This Ain't Your Fathers Office

Tidbits

2011-08-22T07:56:00.006-04:00

- Secret Service agents arrested 8 people in Minnesota for making fake $100 bills with color copier and attempting to sell them to an undercover agent. The ringleader was Vincent D. Tampio.

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- Xerox announced it won a contract from Cisco Corp.
o managed print services contract
o 460 locations
o Goal of 20% cost reduction
o Implemented automated behavior modification popups
o Includes proximity card authentication

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- DocuWare, maker of document management software, announced that they are moving to a cloud-based product only.
o This means that their goal is to only market their product as a monthly subscription, and support would be on-line and/or over the phone from DocuWare Corp..
o Some dealers have complained as this business model greatly reduces profits, as compared to a large one time sale of software and possibly hardware
o Instead of on going revenue stream from on-site support from dealer service technicians/specialists, the DocuWare captures aftermarket revenue, and only pays a spiff to dealer

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- Kodak, which announced that last quarter it lost $179 million, is suing Apple and Research In Motion for $1 billion. Kodak hopes to secure a $1billion licensing deal regarding a patent it owns that it claims is used illegally in the Apple iPhone and the RIM Blackberry cell phone.

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- Lexmark reported its last quarter’s financials:
o total revenue up 1% to 1.04 billion
o Net income declined 0.9% to $344 million
o Debt climbed 44% to $649 million
o Gross profit margin was 39.6%
o Operating income margin of 13.2%
o Supplies revenue up 3%
o Hardware revenue declined 9%
o Software revenue up 33% (result of acquiring Perceptive imageNOW document management software company)

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- Canon gave out more details on its inability to supply some models due to impact of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami:
o 2000 and 5000 series of color imageRUNNER ADVANCE models in short supply
o 6000 series of b/w imageRUNNER ADVANCE models in short supply
o 1025 desktop model in short supply
o Biggest challenge is the third party company which made ASICs (applied set instruction chips) which are the “brains” of the above models, was severely impacted by the earthquake in northern Japan
o Canon’s leasing division, called Canon Financial Services, is now selling used models from lease returns to Canon dealers to help fill demand

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- Xerox announced that it has hired former President of Kyocera Mita USA, Mike Pietrunti, as VP of Acquisitions for its Global division to replace the retiring Paul Schulman. Mike will report to Tom Salierno.

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- According to a survey conducted by PC Advisor magazine, the number one use for color printers at home is to print out photos/posters, or 88% of respondents.

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- Hewlett Packard announced that it is exploring either a spinoff or the sale of its personal computer division. IT will also apparently abandon efforts to sell tablets or smartphones that compete with Apple.
o The PC division has revenue of $9.59 billion, but not very profitable (only 5%) as it struggled to compete against Asian manufacturers
o Will take recently spent $1.2 billion to buy Palm Inc. to add to this division
o Had grown the PC division in the past by spending $25 billion to buy Compaq

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Tidbits

2011-08-15T08:00:00.004-04:00

-According to Coopers & Lybrand study:
o U.S. businesses generate more than 4 trillion paper documents
o Documents are proliferating at annual rate of 22% or 880 billion per year
o Out of every 100 documents created per week, 7.5 of them will be lost
o Average cost to recreate document, primarily payroll cost, is $220 each
o Average misfile rate of 3.5%
o Average cost per misfiled document of $120 to find them

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- A former employee of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Mr. Marque Gumbs, was sentenced for up to 7.5 years in prison for ordering $1.2 million worth of printer/copier toner cartridges, stealing them, and then reselling them over Internet.

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- Even though KPMG just won a $9.2 million contract from the federal government to conduct 150 HIPAA audits at unsuspecting healthcare facilities in the U.S. by end of 2012, KPMG itself apparently caused a HIPAA breach.
o A KPMG employee lost an unencrypted flash drive while working at Saint Barnabas Health Care System of West Orange, NJ
o The breach may impact over 4,500 patients
o Also includes patients from Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in New Jersey

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- A federal judge refused to dismiss a class action lawsuit filed against Hewlett Packard. Lead plaintiff, Chaim Kowalsky, claims that HP knowingly markets desktop MFPs that have defective document feeders. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh found that the plaintiff raised a “plausible interference” that HP knew about the defect, rejecting HP’s motion to dismiss.

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- Business Solutions magazine gave out its annual Best Channel Products awards, based on feedback of VARs (computer valued added resellers):
o DMS category:
Computhink ViewWise
Hyland OnBase
o Document capture software:
AnyDoc
Kodak Capture Pro 2.5
o Desktop AIOs:
Canon imageRUNNER 1023
HP LaserJet Pro CM1415
o Desktop Scanners:
Canon imageFORMULA ScanFront 300P
Fujitsu ScanSnap fi-6010N
o Production Scanners:
Canon imageFORMULA DR-7550C

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- Hitachi Chief Executive, Hiroaki Nakanishi told issued a statement denying that the company was in talks to merge with Mitsubishi. Hitachi has annual revenue of 9 trillion yen, while Mitsubishi has revenue of 3 trillion yen per year.

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-Quark Inc., maker of the popular QuarkXPress digital color page layout and design publishing software, announced it has been purchased by Platinum Equity. (Quark’s main competition is Adobe inDesign)

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- Buck Consultants, a division of Xerox, announced results of survey of impact of upcoming new healthcare legislation:
o 75% believe healthcare costs will rise
o 43% expect a significant rise in healthcare costs
o 90% will pass increased costs on to their employees
o 28% are considering eliminating healthcare benefits for their employees due to rising costs

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- Hewlett Packard won a dismissal of a lawsuit filed against the company by some of its former sales people who claimed that were denied thousands of dollars in commissions due to a faulty billing system. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the reps did not have sufficient evidence that HP’s Omega system caused the company to deny commissions or pay them late.

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-According to data security survey of IT managers conducted by Somaini Research:
o 82% feel culture change is most important part of data security plan
o 67% feel that they do not currently have a culture of security
o 86% believe that they do not have enough funds and/or staff to accomplish security
o 67% believe their people do not have skills to get security job done
o 33% have not created a formal report on security risk to C suite
o 53% have not had security level goal conversation with C suite
o 55% do not communicate monthly with employees about security
o 48% see malware as a significant threat

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- In a recent article, Larry Dignan of Ziff Davis Publications, predicts that current stock market issues will negatively impact spending on IT hardware:
o “Juniper Networks seeing economic hiccups”
o “Cisco seeing warning signs amid its own execution issues”
o “Forrester Research was ready to cut its IT spending forecast”
o Qualcomm has 50.9 days of inventory
o AU Optronics, maker of LCD panels, has 45.9 days of inventory
o Contract equipment manufacturers, Flextronics, Sanmina-SCI, Jabil and others all have high inventory levels
o Retailers and distributors – Ingram Micro, Tech Data and Best Buy all have inventory levels that are “lofty”
o Cell phone makers, Nokia, RIM and Motorola have high inventory levels

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- Copier data security in the news again. The National Retail Federation magazine published an article stating:
o “nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive, much like the one on your personal computer….these drives store images of every document copied, scanned, or emailed from the machine…add the network component and now your current systems may be exposed?
o “millions of copiers and printers in thousands of companies worldwide are ripe targets for cyber-thieves”

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- Monroe, Michigan police arrested two men in their 20s, 18 year old woman, and a 16 year old boy, for allegedly making fake $20, $50 and $100 dollar bills using a color copier.

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Tidbits

2011-04-14T11:52:00.002-04:00

- According to an article in “The Imaging Channel” magazine, Canon’s Precision, Chemicals and Toride plants might still be closed in northern Japan due to the recent earthquake, which may result in shortages of toner and other products this summer, and will also impact Hewlett Packard, as Canon makes the engines and toner for all LaserJet branded products.
o Canon’s Utsunomiya plant is closed, which makes aspheric lenses for MFPs
o Also Ricoh apparently still has plants closed which make MFPs and toner
o Tohoku plant closed which makes PxP polymerized toner
o Plant which makes finishers is closed
o Other vendors in Japan that may be impacted, which provide chemicals used by many toner makers are:
o Kao Corp. (produces polyester)
o Mitsubishi Chemical
o Mitsui and Co. (makes resin)
o Nippon Carbide
o Sanyo Chemical (makes resin)
o Cabot
o Dow
o DuPont
o IMEX
o Mitsubishi Kagaku Imaging
o Tomoegowa

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- Recent survey data from Computer World magazine about company’s usage of MFPs:
o most companies fail to utilize the advanced functionality of the hardware
o 91% have activated scan to email
o 86% have set auto-duplex as default
o 39% use N-up function (putting 4 pages of info on one sheet of paper)
o Most do not user secure print feature, even though they are printing confidential documents

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- Many EHR systems (including Epic) supposedly are based on an old programming language developed in the 1960s called MUMPS, which stands for “Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System”

o MUMPS was developed by Neil Pappalardo and colleagues in Dr. Octo Barnett's animal lab at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston during 1966 and 1967. The original MUMPS system was, like Unix a few years later, built on a spare DEC PDP-7 computer.

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- Four out of five community hospitals believe they can achieve meaningful use by 2013 with their current electronic medical record systems, meaning one-fifth of community hospitals plan to switch their EMRs within the next couple of years, according to a KLAS news release.

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- InfoTrends said a recent survey on scanning usage reveals:
o 52.4% are scanning more
o 43% staying same
o 4.6% scanning less
o 45% using content management systems more
o 44% are now managing scans with software systems

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- The National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) reported that results of a recent survey reveals that nearly 70% of printshop owners feel that their sales will grow in 2011.

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- Texas Instruments announced it will spend $6.5 billion to buy rival chip maker National Semiconductor.

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- The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, which is in charge of pushing healthcare providers to get EHR systems, announced it has appointed Dr. Farzad Mostashari as the new National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. He previously worked for New York City’s Department of Health.

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- Recent data from survey on ambulatory-care (non-hospital) physicians conducted by Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) on usage of EHRs:
o 72% are satisfied with their EHRs
o 61% claims their EHRs have increased productivity and boosted practice revenue
o 52% claim to be using EHRs

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- Recent research from IDC on what decision makers feel about sales people:
o 24% believe that sales reps are NOT prepared for appointment/meeting/presentation
o 30% believe they are somewhat prepared

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- Xerox announced that it purchased United Business Solutions, a Ricoh dealer in Addison, Illinois. (Ricoh will cancel this dealership, so Xerox will rush to convert them to Xerox product) Former owners were Reed Byhring and Fred Martin. Purchase price not announced.

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- According to Infonetics, revenue for managed security services will grow by 62% over the next 5 years to $17 billion worldwide.

