:
- is this a move to lift sagging sales?
- in future, will Toshiba dealers only buy from distributors, instead of directly from Toshiba?
- is this a cost cutting move to reduce wholesale organization of Toshiba?
- will this mean more dealers in the U.S. selling Toshiba product?
- is this part of plan to move to open distribution?
– EASY Software released results of study of document management usage:
- 44% of CEOs say that resistance to change by their staff is the biggest challenge they face when attempting to adopt DMS/ECM systems
- 12% say that resistance from management is issue
- 52% say that finance department is most likely to use solution
- 26% = operations/manufacturing
- 20% = IT department
- 20% say top reason for solution is to reduce reliance on paper
- 16% = reduce storage
- 15% = improve information sharing
– Grove City, Ohio police arrested a 22 year old man who attempted to use fake $20 bills he made on a color copier to buy pizza at a local restaurant.
– DEX Imaging announced it has signed a multi-year, exclusive partnership deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL football team. Details:
- DEX Imaging was founded by Dan Doyle Sr., who also is former founder and CEO of DANKA.
- CEO is Dan Doyle Jr.
- is a dealer for Konica Minolta and Kyocera
- headquartered in Tampa, FL
- also has 13 other locations in Florida
- also has locations in Mississippi, Alabama, Maryland and Tennessee
– Fujitsu previewed a new scanning technology, where a user can touch the area of the paper document that they wish to scan, and a camera in the scanner captures the image. Unknown when technology will be commercially available.
– Harris Interactive released results of study of knowledge workers:
- 83% of workers lose or waste time each day on document collaboration issues
- 73% waste time looking for file
- 57% are confused which is the right document
- 56% have to manually merge changes in documents
- 48% email the wrong version of a document
- 47% work on wrong version of the document
- 10% say they lose at least one hour per day
- 17% lose at least 30 minutes
- 28% lose at least 15 minutes
- 83% lost some time
- 69% use a document management system of some sort or file sharing service
- 88% of those who have a DMS, still have versioning issues
- 92% conduct document review via email
- 13% say that using wrong version makes poor impression on coworker or customer
- 7% say it has damaged a relationship with boss or customer
- 6% say it harms their reputation
- 5% say it cost them a business opportunity
- 4% say it cost them their job
– Suburban Business Products Inc. (dba SBP Image Solutions, a Kyocera dealer) filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Granite City Community Unit School District #9 of Missouri. Details:
- claims that in 2008, the district illegally cancelled a 5 year contract it awarded the dealer in 2006
- asking for damages of $158,249.85
- asserts that district owes $22,711.60 for 5,281,768 clicks of overages ($0.0043ea)
- original contract allowed for 10,200,000 b/w copies per year
- seeks $5495 for damage made to one of the b/w copiers
– Square 9 Software of New Haven, CT announced it won enterprise content management system contract from A/Z Corp., a construction/engineering company with locations in CT, PA and MA.
– Epic announced it won EHR contracts from:
- Rogue Regional Medical Center or Oregon
- Smiths Medical of St. Paul, Minnesota
– Healthland announced it won a Centriq EHR contract from Fulton County Hospital of Arkansas.
– Meditech announced it won contract from Cherry County Hospital of Nebraska.
– McKesson announced contracts from:
- Bayhealth-Kent General Hospital of Dover, Delaware
- Pioneer Community Hospital of Georgia ($27 million)
– NTT Data announced it won Optimum EHR contract from CareONE LTACH hospital of New Jersey.
– Hewlett Packard won a managed IT services contract from Jupiter Medical Center of Florida.
– Xerox launched the “Making Smiles Brighter” program, which provides free dental screenings for students from low-income families in select cities in the U.S.
– HIPAA Breaches:
- Nova Scotia Health District of Canada reports that last year, its computer systems experience over 1 million security threats, including malware and spyware attacks.
- Kirkwood Community College of Cedar Rapids, IA notified 125,000 students that their PHIs may have been exposed after someone overseas hacked into their database.
- William Jennings Bryan Dorn VA Medical Center of Columbia, SC notified 7,400 patients that their PHIs were exposed when a laptop computer was stolen from the respiratory therapy department.
- Hospice of Alamance Caswell of North Carolina notified 5,400 patients that their PHIs were exposed after three laptop computers were stolen.
- The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services notified 652 patients that their PHIs were exposed when a laptop computer was stolen.
- U.S. District Judge Joseph Bianco sentenced Helene Michel to 12 years in prison for posing as a clinician to steal PHIs from 20 nursing homes in New York.
– MarketsandMarkets announced results of new study which projects that the electronic prescribing software systems market will grow to $794 million by 2017.
– President Obama’s new budget requests a total of $967 billion of funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, an increase of $120 billion over the 2012 budget.
- 54% of budget is Medicare
- 31% of budget is Medicaid
– Ricoh now shipping two new color MFPs designed specifically for the healthcare vertical, the MP C300HW and C300HT featuring:
- color A4 MFPs
- top speed of 32ppm
- 4 tandem OPC drum design
- both are capable of printing on wristband materials
- “HW” model handles media as narrow as 3.25”
- paper drawers are coated with Teflon to prevent misfeeding of specialty stock, such as wristbands, prescription paper, etc.
- optional fax
- comes standard with secure print, hard drive encryption and hard drive data overwrite
- base MSRPs of $6570 and $6260