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- Recent survey results from Information Week magazine regarding what IT is doing to keep devices on their network secure:
o 68% educate their users about security
o 62% put written policies in place, but no technology in place to enforce
o 50% technology in place to enforce
o 48% rely on employee common sense
o 37% require encryption

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- Canon announced it has settled out of court, thus ending its lawsuit in attempt to shutdown Ninestar’s production of toner cartridges in China that work in Canon printers and MFPs. (due to Japan earthquake damage will the company use Ninestar’s Chinese made products?)

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- Adam Greene was named at Senior Health IT & Privacy Advisor in the Office of Civil Rights, which is part of the Department of Health & Human Services, and is enforcing HIPAA legislation on the healthcare industry. In a speech he reminded healthcare administrators:
o Business associates and subcontractors can be held directly liable for HIPAA breaches
o In accounts of disclosures of patient information (PHIs), treatment info, payment info and healthcare operation info must be tracked and disclosed
o New restrictions will be put on use of patient data for marketing and sale of protected health info (PHIs)
o Minimum HIPAA breach penalty raised to $50,000, maximum still at $1.5 million

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- Imagetec, a copier dealership owned by former IKON executive, Rich Cucco, announced the opening of its 5th Chicago area location in Lincolnshire.

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- More layoffs at Ricoh? Ricoh announced that it is consolidating two separate production print divisions into one. InfoPrint Solutions (which it acquired from IBM) and Ricoh Production Printing Business Group will be merged together to form Ricoh Production Print Solutions (RPPS), and run by Shiro Sasaki, who formerly ran Ricoh Europe.

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- Hewlett-Packard is suing a former executive for allegedly stealing trade secrets before he took a job with HP rival Oracle.

o Filed Wednesday in Santa Clara County Superior Court, the lawsuit alleged that Adrian Jones, a former HP senior vice president in Asia, stole proprietary information before he resigned in February and moved to
o An internal investigation at the time of his resignation uncovered that Jones failed to disclose a "close personal relationship" with a subordinate, gave that subordinate a 97% salary bump and expensed thousands of dollars spent visiting that person with no relevant business purpose, HP said.
Before he left, Jones copied "hundreds of files and thousands of e-mails" related to HP's business strategies, future plans, employee data and customer data, the suit said.
o HP seeks an injunction from the court to prevent Jones from using the sensitive information to put the company at an "unfair competitive disadvantage."

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- The media is still publishing reports of copier hard drive security threats.
o The Kilgore News Herald newspaper of Texas ran an article that said; “employee and customer data could easily be downloaded (from copier) by criminals”
o Senator Bob Smith of Middlesex, NJ stated to the press; “It’s frightening to think about all the information that is potentially at risk unless we require (copier) hard drives to be erased…”
o Ondrej Krehel, Chief Security Officer at ID Theft 911 stated; “I don’t think vendors have been doing a good job of pushing the security capabilities available on their devices”

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- HIPAA breach: MidState Medical Center In Meriden, Connecticut reported that an employee took info on 93,500 patients home on a personal hard drive. The employee was fired, but the drive has not been found.

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- According to the Health Information Management Systems Society, here is list of most common EHR installs in the hospital/acute care market in the U.S.:

o Meditech 1,212 installs
o Cerner 606
o McKesson 573
o Epic 413 (but fastest growing)
o Siemens 397
o CPSI 392
o Healthcare Management Systems 347
o Healthland 223
o Allscripts/eClipsys 185
o 273 hospitals claim to have developed their own

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- A radio station destroys a Canon copier. As part of a contest, MOJO 92.5, a radio station in Billings, Montana, allowed Jeff Anderson to push a Canon imageRUNNER off the roof the Western Security Bank building. Mr. Anderson won a new copier from Big Sky/Star Office Solutions for his efforts.

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Tidbits

2011-04-07T10:37:00.002-04:00

- Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, who is chairman of the IT Security & Oversight committee, introduced a new bill named “Cyber Security & Internet Freedom Act 2011”, which would create the National Center for Cybersecurity & Communications (NCCS) to provide even more enforcement of data security laws.

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- HIPAA Breaches:
o Maryville Academy of Chicago announced that portable hard drives were stolen, resulting in possible exposure of personal information on 4,000 people.
o Eisenhower Medical Center of Rancho Mirage, CA reported the theft of a computer which had personal information on an undetermined amount of patients. The computer did NOT have encryption.

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- Lexmark celebrated 20 years since it was spun off from IBM as a separate company, via financing by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. Milestones:

o Name came from the fact that it was headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky, and “lex” is latin for writing so Lexmark could mean “black mark”
o 1992 = first Lexmark branded product was a typewriter
o 1992 = introduces its first color inkjet printer
o 1994 = announces that its sales force would be verticalized, with special focus on banking, education and healthcare
o 1995 = company went public
o 1995 = launches product called Medley, industry first inkjet all-in-one
o 1995 = its first color laser printer, the Optra C
o 1998 = establishes Solutions division
o 1999 = launches first managed print services program
o 1999 = launches its first laser MFPs
o 2000 = opens inkjet printhead plant in Cebu, Phillippines
o 2000 = opens plant in Shenzhen, China
o 2001 = opens laser printer plant in Tatabanya, Vietnam
o 2002 = Dell announces it will relabel Lexmark product
o 2006 = launches embedded solutions capability
o 2010 = acquires Perceptive Software, maker of document management solutions

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- A New York state Supreme Court judge ruled that Xerox will be forced to defend itself in a lawsuit filed against its Global subsidiary location in Long Island. The lawsuit claims that a sales rep forged changes to copier lease documents

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- Hewlett Packard is opening a 50,000 square foot office in Fort Collins, Colorado that will test data center technologies. More than 8,000 environmental sensors throughout the facility will monitor everything from temperature to humidity and how it effects thousands of HP servers.

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- Results of survey of nurses commissioned by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACCN) reveals:

o 85% have been in a situation where technology was effective in alerting of potential risk
o 58% said that while they received the warning, they failed to effectively speak up to solve problem and protect patient
o 82% have witnesses physician incompetence and of those
o 19% put patient at risk
o 79% elected not to inform physician of safety breach
o 85% have been openly disrespected by physician

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- The compliance deadline for implementing ASC X12 Version 5010 data transmission standards is 1/1/2012, which is part of HIPAA law. This is the new standard required for healthcare facility financial systems, to allow for submission of Medicare claims. Results of survey published by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) show that most of the physician practices in U.S. have not received an update to their software to comply.

o 56% have yet to even schedule internal testing
o 5% are conducting external testing
o 8% conducting internal testing
o 16% are extremely confidant they will meet deadline
o 34% are confidant
o 23% are somewhat confident
o 11% were slightly confident
o 15% not confident

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- Hewlett Packard announced that all “ePrint” enabled printers and MFPs will now support Google Cloud Print applications on a range of mobile devices.

o Google Cloud Print allows end users to print copies of MS Word docs, Web sites and articles without need for a mobile printer
o The service temporarily hosts the files you attach on its own servers, then sends the document to your printer for output

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- Xerox published results of survey of attorneys in U.S.:

o 72% who use Automated Document Classification (ADS) solutions save time
o 64% who use ADS said it was more cost efficient
o 60% claim it improves consistency
o 53% claim it allows for more accurate budget planning
o 46% claim it improves accuracy
o Less than 33% have some form of ADS
o 42% believe technology is key to improving legal document review process

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- Open Text Corp. of Waterloo, Canada, maker of fax servers and document management software, has recently made some acquisitions to broaden its offerings:
o Vignette of Austin, Texas, provider of web-based services
o Metastorm of Baltimore, Maryland, maker of business process management software
o weComm of London, England, maker of apps that can run on mobile/cell phone devices

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- Adam Greene, Senior Health IT & Privacy Advisor for the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), a division of Health & Human Services (HHS) in federal government, addressed hospital executives and reminded them of changes to existing HIPAA regulations:
o Business associates can be held directly liable for privacy and security rules
o Subcontractors will be held to same liability
o In accounts of disclosure of patient information, treatment, payment and healthcare operations, information must be tracked and disclosed
o New restrictions will be put on the use of patient data for marketing and fundraising, and the sale of protected health information (PHI)
o Financial penalties for single privacy and security violations will be increased to $50,000 per violation
o Maximum penalty per year of $1.5 million

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- Intel stated that one of the reasons it acquired McAfee, maker of data security solutions, was so it could embed McAfee software into its Atom processor chip, and market it to makers of MFPs, most of whom are now using IBM RISC processors.

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- More details from recent Samsung printer/copier dealer meeting in Las Vegas:

o Michael Strahan of New York Giants was keynote speaker
o Peter Richardson is now Manager of printer/MFP division in U.S.
o John Barbieri is in charge of service
o Jy Lui is Korean executive in charge of division
o Representatives from 72 dealers attended
o Claim to have 22% of world’s laser printer market
o Has 5 “dedicated” people at U.S. headquarters to support
o Has 6 region managers in U.S., each with a region service manager, and key account managers focused on top 25 accounts in each region
o More A3 laser engines are in development with faster speeds
o Took 4 years to develop current A3 models
o Has 3 service training classrooms; California, Chicago & New Jersey
o Provides a 3 year parts warranty to dealers (similar to Kyocera)
o Dealers can not order product directly from Samsung, instead they order from Azerty, a computer products distributor in New York
o In 2012, plans on launching a Healthcare Program
o Cerner certification in the works
o Meditech certification in the works
o McKesson certification in the works
o Dealers are complaining that some of the new A3 products can be found for sale on the Internet, including discounted pricing on toner.

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- Masahiro Nokanumyo & Ben Reitzes of Barclay Capital, in an article in Forbes magazine, stated that Canon and Fuji will both most likely experience a shortage of toner later this year due to damage caused by earthquake in Japan.
Details:

o Besides making toner for is own products, Canon also makes toner for the engines it makes for Hewlett Packard LaserJet products
o Fuji makes toner for most Xerox printers and MFPs that are based on Fuji engines.

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- Equitrac’s VP, Noel O’Dwyer, stated that just the announcement that a customer will start monitoring end user’s printing habits can cause an initial drop of as much in 40% in total pages.

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Tidbits

2011-03-29T14:38:00.002-04:00

- Toshiba announced that it sent 100 workers to try to repair the Fukushima nuclear plant, as part of team of 700 employees that are assigned to the project. Toshiba admitted to manufacturing 4 of the 6 reactors on the site.

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- Toshiba announced it will hold two conferences for end users to discuss data security, cloud computing and managed print services:
o Held at new Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas
o 5/22/2011 and 5/24/2011
o Called “Fast Forward”
o Cost to attend is $99 per person
o All Toshiba MFPs on display
o Solutions on display
o Focus on healthcare, financial, government, education and retail vertical markets
o Speakers include:
 Peter Coffee, VP of salesforce.com
 Sridhar Solur, GM of Hewlett Packard’s Cloud Computing division
 David Drab, info consultant with FBI
 Kevin Goffinet, VP of Lexmark’s managed print services division
 Frank Abagnale, whose life was portrayed by Leonardo Dicaprio in the movie, “Catch Me If You Can”

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- Nuance Corp. and 1450 Inc. announced a new software product, called NoteSwift, using Nuance Dragon voice recognition technology that will allow doctors to dictate info on patients and it automatically input into Allscripts EHR software.

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- Intel, which is trying to become a major supplier to the MFP industry, announced a new product it jointly developed with Global Graphics of England:
o Designed to be embedded into MFP or printer
o provides peer-to-peer, driverless mobile printing from cell phones, tablets or PDAs
o uses Intel Atom processor
o print JPEG images, PostScript, PDF files, XPS files & MS Office documents without need to install print drivers or be connected to Internet
o uses Bluetooth or WiFi
o “our performance is significantly higher than that achieved by HP’s ePrint” says Martin Bailey, CTO of Global Graphics

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- All 40 of Trinity’s owned hospitals in Michigan will implement NextGen EHR system by late 2012 for $400 million. (with upgrades and maintenance it will cost about $1 billion)

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- Kodak reported on its last quarter’s financials:
o revenue of $1.9 billion, down 25.4%
o gross profit margin fell from 34.4% to 19.4%
o net income decline from $444 million to $22 million
o posted a full year 2010 net loss of $70 million
o 2.8% decline in production print sales
o 66.7% decline in operating profit from production print division
o Investment Partners Asset Management (IPAM) a major Kodak shareholder, is demanding the ouster of Antonio Perez as CEO

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- Here are the states with the most physicians:
o California = 78,393
o New York = 50,655
o Texas = 42,613
o Florida = 39,432
o Pennsylvania = 29,381
o Illinois = 26,917
o State with the fewest = Wyoming with only 896 physicians

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- Ricoh announced new optional “widgets” for its MFPs that have the App2Me feature:
o Scan to Evernote
o Scan to Gmail
o Scan to Google Docs

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- Xerox reported its last quarter’s financials:
o total revenue of $6 billion, up 41.6% (due to acquisition of ACS)
o operating income of $619 million, up 86.4% (ACS added)
o R&D investment as a percentage of income only 3.2%
o Paid down $889 million of debt, with $8.6 billion in debt remaining
o Revenue for equipment division down 0.4% to $2.8 billion
 Equipment sales up 3%
 Service/supply revenue down 2%
 Total pages printed down 2%
• Color pages up 11%
 Total MIF up 2%
• Color MIF up 11%
• B/W Production Print installs down 11%
• Color Production Print installs up 19%
• Midrange b/w MFP installs down 2%
• Midrange color MFP installs up 22%
• Will not publish details on sales of ColorQube wax copiers
• A4 b/w MFP installs up 25%
• A4 color MFP installs up 27%
• Color printer installs up 4%
o Will not publish details on its “Global” locations performance

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- Xerox apparently is experimenting with a new service call dispatch process in an effort to reduce costs. Rather than a technician being assigned to specific customers, instead the service calls are received by a call center in Canada, who then dispatches any available technician who is certified on device. This approach could cause obvious problems, as the technician that shows up may be unfamiliar with the customer’s workflow and impact ability to resolve the issue in a timely manner.

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- The federal list of HIPAA data breaches that have occurred since 9/2009 includes 249 incidents affecting nearly 8.3 million people

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- Print Audit, maker of managed print services software, announced it hired Andy Rysdale as COO.

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- Canon claims the following regarding the managed print services contract it won from CA Technologies:
o Saved more than 190 million sheets of paper
o Saved 2.5 million liters of water
o Eliminated 1/3 of all desktop printers
o Now only 200 total devices
o Implemented “follow you” printing via employee badge
o 70% of prints jobs are now duplexed

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- Sharp announced it hired former Sony executive, Mark Viken, as VP of Marketing. Bob Scaglione is Chief Marketing Office, responsible for cross-pollination of Sharp business units and categories to strengthen the Sharp brand in the U.S.

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- MWAi of Scottsdale, AZ announced it was awarded a U.S. patent for automation of service call creation and dispatch from a field output asset.

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Tidbits

2011-03-22T08:43:00.003-04:00

- For those that think printing on paper is bad, consider this:
o the paper making industry plants more than 1.7 million trees per day, as when any tree is harvested, it is replaced by several
o The U.S. has about the same number of trees today, as it did 100 years ago, due to management
o For every ton of wood a forest produces, it removes 1.47 tons of CO2 from the air and replaces it with 1.07 tons of oxygen
o In 2009, over 64% of paper consumed was recycled, in contrast the recycle rates for others:
 Metal = 36%
 Glass = 22%
 Plastic = 7%

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- InfoTrends estimates that over 10,000 lawsuits have been filed against desktop printer manufacturers in regards to alleged premature replacement of supplies. Customers are claiming that the printer forces them to change out the cartridge, even though the cartridge is not completely empty. Companies named in the lawsuits are Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Lexmark and Samsung.

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- Canon announced the following plants in Japan are temporarily closed:
o Utsunomiya = optics
o Oita = compact printers
o Toride
o Ami in Inashiki-gun
o Hirosaki
o Yuki
o Tsukuba – chemicals
o Fukushima
o Kasama – plastic molding
o According to the BBC (British Broadcasting Company), three of the above plants suffered serious damage

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- Toshiba’s stock plunged 16% in reaction to the fact that the company made several of the reactors at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in northern Japan. However, Toshiba’s CEO, Norio Sasaki, who is himself a former nuclear engineer, stated that company would not give up on its plans to grow its nuclear plant development.

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- Gartner released its finding of U.S. MFP sales during last quarter of 2010:
o claims that Canon had most marketshare with 18.6% of sales (even though Canon does not certify its numbers)
o totals include low end products sold through websites and office supply/computer superstores

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- A lawsuit was filed against Walgreen’s by disgruntled customers in California, trying to prevent the pharmacy chain from selling customer data. Without identifying individuals, Walgreen sells data that includes patient’s sex, age, state, and name of drug. The data is sold to pharmaceutical manufacturers.

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- Scanning in healthcare vertical on the increase according to research conducted by Record Nations:
o Requirements for Medicaid payments have causing 22% increase in scanning
o Need to recover physical space caused 11% increase
o 8% growth in scanning documents from healthcare business that were closing due to law requiring retention of records for 7 years
o 4% growth caused by a desire to “go green”

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- U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has introduced legislation to expand the types of doctors that can get HITECH funds to pay for EHR systems to now include:
o behavioral health
o mental health
o substance abuse treatment professionals and facilities.

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- The supply of ink and toner cartridges for devices made by Canon (which HP relabels), Epson and Kyocera may be impacted by the temporary closure of plants in Japan.

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- HealthTexas gave out details on the install of its new EHR system:
o First 60 days average cost per physician of $32,409
o For entire year, average cost per physician of $46,659
o In-house staff spent an average of 134.2 hours per physician and $10,325 per physician during implementation

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- Equitrac announced that it won contract from its 25,000th customer, with the inking of a deal with John Moores University of Liverpool, England:
o reduced printing by more than 4 million pages per year
o supposedly will save $250,000 per year
o cutting paper usage by 23 tons

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- Sharp just held its annual dealer meeting in Las Vegas, and main attraction to its dealers was the new 10.1” color touchscreen LCD on new MFPs that works similar to an Apple iPhone with its multi-touch functions. The theme for meeting was the new “UI” which stands for User Interface.

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- The HHS OCR (Health & Human Services division of Office of Civil Rights) is requesting $46.7 million in federal funding increase to accelerate its enforcement of HIPAA regulations on healthcare providers in the U.S. The increase includes the placement of a “Privacy Officer” in each of the OCR’s ten regional offices, to coordinate HIPAA data breach investigations. The agency predicts that it will need to investigate up to 20,000 breach reports per year.

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- Hewlett Packard’s Ann Livermore, Executive VP of Technology Solutions Group, stated “HP is particularly interested in acquiring intellectual property to support vertical markets…”, thus implying that HP is going to buying up software companies

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- The catastrophe in Japan has impacted Ricoh, where the Tohuko, Japan plant is closed, and makes:
o 55ppm and above A3 MFP models
o Duplicators
o Certain accessories
o Other plants that closed are:
 Hanamaki – optics
 Hasama – copiers and data processing
 Ibaraki – Ricoh Printing Systems

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- Ponemon released data from survey of patients regarding their PHI (protected health information):
o 70% want control over their medical records
o 80% expect their healthcare provider to ensure privacy of their medical records
o 49% of patients who had their info exposed (HIPAA breach) took no new steps to protect themselves
o 50% did not report that theft of their medical info to police
 43% did not want to make a “big deal out of it”
 37% were afraid of being embarrassed
 21% are afraid of loss of health insurance coverage
 18% are afraid of lower credit score
o 55% are not familiar with new HIPAA regulations
o 79% are not aware of the creation of a national database of health information

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- A Delaware judge late Thursday ordered that the letter that led to former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd's August resignation be unsealed.
o A lawyer for Mr. Hurd, Amy Wintersheimer, said in a statement that she planned to appeal the decision, meaning that the letter won't be made public anytime soon.
o The letter detailed his alleged improper relationship with a female employee

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Tidbits

2011-03-18T10:28:00.003-04:00

- Office Depot announced a partnership with Xerox to offer Managed Print Services to customers across Europe.
o Office Depot’s new Managed Print Services offering, which leverages Xerox’s expertise in solution design and service delivery, will enable Office Depot to assess, optimize and manage customer printing needs, resulting in lower print, copy and IT support costs, reduced environmental impact, as well as increased office productivity.

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- SmarTrend News Watch reports the top five companies in the Health Care Technology industry as ranked by gross margin:
o Cerner has gross margin of 81%, a sales growth of 7.3%, and trailing 12 months sales of $1.9 billion.
o MedAssets has gross margin of 76.3%, a sales growth of 16.3%, and trailing 12 months sales of $380.1 million.
o Vital Images has gross margin of 75.4%, a sales growth of 4%, and trailing 12 months sales of $59.4 million
o Simulations Plus has gross margin of 73.6%, a sales growth of 15.4%, and trailing 12 months sales of $11.1 million.
o Mediware Information Systems has gross margin of 67.9%, a sales growth of 22.4%, and trailing 12 months sales of $51.8 million.

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- 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”

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- 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.

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- IDC reports that healthcare professionals spend as much as 70% of their time dealing directly with documents, nearly twice that of other vertical markets.

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- Ricoh announced it will channel roughly a quarter of its R&D budget into new areas like business-use image projectors, reports a January 25 article in The Nikkei
o The company plans to develop new businesses to replace copiers and printers as its key source of revenue.
o The firm set a target of earning about 25 percent of its overall sales from new businesses by fiscal 2014, up from the current 15 percent.
o The office equipment section accounted for 99 percent of Ricoh's overall operating profit for the April-September period, and this sort of reliance on one segment may make it difficult for Ricoh to grow its profit.
o The planned R&D investment will likely total about ¥30 billion ($367.3 million).
o Ricoh's overall R&D budget is seen growing to as high as ¥120 billion ($1.5 billion) from the ¥112 billion ($1.4 billion) the company has planned for the current fiscal year.
o The company also plans to raise the proportion of its R&D staff working in new businesses to about 25 percent, which is more than 900 people.
o Ricoh will also seek to raise sales in its projector business division and bolster its consulting operations.
o The company is shooting for annual sales of about ¥8 billion ($98.0 million) in this area in fiscal 2013 by exploiting its expertise in the production of office equipment.
o By nurturing its new businesses, Ricoh aims to improve its group operating profit margin to around 10 percent by fiscal 2014, up from 4 percent projected for fiscal 2010.

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- China Investment Corp., the country's US$300 billion sovereign wealth fund, is one of the parties behind an Australian-registered investment vehicle that bought stakes in Toshiba Corp., Kirin Holdings and Shiseido Co., the Wall Street Journal said.
o The same party also appears to have bought stakes in Sony Corp., Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group, the newspaper said.
o The State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which manages China's more than US$2.85 trillion in foreign currency reserves, is also probably behind the investment vehicle called SSBT OD05, the report said, citing advisory firms and people familiar with the matter.
o The Japanese companies know little about the investors, which use investment vehicles registered in Sydney at State Street Bank & Trust, the report said.
o The stakes held by Chinese state funds — worth 1.62 trillion yen — are below the 5 percent threshold that requires greater disclosure under Japanese securities law and appear to be passive, the report said, citing Japanese investment adviser Chibagin Asset Management.
o The figure does not include funds from other Chinese investors.
o CIC was established in 2007 to invest some of China's world-beating foreign exchange reserves overseas, partly in order to gain better returns.
o The reserves are mainly parked in safe but low-yielding instruments such as U.S. Treasury bonds, but since the global financial crisis a growing portion has been invested in euro and yen assets.
o China overtook Japan last year to become the world's second-largest economy behind the United States.

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- A survey conducted by Health Facilities Management magazine and the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) (Chicago, IL) found that hospitals and health systems in the United States are focusing more on renovation or expansion than new construction.
o Renovation or expansion accounted for 73 percent of construction projects at hospitals responding to the survey.
o A little over 26 percent of respondents reported that their organizations have building projects currently under construction.
o About 15 percent of this total involved new construction, 11.6 percent involved replacement facilities and the remainder covered expansion and renovation.

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- 76% of office-based physicians could quality for HITECH stimulus funds according to research published in Health Affairs magazine. Of those, 47% could qualify for Medicaid funds, and 14% could qualify for Medicare funds.

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

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

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- 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

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- 49% of patients believe that EHR software will have a negative impact on privacy of their medical records according to survey conducted by CDW.

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- Kyocera (aka Kyoto Ceramic Company) announced the formation of a new Global Services Division:
o mandate to drive growth by optimizing operational and product synergies between the market and various functions of the company.
o “This new division is step change advantage in ensuring our company is ideally aligned to meet evolving market needs, and, to enable our professionals and product experts to fuel true industry innovation.”
o focus will be to enhance and expand the Kyocera brand promise by actively seeking innovation and growth opportunities that create tangible product differentiation in such areas as document capture, document management, job accounting and managed document services.
o David Factor has been appointed as Director, Global Services Division. All changes will be effective March 1.
o “GSD will serve as a vital point of contact between globally based companies who procure products and services on a worldwide basis, and our internal product, services and application development teams,” said Michael Pietrunti, President and CEO, Kyocera Mita America. “This new division is step change advantage in ensuring our company is ideally aligned to meet evolving market needs, and, to enable our professionals and product experts to fuel true industry innovation.”
o Within this operational framework, the company expects to bring new solutions to market faster

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- The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has started its roadshow to go across the country and train State Attorneys General how to enforce HIPAA laws.

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- ADP announced it has acquired AdvancedMD from Francisco Partners.
o The 200-employee, Salt Lake City-based AdvancedMD is a leading provider of practice management, revenue cycle, and electronic medical records systems.
o It has more than 10,000 physician users in 4,100 practices.
o In the announcement, ADP positions itself as “an integrated, single-source provider of Medical Practice Optimization” for small- to mid-sized practices.
o The company’s Small Business Services group provides HR, payroll, and benefits services to 45,000 physicians in 13,500 practices.

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- According to Ponemon Institute:
o 70% of hospital’s total data footprint is DICOM medical images
o 30% of all of the world’s digital storage is now dedicated to healthcare data
o Hospitals require 60 gigabtyes (GB) of data storage per licensed bed per year
o For a typical 100 bed community hospital, 6 terabytes of storage will be needed per year
o The above does not include storage of scanned data

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- Xerox to Stop Selling Wide-Format Products US and Canada by the End of 2011
o According to Scott Frame, vice president, Wide Format, Xerox Corporation, "Xerox will stop taking orders for wide-format products in the US and Canada in 2011, with specific timing based on inventory levels. Xerox’s European and Developing Market operations will continue selling wide-format products and will source new products.
o "Xerox prioritizes each investment, allocating research and development dollars to areas where the company can deliver the best value to the marketplace. As a result of this practice, Xerox has opted to not invest in wide format product engineering in 2011.

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- One copier dealer buys another. Marco, Inc., headquartered in St. Cloud, Minnesota, announced today it has bought the copier, printer sales and service division of Office Enterprises in Eau Claire, Wisconsin:
o The purchase is the latest acquisition for the business services company as it continues to expand in the Midwest.
o “It is a nice fit for us as we move into Wisconsin,” said Jeff Gau, chief executive officer of Marco. “It is really an effort to continue expansion into the Upper Midwest.”
o Marco already owns offices in Bemidji, Brainerd, Detroit Lakes, Mankato, Rochester, St. Louis Park, Thief River Falls, Worthington, Fargo and Grand Forks, N.D., Sioux Falls, S.D. and Decorah, Iowa.
o Marco carries Konica Minolta, Sharp, HP & Canon products
o The Office Enterprises purchase is Marco’s first move into Wisconsin. Marco will take over the client list and the service technicians. Office Enterprises, a Konica Minolta dealer, will continue to operate in Superior and Wausau, Wis. and will provide mailing products and services in Eau Claire.
o “It is not a large acquisition but it is important. It gets us into the marketplace.”
o Marco, Inc., which provides data networking and security, converged voice applications, print and document management, and audio and video for training rooms and meeting rooms, digital signage and video surveillance, does about $80 million in sales annually and has 365 employees.

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- The average cost of a HIPAA data breach has risen to $345 per record in 2010 from $301 in 2009.

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- Police in Rome, Georgia arrested Christopher Shane Vasser for allegedly making fake $100 and $20 bills using a color copier. Apparently, the money was being used to fuel a crystal meth addiction.

- A Chester, Ill. man who used a color copier to turn $5 bills into $100 bills was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison, fined $1,000 and ordered to pay $1,500 restitution, the U.S. Attorney's office said Friday. Raphael J. Solomon, 25, pleaded guilty Nov. 5 to one count of manufacturing counterfeit currency.

- Kendall Ray Gray, 23, allegedly made his own money using a color copier in his apartment on Elizabeth Street. Count 1 of Gray’s indictment alleges conspiracy to pass the bogus bills. Gray allegedly gave a fake $100 bill to someone to pass Nov. 18 at an E-Z Mart in Texarkana, Ark.

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- Even though it has been over 10 months since CBS News ran a TV report warning businesses about problems with copier hard drives, local media outlets continue to repeat the story.
o This time it is WGEM Channel 13TV of Portland, Maine, which stated;
o “Identity theft is still the number one complaint with Maine's attorney general. And, most of us have been warned to watch how we use our personal information online and shred personal documents once we're finished with them. And now, 13 is on your side with a warning about a security risk you might not have thought of. Copiers and fax machines are now the latest method crooks are using to steal your information. When you use each machine, your personal information is actually stored on the hard drive.”

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Tidbits

2011-02-08T06:34:00.002-05:00

-According to Gartner Group, printing revenue is the third highest expense after payroll and rent.
o On average, businesses unknowingly spend 7% to 12% of total revenue on document production, management and distribution.

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- The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) announced that it only has 5 more IPv4 address blocks left to give out for use. IPv4 address space allows for a maximum of 4.3 billion unique addresses. (This is why customers are moving to new standard, IPv6, and should require that their new MFPs support IPv6 standard out of the box, to prevent product obsolescence)

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-Xerox and data security. Brendan O’Connor of Black Hat USA, published instructions on how to hack into a Xerox WorkCentre MFP, through its Linux based operating system. Details on what he was able to do after hacking in:

o Steal passwords
o Collect all print jobs remotely
o Reset or change meters to affect copy charges from Xerox
o Change default print template, or print random pages
o Firewall network ports
o Schedule random reboots
o Randomly email print and scan jobs to other people
o Make long distance connections with fax modem
o Shut down device

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- Details of survey conducted by Oce’, a division of Canon, regarding electronic document management:

o 77% = improved operational efficiency
o 72% = improved customer service
o 50% = enhanced regulatory compliance
o 21% = increased competitive advantage
o 90% = currently use paper records repository
o 70% = have deployed electronic records repository
o 9% = have deployed document imaging process in mailroom

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- In another survey conducted by Oce’ the following is revealed:

o 62% believe economy is growing again
o 29% believe economy will rebound at end of 2011
o 50% believe it will take 3 years to recover
o 52% will have increase in digital imaging spend in 2011
o 38% will spend more on document management software in 2011

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- Sharp reported financials for last 9 months:

o Net sales of 2.32 trillion yen, up 15%
o Net income of 21.8 billion yen compared with prior year’s loss of 8.59 billion yen
o Company reported that it benefitted from increase in sales of LCDs, TVs and Blu-ray players

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- Toshiba stated that its last quarter’s operating profit more than doubled on increased sales of NAND flash memory chips and LCD displays sold to Apple for iPad and iPhone products.

o posted a 37.5 billion yen ($456.8 million) profit
o LCDs and flash memory totaled 17.2 billion yen in operating income

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-Lexmark reported last quarter’s financials:

o revenue of $1.1 billion, up 3%
o Total laser printer/MFP revenue of $806 million, up 8%
o Profit of $87.6 million, up from $59.8 milliON

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- According to results of a 3 year study conducted by researchers at Stanford University of Palo Alto, CA, “there is no consistent association between Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDS) and better quality” “These results raise concerns about the ability of health information technology to fundamentally alter outpatient care quality”

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- Police in Atlanta, Georgia are on the lookout for 4 men who have stolen tens of thousands of dollars worth of printer cartridges from Office Depot stores. Apparently, three of the men come into the store and pepper store clerks with questions to distract them, when the 4th man empties the printer cartridge shelves into a large cardboard box and then sneaks out of store.

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-A study published by Health Affairs magazine reveals:

o 64% of doctors have never used electronic health records software in their office
o 42% of doctors would be willing to use EHRs
o 24% of doctors are unwilling to use EHRs
o 49% believe that EHRs would save time or improve relations with patients, or improve accuracy

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- Xerox announced it will use Microsoft’s new Azure cloud computing platform to launch Xerox Cloud Print, a chargeable service that will allow end users to route a printing job to any available public printing, directly from their mobile devices.

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-According to recent survey of what IT departments acquired in 2010, here is breakdown of top categories:

o 55% = business application software
o 51% = servers
o 39.5% = security
o 37.1% = printers and MFPs
o 35.2% = storage

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-A Toshiba senior human resources manager, Elaine Cyphers, filed a lawsuit against the company for $100 million, accusing Toshiba of gender bias against women in pay and promotions:

o contends that Toshiba pays women lower salaries and bonuses than men for similar work
o alleges that company steers women into lower grade positions and favors men in promotions
o “astounding lack of women in leadership positions” according to Ms. Cyphers
o Only 3.4% of Toshiba’s 6,273 managers are women
o “The numbers are atrocious! We believe the class claims are significant, and will be substantiated in the litigation” said attorney David Sanford
o Toshiba spokesperson, Tom Gallatin, stated that Toshiba does not discuss pending litigation.
o The case will be heard in the U.S. District County in New York later this year.

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- HIPAA Data Breach: The Ankle + Foot Center of Tampa Bay, Florida announced that someone hacked into their network and had access to the personal info of 156,000 individuals.

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- Intel announced that it has discovered a design issue in a recently-released chip, the Intel 6 series, code-named Cougar Point. This has caused a massive recall of laptop computers made by Dell, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba.

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- Xerox acquired a provider of electronic health records (EHR) solutions to the healthcare vertical:

o Acquired WaterWare Internet Services Inc.
o Based in San Jose, CA
o Specializes in storing EHR data online called Aquifer EHR Edition
o Offers a system that pharmacists can use to manage patients’ prescriptions called Nile Pharmacy
o Will work alongside Xerox DocuShare software

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Tidbits

2011-02-01T06:01:00.002-05:00

- The blowback continues from the CBS TV report on copier hard drive security, as the states of New Jersey, Arizona and Washington have all introduced bills into their respective state legislatures, that would impose heavy fines on vendors who do not remove or erase contents of hard drives at end of lease.

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- University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City announced it is conducting an investigation after a screening showed the electronic medical records of 13 University of Iowa football players may have been accessed inappropriately.

o The hospital says under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the patient medical records can only be accessed by health care workers with legitimate reasons to review those records. The hospital says it routinely screens for possible privacy violations to protect the confidentiality of patients, including those with "high public profiles."
o The football players have drawn national attention after they fell ill following off-season workouts. They have been in the hospital since Monday. Since then, there have been media reports on the results of drug tests and the player's conditions

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- In an interview in Computer Resellers News magazine, Ricoh U.S. president and CEO, Jeffrey Hickling, stated; “While a much larger share of our revenue comes from direct, we increased our investment in dealer support 50% in 2010”. “In what we’d call the midmarket and the commercial accounts, a direct coverage model alone can be prohibitively expensive”

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- Xerox reported its last quarter’s financials:

o earnings per share of 12 cents
o total revenue up 42% (includes ACS)
o cash flow of $1.3 billion
o operating margin of 10.4%
o 11% increase in revenue from Business Process Outsourcing
o 5% increase in IT outsourcing revenue
o 13% increase in service signings
o 4% increase in equipment sales
 Color equipment sales revenue up 6%
 25% increase in A4 b/w units
 27% increase in A4 color units
 4% increase in color printer units
 2% decrease in midrange b/w units
 22% increase in midrange color units
 11% decrease in b/w production print units
 19% increase in color production print units
 Gross margin decreased 1% to 34.1%
o Total liabilities of $18 billion
o Bad debt expense decreased by $45 million
o Digital pages under contract declined 2%
 Color pages under contract increased 11%
o $264 million in employee severance costs from 6,000 employee layoff
o $19 million loss associated with sale of operations in Venezuela

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- Kodak reported its 2010 financial results:

o total sales of $7.187 billion, down 6%
o digital sales revenue up 1%
o Inkjet and Workflow Software revenue up 18%
o Inkjet revenue up 35%
o Loss of $58 million
o Graphic Communications Group (NexPress, Digimaster, Stream, etc.) total sales of $2.681 billion, down 2%
o $322 spent on R&D
o 27.1% gross profit margin

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- Lexmark announces new connector for its MFPs, called “Interact”:

o Allows panel integration with Perceptive imageNOW document management solution
o Connections also available for Pharos, eCopy, Kofax and NSi AutoStore

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- According to Eric de Goeijen, a print for pay industry analyst, the total print opportunity for 2011 is estimated to be 10 trillion pages. Of that number, 216 billion pages will be from digital production print devices.

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-HIPAA Breach News: The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) reports that the number of entities reporting breaches of patient files affecting 500 or more patients has hit 225, since the first breach was reported to OCR in 9/2009.

o 10 reports of breaches impacting more than 100,000 patients
o 4 reports of breaches impacting between 50,000 and 99,999 patients
o 6 reports of breaches impacting between 25,000 and 49,999 patients
o 27 reports of breaches impacting between 10,000 and 24,999 patients
o 61 reports of breaches that involved a laptop computer

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- According to Lyra, here are average monthly volumes in the healthcare vertical:

o B/W midrange MFPs = 6,525 pages/month
o Color midrange MFPs = 7,160 pages/month
o B/w desktop printers = 2,165 pages/month
o Color desktop printers = 1,235 pages/month
o Inkjet printers/MFPs = 675 pages/month

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- A computer hacker named Deral Heiland invented a program called “Praeda” (which is Latin for plunder) which supposedly can be used to hack into printers and MFPs that are connected to the Internet, that don’t have the appropriate data security features. The hacking software can be used to enter a customer’s network through the connected printer or MFP and steal data or take over other devices.

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- InfoTrends predicts that document outsourcing will increase 2.2% by 2014.

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- Xerox’s chief financial officer (CFO), Lawrence Zimmerman, announced he is leaving the company. Replacement will be Lucan Maestri, formerly of Nokia Siemens.

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- Global Graphics, which makes print controllers, claims that it has developed an option for printing from smartphones or tablets without need for drivers:

o no need for print drivers
o do not need to be connected to Internet
o uses Bluetooth or WiFi
o is small device that would be embedded into printer or MFP
o device contains Intel Atom processor and raster image processing technology from Global Graphics
o pricing and availability not announced

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- Canon announced its last quarter’s operating profit was $1.2 billion, up 9%

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- In Japan, Fuji has taken the old single OPC engine from the Xerox DocuColor 12 color MFP, and reintroduced it as the DocuColor 1450, now running at 14ppm, and using polymerized toner (EA emulsion aggregate) instead of pulverized toner with fusing oil. Unknown if Xerox will sell this in the U.S.

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- Quality Systems, Inc. (NextGen EHR) turns in record Q3 numbers:

o Revenue up 23% to $91.9 million
o Board chair, founder, and former CEO Sheldon Razin holds almost $400 million worth of shares.
 He started the company in his garage in 1973 with $2,000 in capital and took it public in 1982. Its market cap is now over $2 billion.

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- Police arrested John Kenneth Martin of Diboll, Texas after they caught him trying to use fake $10 dollar bills he created on a color copier in order to get a burger from Jack in the Box fast food restaurant.

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Tidbits

2011-01-24T08:45:00.002-05:00

- Lyra Research reported its view of worldwide sales of digital b/w MFPs in 2010:
o 78% of units placed were desktop units
o Shipments of Segment 3 (31-39ppm) A4 units up 90%, just under 80,000
o Segment 2 (21-29ppm) A4 units up 30% to 500,000
o Segment 1 (20ppm or slower) A4 units down 12%
o Segment 1 A3 units down 17% to 300,000
o Total A3 units down 150,000
o Total A4 units up 400,000
o Segment 4 (40-69ppm) A4 units up 10%
o Forecasts that total shipments will increase 4%, but total revenue will drop 10% to $16.3 billion

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-A maker of generic toner cartridges may be headed for bankruptcy. American TonerServ (ATS) of Rohnert Park, CA was on an acquisition spree back in late 2007 & 2008, scooping up iPrint Technologies, Image Technology Products, Mid-America Environmental, Pendl Companies, and Tonertype.

o In the first nine months of 2010, ATS had reported record revenue, and the firm announced in November that it was averaging 1,500 toner cartridge sales per day, a 50 percent increase compared to approximately one year ago..
o On December 30, ATS filed a form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in which the company said it has ceased normal business operations. The filing reads, “Management is now considering the future course of action, which may include requesting protection under the U.S. bankruptcy laws and/or a liquidation of the company’s remaining assets. In any event, the company does not expect to be able to resume any normal business operations. It is also unlikely that the company’s shareholders would receive anything for their shares in a bankruptcy proceeding or liquidation.”

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-Hewlett Packard announces a shakeup of its board of directors:
o Departing are Robert Ryan, John Joyce, Joel Hyatt and Lucille Salhany.
o Joining are Shumeet Banerji (CEO of Booz & Co.), Patricia Russon (former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent), Dominique Senequier (CEO of AXA), Meg Whitman (former CEO of eBay and ran for governor of California) and Gary Reiner (former CIO of General Electric)

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- Van Gansewinkel Company of Germany announced the first 100% recycled office paper, claiming that no trees have to be cut down for manufacturing. It claims that Van Gansewinkel Office Paper:
o uses 83% less water when made
o requires 72% less electricity when made
o 53% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions when made

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- Desktop laser MFP causes fire. San Diego fire department reports that a house in Rancho Bernado had $400,000 in structural damage and $200,000 worth of furniture damage due to an overheating desktop MFP. The make and model was not released.

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- Just like in some other Ricoh color MFPs, the company announced that if you choose the 1200x1200dpi high quality print mode in the new Aficio MP C300 and MP C400 color laser A4 MFPs, the machines slow down half speed to only 15ppm, as the laser must draw the image twice on the drum in order to achieve this resolution. The engines also have a maximum of only 4 bits per pixel.

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- Marvell, which makes print controllers, has been served with a patent infringement lawsuit from Advanced Processor Technologies of Frisco, Texas over a computer memory management patent

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- Notable Solutions Inc. (NSi) announced that version 6.0 of its popular AutoStore middleware solution is due by end of first half of 2011.

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-Has the consolidation begun? Canon announced that it will take over Oce’ operations in India. Employees from former Oce’ branches will now report to Kensaku Konishi, President and CEO of Canon India.

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- Former Xerox employee, inventor of Ethernet, and founder of 3Com Corp., Bob Metcalfe, announced he is now Professor of Innovation at University of Texas in Austin.

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- New company is formed to provide document capture middleware solutions, named DocSolid. Details:

o founded by Steve Irons, former founder of ImageTag KwikTag
o headquartered in Phoenix, AZ
o First product is AirMail2 featuring:
o Works with any scanner or MFP, because rather than an embedding an application in the device, end user just scans to a folder on the PC
o When user is ready to scan, they select command from the MailMan software loaded on to server
o Document to be scanned will be affixed with a barcode, which is printed on a label from a postage stamp printer
 Stamps use two-dimensional DataMatrix bar codes
 In contrast, KwikTag uses bar-coded Post-It Notes
o MailMan software reads bar-code, cleans up and formats images, and sends images to internal server location or to PostOffice, which is a cloud-based storage service
o $3995 for unlimited number of users
o $395 license for each scanning device
o Optional connectors to document management systems

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- In survey published by OpenText of internal medicine trainees, it was revealed that over two-thirds were spending more than 4 hours per day on documentation.

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- Street pricing seen in the print for pay marketplace:
o Xerox 700 Digital Color Press with external Fiery/LCT/booklet-making/stapling finisher for $50,500 with color clicks @ $0.049 and b/w clicks @ $0.0129. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Xerox 4112 b/w system w/external Fiery/booklet maker/3 hole punch/LCT for $39,200 with b/w clicks @ $0.004. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Canon imageRUNNER 8085 w/controller/booklet-maker for $23,600 with b/w clicks @ $0.005. 11”x17” billed as one click.

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- According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), data breaches recorded in 2010:

o 41.8% from general business
o 26.1% from healthcare facilities
o 15.6% from government
o 12.3% from banking industry
o 8.5% from educational institutions

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- According to EHR survey released by Office of the National Coordinator(ONC) for Health IT of the U.S. Government:

o 81% of hospitals intend to seek HITECH/Meaningful Use stimulus dollars
o 41% of office-based physicians intend to seek stimulus dollars
o 90% of physicians who have purchased EHR are NOT on track to meet MU goals

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- PrintFleet, maker of managed print services software, based in Ontario, Canada, announced formation of an advisory board, which includes various channel executives including:

o Sam Errigo of Konica Minolta
o Kevin McCarthy of Modern Office Methods
o Doug Johnson of Supplies Network
o Gary Johnson of Laser Systems
o Lee Rummage of RJ Young
o Matthew McLeish of PartsNow!
o James Luquire of Synnex
o Michael Pietrunti of Kyocera
o Dave Collinson of Okidata

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- According to Lyra Research, the bad economy has caused businesses to re-evaluate the need for color output, and caused the sales of single-function b/w laser printers to grow 14% in units and 9% in total revenue in 2010.

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- Bagwell Marketing reports that shared mail business is growing between 10% and 15% annually. This is good news for printshops, as this means an increase in digital color print jobs from companies that wish to grow their business by advertising inserts in shared direct mail coupons campaigns.

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- Why should healthcare facilities invest in a document management system (like Prism Healthflow)? A document capture system could help organizations with the following Meaningful Use requirements:

o recording demographics as structured data for at least 80% of admitted patients
o reporting quality measures to the CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) such as the percentage fo diabetics with A1c under control or the percentage of hypertensive patients with blood pressure under control
o providing patients with electronic access to health information including lab results, problem lits, medication lists and allergies
o providing patients with an electronic copy of their discharge instructions and procedures at the time of discharge
o submitting electronic data to immunization registries
o exchanging key clinical information among providers electronically

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Tidbits

2011-01-05T09:28:00.002-05:00

-Hewlett Packard detailed the success of its last 4 years of trying to put counterfeit print cartridge makers out of business:
o Conducted 4,723 investigations
o Covered 88 countries
o Resulted in 3,733 enforcement actions (raids and seizures)
o Confiscated 47.2 million cartridges

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-For any business that handles credit cards, the updated version of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) goes into effect 1/1/2011.

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-Results of EHR study conducted by University of California-Davis finds:o Initial implementation of EHR results in a 25-33% drop in physician productivity
o Internal medicine units adjusted to the new technology and experienced increase in productivity
o Pediatricians and family practice doctors did not return to original productivity levels

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-Toshiba announced it is entering the electronic book market, with its new Toshiba Biblio Leaf:
o Solar powered
o 6” b/w touchscreen display
o 800x600dpi
o 2GB RAM
o SD memory card slot
o WiFi and 3G wireless connections
o $20/month subscription
o 12 hour battery life
o Expected price of $150.00

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-InfoTrends predicts that print production workflow software sales will increase 5.2% per year through 2014. By 2014, it projects the total spend in the category will be $8.6 billion.

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-HIPAA breach. Dean Health System of Wisconsin notified 2,000 surgery patients that their personal information was exposed when the laptop computer belonging to a doctor was stolen.

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-Results of healthcare survey conducted by PriceWatersCoopers (PwC):
o 86% of patients do not access their medical records electronically
o What consumers would use web-access to health info for:
 58% lab reports
 56% prescription orders
 53% immunization records
 52% upcoming appointments
 48% physician visit notes
 33% suggested preventive health screening
o 72% would trade employer-based insurance for higher pay

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-Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, announced he is renewing his effort to sue Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, AOL and other companies for patent infringement. The patents at issue are owned by Interval Research, which was founded by Allen and Xerox’s David Liddle in 1992.

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-In the year 2011, HIPAA rules get more enforcement:o HITECH set much higher penalties for HIPAA violations
o HIPAA compliance audits are now mandated
o State attorneys general now have power to file federal civil lawsuits for HIPAA violations
o Office for Civil Rights hired Booz Allen Hamilton to create game plan for auditing program
o HITECH mandated HIPAA training program for state attorneys general starts
o New AOD law takes effect (accounting of disclosure) stating that healthcare facilities must disclose to patients to whom their electronic health records have been shared with, thus forcing healthcare facilities to have an audit log system for document transmissions

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-A new survey conducted by Lexmark finds that 7 out of 10 offices workers that have access to wireless connection to their printers do not use it, due to connectivity and security issues.

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-Impact of proposed new leasing rules studied. PricewaterhouseCoopers stated that it conducted a survey of the impact of proposed new rules that would do away with off-balance-sheet accounting for equipment leases. The study revealed that 24% of companies surveyed would experience an increase in debt of over 25%.

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-Adobe Corp. reported it first billion dollar quarter. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010, Adobe achieved record revenue of $1.008 billion.

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-According to Black Book Rankings about EHR adoption:o 90% of healthcare providers that purchased EHR systems are off track to meet meaningful use implementation goals
o Only 10% foresee achieving requirements for stimulus funding this spring
o Over 400 EHR system developers have emerged in past year
o Top five reasons why will not meet requirements:
o 93% say lack of support from their EHR vendor
o 89% say delay caused by cost of additional support by EHR vendor
o 82% caused by rushed selection of EHR vendor
o 77% lack staff to implement
o 69% are underfunded to rectify difficult EHR system interfaces

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-Pitney Bowes announced that Patrick Keddy, Executive VP and President, will retire at end of year.

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-Office Products Analyst Inc. stated that in a recent survey of 232 printshop owners:o Kodak NexPress production color systems were rated the most reliable
o Sharp b/w MFPs (not production units) were rated most reliable
o Canon products were least reliable.

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-According to EHR study conducted by RAND Corp, regarding adoption of EHR systems in hospitals:
o Number of hospitals using either basic or advanced EHR up from 24% to 38%
o Largest increase in quality of care was for patients treated for heart failure for hospitals with EHR versus those without

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-Janelle Newsome and Richard Gladfelter were arrested for allegedly creating fake $10 and $20 bills using a color copier in South Charleston, WV.

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-Lorree Ann Capps of Anderson, South Carolina was sentenced to 30 months in prison for making fake $20 bills using a color copier.

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-The new year of 2011 marks that start of payment of federal stimulus funds to healthcare organizations that can demonstrate “meaningful use” of EHR systems (electronic health records):
o Can now begin a “90-day meaningful use reporting period”
o Beginning April 4th, organizations that have completed reporting period, can attest that they are meaningful users and apply for first year incentive payments (according to the HITECH act of the ARRA stimulus bill)

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-HIPAA Data Breach. Geisinger Health System of Danville, PA notified 2,900 patients that their personal info was possible exposed when one of their gastroenterologists was caught using an unencrypted home computer to store patient files.

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-Toshiba announced it is working on a new copier that will be a “Green” machine. Details:
o Produces instantly erasable output
o Documents can be turned blank by heating them with a special device
o Uses special toner that loses its color when heated
o Printouts can be reused at least 5 times
o Top speed of 30ppm (b/w only)
o Will cost 30% more than current 30ppm model

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-According to Gartner, 16% of worldwide software sales will deliver as a service. According to Saugatuck, 40% of new software sold will be cloud-based.

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-Hewlett Packard revealed that it spent $1.6 million on lobbying the federal government in the third quarter, which is twice its normal spending levels.

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Tidbits

2010-12-14T05:28:00.003-05:00

-The Managed Print Services Association (MPSA) announced a management change:
o Jim Fitzpatrick of Okidata, has resigned as association president, and is now on Board of Directors – Manufacturer Representative
o Ken Stewart, of Photizo Group, has resigned as member of board of directors, and is now on Standards Committee
o Joe Barganier was elected interim president, and is currently working for MT Business Technologies of Ohio as manager of Total Output Management offering.

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-According to survey from College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME):
o 15% of hospital CIOs are confident that they will have EHR installed by April, 2011
o 5% expect to meet meaningful use targets in first 6 months

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-According to “GreenOrder”, a sustainable business strategy firm:
o Copier sales in US are worth $24 billion annually
o Older copiers use up to 60% more energy than new models
o Average office worker creates 1.5 pounds of paper waste each day
o Recycled paper uses 44% less energy and produces 48% less waste
o More than 100 million cartridges end up in trash each year in US
o Cartridges take up to 450 years to decompose
o Toner remanufacturing employs 35,000 in the US
o Reconditioning cartridges saves 264 gallons of oil and 845 lbs. of solid waste each month
o Fewer than 10% of all electronics discarded are recycled each year in US
o Electronics contribute 50 million tons of trash each year to landfills

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-When asked about offering managed print services, Epson executive, Chris Price, stated; “I don’t think we can be that bullish. We are probably finding it as equally tough, mainly because in MPS customers are looking for a suite of products or services as opposed to what we offer…”

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-In a cost cutting move, Ricoh announced it is shrinking its wholesale division from 4 regions to only 2:
o Ricoh dealer division employees were instructed to call in to a special phone number and received one of two pre-recorded messages:
 Your position has been eliminated
 Your position had changed
o Mark Conant (east) and John Stewart (west) are two RVPs left
o The district sales managers will now support all Ricoh, Savin & Lanier dealers, rather than having separate personnel for each brand

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-According to survey conducted by MSPmentor 100, only 20% of managed IT services providers provide managed print services.

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-According to Photizo Group, the managed print services market:
o Grew from $20 billion in 2008 to $24 billion in 2009
o Will be $68 billion by 2014
o 24% compound annual growth rate
o Double digit growth projected for next 5 years

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-IDC announced that 31 million printers/MFPs were shipped in the third quarter of 2010 worldwide.o total value of $14.3 billion
o 38% growth in b/w MFPs
o 21% growth in color MFPs
o 35% growth in b/w laser printers
o 5% growth in color laser printers
o HP shipped 3.5 million laser units
o 20 million inkjet units shipped, up 6%
o 6.8 million units total shipped in US, up 3%

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-In a recent survey of printshops, the average selling price of a letter size color copy was 42 cents.

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-Lexmark announced that it has named Ray Belanger, CEO of Bay Copy of Rockland, MA to its dealer advisory council. Ray joined 11 other dealers on the council for a two day meeting at Lexmark headquarters in Kentucky. As part of the meeting, Lexmark took the 12 members for a tour of the WinStar Farm race horse facility.

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-Xerox announced it will spend $25 million to expand its EA polymerized toner plant in Webster, NY.
o Will increase production by 50% as more models in product line use this toner instead of pulverized toner
o Original plant opened in 2007
o Has 20 miles of pipe
o Has 4,000 sensors that track temperature, humidity and air flow
o Original investment was $60 million
o Expansion will be complete at end of 2011
o Will add 10 employs to total of 75
o Claims that it has 300 patents related to toner

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-EHR usage survey. Survey conducted by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals:
o More than half of physicians surveyed are using at least a partial EHR system in their practices
o Nearly a quarter have a system in place that meets criteria for basic EHR system
o 10% have fully functional EHR in place

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-Steve Wozniak, one of the original founders of Apple Computer gave speech at the new Computer History Museum:
o Had offered his original design for Apple 1 computer to HP 5 times, but was turned down each time
o HP co-founder Bill Hewlett reportedly said afterwards; “you win some, you lose some”
o At recent auction last week in London, someone paid $174,000 for an original Apple 1 computer in working condition
o Steve also invented Pong, an early video game

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-Google announced release of beta version of Google Cloud Printing. Details:
o lets users print from anywhere without print drivers
o computer in use must have Windows XP, 7 or Vista
o end user downloads Google Chrome OS and Google Cloud Print Connector
o Can print to web-connected printers
o Google hopes that printer and MFP vendors will produce cloud-aware printer that support Google Cloud Printing out of the box

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-According to survey of EHR usage in pediatric hospitals conducted by Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine:
o 2.8% have a comprehensive EHR system
o 17.9% have a basic EHR system
o 15.7% exchange health info electronically
o 34.3% have CPOE (computerized physician order entry) systems

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-Heidelberg announced that in Australia it will resell the Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C6000 and C7000 models.

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-The Federal Reserve announced that while it printed 1.1 billion redesigned $100 bills, a large number of them were not printed correctly, and will have to be quarantined, sorted and burned. The cost of the mistake is estimated at $120 million.

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-Street pricing recently seen in the print for pay market:
o Ricoh Aficio PRO 720S w/external Fiery/stapling finisher/booklet maker for $53,900 with color clicks @ $0.045. 11” x17” billed as one click.
o Xerox DocuColor 252 (disc) w/embedded Fiery/booklet maker for $27,200 with color clicks @ $0.049 and b/w clicks @ $0.0129. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Canon imageRUNNER IR-8105 w/Fiery/booklet maker/hole punch/LCT for $29,900 with b/w clicks @ $0.0042. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Demo Xerox 4595 w/controller/bookletmaker/stapling finisher/hole punch/LCT/cover inserter for $25,400 with b/w clicks @ $0.0052. 11”x17” billed as one click.

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-Worldox, a document management program for the legal vertical, won the “Gold” award from Legal Technology News for 2010 based on customer satisfaction.

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-Brittany Edwards of San Antonio, TX was arrested after she attempted to buy a beer at the Firehouse Bar & Grill, using a fake $20 bill she made using a color copier.

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Tidbits

2010-11-29T07:56:00.003-05:00

-Quick historical timeline of printing technology:
o 618AD = first printing is done in China by T’ang Dynasty using ink on carved wood blocks to transfer image on to paper
o 1241 = Koreans use movable type to create books
o 1309 = first paper made in Europe
o 1338 = France opens its first paper mill
o 1390 = Germany opens its first paper mill
o 1423 = Block printing used to print books in Europe
o 1452 = Metal plates used for printing in Europe
o 1456 = Johann Gutenberg prints the Holy Bible
o 1457 – Fust and Schoeffer create first color prints
o 1476 = William Caxton uses Gutenberg press in England
o 1495 = England opens its first paper mill
o 1501 = Italic type is first used
o 1605 = First newspaper published in Germany
o 1611 = King James Bible is printed
o 1691 = Americans open their first paper mill
o 1702 = Jakob Le Blon invents multi-color engraving in Germany
o 1800 = first iron printing presses
o 1829 = Louis Braille invents embossed (raised) printing
o 1841 = Type composing machine invented
o 1844 = Electrotyping invented
o 1846 = Richard Hoe invents cylinder press, running at 8,000 sheets/hour
o 1863 = William Bullock invents rotary web-fed press
o 1865 = Web offset press that prints on both sides of paper is invented
o 1886 = Ottmar Mergenthaler invents linotype composing machine
o 1870 = Paper is produced from wood pulp
o 1890 = First mimeograph machine
o 1892 = First 4 color rotary press
o 1960s = invention of photocopier and laser printer

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-Details from survey from the Agency for Health Research and Quality:o based on data from 10,567 staff from 470 medical offices in 33 states
o More than 50% have encountered problems when exchanging information
o 69% reported that patient was unable to get appointment within 48 hours for serious problem
o 85% reported that a wrong chart/medical record was used for a patient
o 63% reported that a chart/medical record was not available when needed
o 70% reported scanning a patient record into the wrong patient folder
o 22% reported that pharmacy contacted office to clarify prescription
o 44% reported that patient’s medication list was not updated during their visit
o 39% reported that lab results were not available when needed
o 79% reported that an abnormal result from a test was not followed up within one business day
o 55% reported problems communicating with labs/imaging centers
o 50% reported problems communicating with other physicians
o 52% reported problems communicating with pharmacies
o 58% reported problem communicating with hospitals
o 82% had electronic appointment scheduling
o 59% have electronic access to test/lab/imaging results
o 51% have EHR systems
o 41% have electronic medication ordering
o 37% have electronic ordering of tests

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-The California Department of Public Health fined 7 hospitals for HIPAA breaches:
o Kern Medical Center fined $250,000 for theft of 596 patient records from unlocked locker
 Also fined $60,000 regarding unauthorized access to emergency room patient by two employees
o Pacific Hospital of Long Beach fined $225,000 for employee gaining unauthorized access to 9 patient records
o Kawaeah Manor Convalescent Hospital in Visalia fined $125,000 for employee gaining unauthorized access to 5 patient records
o Delano Regional Medical Center fined $60,000 for employee gaining unauthorized access to medical record of relative
o Childrens Hospital of Orange fined $25,000 for employee gaining unauthorized access to patient record of coworker’s child
o Oroville Hospital fine $42,500 for employee discussing patient record on cell phone with others and posting on MySpace
o Biggs Gridley Memorial Hospital of Gridley fined $5000 for two employees gaining unauthorized access to medical record of coworker

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-Okidata reports financial data:

o Worldwide hardcopy revenue declined 12% in first half of 2010 to only $675 million
o Operating loss of $34 million for first half of fiscal year
o Printer revenue down 22% as compared with 2006
o Printer revenue is 33% of total company

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-Microsoft’s Peter Neupert stated that the company is abandoning efforts to make HealthVault (cloud based storage of PHI info) profitable because of the complexity of the U.S. health system. Now the benefit of continuing to offer the product was “simply to increase brand relationship” by raising Microsoft’s image with customers as “important, critical and trusted”.

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-Fuji Xerox president, Tadahito Yamamoto, gave an interview to the press about future of printing business:
o Company is three years into reinvention as a managed print services provider
o Due to maturing hardware markets, is scrambling to diversify its revenue mix
o Spent $761 to build the Yokohama Minatomirai research and development facility
o Will spend $755 million on R&D this fiscal
o Company’s current ingrained hardware manufacturing culture is proving difficult to change
o Looks to IBM as role model

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-HP reported its last quarter’s financials:

o profit up 5%
o total revenue up 8% to $33.28 billion
o net income of $2.5 billion
o operating margin decreased to 9.9% from 10.2%
o PC sales up 4% to $10.3 billion
o Services revenue up 0.4% to $9 billion
o Software revenue up1% to $974 million
o Printer/MFP division revenue up 8% to $7 billion
 Supplies revenue up 6%
 Commercial hardware revenue up 22%
 Consumer hardware revenue down 2%
 Commercial printer/MFP units up 43%

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-Epson announced it celebrated its 20th anniversary of launching piezo crystal inkjet technology:

o competes with technology used by HP and Canon, known as thermal inkjet, that uses heat to vaporize liquid water-based ink and fire it through printhead nozzles
o Instead uses mechanical pressure generated by a piezoelectric element when an electric current is applied to push droplets through nozzle
o Developed by current Epson president, Minoru Usui
o Is division of Seiko, the watchmaker.
 After launching its first dot matrix printer in 1968, the EP101, Seiko Corp. decided on the name “Epson” in 1975 as the division was the son of the EP printer.
o First printer to use technology was the Epson Stylus 800 in 1993
o Technology superior as it produces more precise ink droplets, resulting in sharper and smoother prints, with lower operating temperature
o Able to use synthetic colorants
o Will roll out its first color production inkjet system, the SurePress L4033A in late 2011

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-HP’s new CEO, Leo Apotheker, announced that the company will dump its current Siebel CRM, (division of Oracle) and instead go with Salesforce.com

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-The Equipment Leasing & Finance Association (ELFA) announced that U.S. businesses originated $4.9 billion in leases and loans to invest in capital equipment (which includes MFPs), which is up 14% from this time last year.

o 2.95% of borrowers were delinquent 30 days or more, down 3.41%
o Lenders in October considered just 1.2% of the loans in their portfolios as losses unlikely ever to be paid, down 1.7%
o 73% of all credit applications were approved, up from 72% last year

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-In a press release, new Hewlett Packard CEO, Leo Apotheker, stated that he will refocus the company’s R&D to increase software sales. “With software, companies can add much value to any product which is intended for HP customers”.

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-FM Audit Inc. of Jefferson City, MO announced it has added a “Green Reporting” feature to its managed print services software that will allow dealers to provide info to customers on their printer’s paper consumed, supply usage and power consumption.

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- Canon announced that it is collaborating with Accenture to expand its managed print services business, initially in Europe. Accenture details:
o headquarters in Ireland
o U.S. headquarters in New York
o Was originally a division of Arthur Anderson
o Split away and was called Anderson Consulting
o Renamed Accenture in 2001
o Has 204,000 employees
o 200 locations in 120 countries
o World’s largest outsourcing firm
o Has 96 of Fortune Global 100 as customers
o Last fiscal year revenue of $21.6 billion
o Is largest competitor to the ACS division of Xerox
o Signed 4 year partnership contract with Canon
o In past, Canon has been customer of Accenture for finance and accounting

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-Notable Solutions Inc. (NSi) reports that 25,000 customers now have one of its AutoStore document capture server solutions.

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-According to New York Post, Samsung and Toshiba are in a secret bidding war to acquire Seagate, maker of hard drives.

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-Impact Networking, a dealer with locations in Illinois and Wisconsin, announced it has adopted Pickard Elementary School in Chicago, providing its 432 elementary students with Christmas gifts.

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-A retired Columbia University professor who held the sole patent covering a method of producing LEDs and laser diodes has died at age 83. Details:

o Gertrude Neumark Rothschild began research career with Sylvania Research Labs in Bayside, NY in 1950s
o Later worked at Philips Labs in Briarcliff Manor, NY
o Joined Columbia as professor of materials science in 1985
o Her patents led to laser and LED technologies used in laser print engines, DVD players, computers, instrument panels and background lighting in cell phone screens.
o In March, 2008, she sued LG, Nokia, Pioneer, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba for patent violations
o She received settlements totaling $27 million according to her lawyer, Albert Jacobs

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-Apple will roll out a second generation iPad next April, according to Wall Street analyst, Brian Marshall. In addition, the company announced it purchased the former headquarters of HP in Cupertino, CA for use as new office space.

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-Lexmark announced that some of its products will now be sold by Best Buy.

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-EFI announced a printing solution for owners of Apple iPads. The company released PrintMe Connect for AirPrint, a free software package, allows users of iPads, iPods or iPhones to print to a Fiery driven MFP

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-Hewlett Packard filed a patent for “multi-threading” called “Parallelization in Printing” that will supposedly enable servers to speed up processing of large multi-page print jobs.

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Tidbits

2010-11-23T07:10:00.003-05:00

-Do customers prefer printing color photos or viewing them on-line? In a recent study conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) about people’s preference to have their photos printed, or view online:
o 59% preferred to look at printed images
o 38% preferred to look at them on-line
o 3% preferred both
o 18% preferred print because they could see more detail
o 30% preferred print because they were easier to look through
o 36% liked prints better due to quality, and bright, shiny, saturated colors
o 56% who print photos spend more time looking at them than those who view on-line
31%preferto print themselves
28% prefer a printshop to print

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-Gartner released it latest Magic Quadrant report for Enterprise Content Management software vendors. Details:
o market grew 4.8%
o worldwide revenue of $3.5 billion in 2009
o forecasts growth of 10.1% through 2014 with revenue to exceed $5.7 billion in 2014
o Leaders in industry are:
 IBM (FileNet)
 Microsoft (Sharepoint)
 Oracle
 EMC (Documentum)
 OpenText (Hummingbird)
 Hyland (OnBase)
 Perceptive (now a division of Lexmark)
 Laserfiche

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-IDC report on managed print services revealed:o predicts MPS market will see a compound annual growth of more than 10% over next 5 years
o market driven primarily by advertised cost savings
o warned that “overzealous attack on the bottom line” for short-term financial benefits could mean that organizations leave themselves at risk of “damaging productivity shortfalls” in the future
o predicted sharp fall in number of qualified knowledge workers employed in businesses
o workers currently spend an average of 7.4 hours per week “searching but not finding information” and “reformatting data from multiple sources”
o businesses are advised that when considering MPS agreements that they include document workflows
o “Document workflow initiatives are increasingly being identified as one of the last untapped areas of the IT infrastructure to deliver significant productivity enhancements” said Leigh Worthing, IDC lead analyst

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-Pira International announced results of study of the on-demand book printing market:
o Inkjet equipment sales are expected to grow 135% by 2014
o By 2018, 43% of book printing revenue will be done by digital printers
o Book runs of 5,000 or less account for 70% of book printing
o eReader market has estimated value of $500 million in 2010

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-According to Dan Vesset, analyst at IDC, the Healthcare business intelligence market was $600 million in 2009, and will grow faster than any other vertical market in the next 5 years. Growth driven by:
o Increased focus on financial performance management
o Labor productivity
o Cost control
o Analysis of billing
o Analysis of payments
o Bed occupancy rates
o Patient treatment

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-The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reported its data breaches in October of 2010:o Notified 2,574 veterans that there personal info may be compromised
o Two stolen desktop computers
o Lost 22 Blackberry devices
o 79 internal unencrypted email incidents
o 79 mishandling incidents (i.e. mixing up prescriptions)
o 10 mis-mailed medications

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-InkCycle of Lenexa, KS, which remanufactures toner cartridges for laser printers, announced that it has hired Jay Loisel as Director of Managed Print Services. Previously, he worked with his brother, who owns competitor, LMI Solutions of Phoenix, AZ. Jay will report to Carl Little, VP of Sales.

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-One copier dealer buy another in Ohio. Barry Clark, President of Perry Corp.(Konica Minolta, Kyocera, HP, Muratec, Riso & KIP) announced that the company acquired the copier division of Friends Business Source of Findlay, OH. He stated; “We are growing and increasing our presence throughout northwest central Ohio, southern Michigan and western Indiana.

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-Most common benefits of installing an EHR(electronic health records system) according to New England Journal of Medicine:o No more filing, pulling, re-filing or creating paper charts
o No lost charts
o Less time filing
o Universal chart access
o Easier compliance with chart requests
o Improve external communication
o Fewer call backs from pharmacies
o Higher quality documentation
o Spend less time charting
o More efficient chart signing
o Built-in health maintenance protocols and reminders
o Improved medication management
o Improved customer service
o Free up valuable office space
o Eliminate transcription costs (average physician spends $12K to $25K/year)
o Eliminate chart creation costs (average of $5 per chart for supplies and labor)
o No more paying staff to pull and refile charts (average of $0.40 per transaction)
o No more cost to find lost charts (average of $2500 per year)
o Eliminate paper faxes for prescription renewals (average of $36K/year for supplies and labor)
o Reduce undercoding, where physicians are not getting paid for everything they do (average of $25K/year)

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-The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission reported that China Telecom in April routed much of the world’s Internet traffic through servers in China for 18 minutes.

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-Apparently, the U.S. Navy signed a $3.3 billion, 5 year, no-bid contract with Hewlett Packard to manage its computers and data systems.

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-Survey shows hospitals with EHR systems are ready to meet some components of the “Meaningful Use” rules set forth by federal government to access HITECH stimulus dollars:
o Conducted by HIMSS (health information management systems society)
o 22% have capability to achieve 10 or more of the required core measures in Stage 1 of meaningful use
o 34% can achieve between 5 and 9 of the core measures
o 40.47% can achieve 5 or more of the menu items
o 9.61% can achieve 12 core measures

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-Micro Solutions Enterprises of Van Nuys, CA announced it will make generic color wax sticks that will work in the Xerox Phaser and ColorQube color devices, for those looking for a lower cost alternative to genuine Xerox supplies.

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-Study by Medical Economics magazine shows that annual cost for an average physician practice to manage paper charts is: (instead of using EHR)o $12K/year for transcriptions
o $2400/year for paper chart supplies
o $41.6K/year in labor to pull and refile charts
o $2.5K/year in labor to find misplaced charts
o $36K/year for inbound faxes
o $21.875K/year for outbound faxes
o $25K/year for money lost in downcoding (not claiming enough)
o TOTAL = $141,375/year

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-McAfee and Cisco have released their detailed cybersecurity reports for the third quarter:o 60,000 new pieces of malware were identified per day, quadruple the 2007 rate
o In third quarter, McAfree identified 14 million unique pieces of malware, up 1 million
o The Zeus botnet malware let business to lose $70 million to Ukranian organized crime
o The Cutwail botnet malware used denial of service attacks against 300 websites
o 60% of Google search terms delivered customers to malicious sites in first 100 results
o 10% of malware was encountered via search engines
o 7% of malware was referred by Google
o 7% of all encounters targeted Java
o 1% targeted Adobe Acrobat Reader
o Pharmaceutical vertical was the most targeted

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-Xerox announced it will spend millions to install giant interactive displays in a dozen airports to promote its partnerships with Target and Marriott. (Xerox also reported it has $9.5 billion in debt)

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-According to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the most common cause of data breaches impacting more than 500 people is the theft of laptop computers.o Of the 189 data breaches recorded this year that involved more than 500 people, 52% were result of theft
o 20% were from unauthorized access
o 18% were from loss
o 24% involved laptop computer
o 22% involved paper records
o 16% involved desktop computers
o 14% involved portable devices like smartphones

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-Most companies do not erase sensitive data from hard drives according to study conducted by Kroll Ontrack:o Only 49% stated that their businesses deployed a data eraser method
o Among that group, 75% do not delete data securely
o Average business suffers at least one data breach per year
o Data breaches cost U.S. companies an average of $6.75 million
o Only 19% deploy data eraser software
o 6Z% use a degausser to erase media
o 33% do not know how to ensure data has been erased
o 22% say they reboot the drive to see if data is still there
o 60% of all old business computers are fully intact with proprietary business data in the second hand computer marketplace
o 40% say their companies gave away their used hard drive to another individual
o 22% don’t know what happened to their old computers
o 16% rely on a product or service report to confirm all of their data had been wiped

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-According to Office for Civil Rights, over 5 million people have been affected by healthcare data breaches since September, 2009.

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Tidbits

2010-11-08T07:56:00.003-05:00

-According to security vendor, MS Lab Inc., the company is still detecting malware distribution related to Xerox MFPs. The trojan poses as an automatic message from Xerox WorkCentre Pro MFPs, to look like a scan to email. Cybercriminals are behind this attack, and hope end users are tricked into opening up the email message and clicking on the attachment labeled; “Scan from Xerox WorkCentre P9275821”, which would then launch an executable file to steal data from end user’s computer. Since this is not the first time that this has been attempted, it would indicate that it must have a high rate of success.

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-FMAudit of Jefferson City, Missouri, announced version 3.2 of its managed print services software, that it claims has 180 new features

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-According to some authors, Google Docs will soon have a new feature that will allow users to print documents to any Internet-connected printer, anywhere in the world. For it to work, users will have to install small piece of software on a computer that’s on the same network as the printer. The computer has to be turned on and connected to the Internet for the print service to work.

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-Artifex Software Corp., maker of print drivers, announced version 9.0 of its Ghostscript drivers featuring:
o PostScript Level 3 compatibility
o PDF 1.7
o PCL 5e, 5c & XL
o Microsoft XPS
o PostScript to PDF conversion
o XPS to PDF conversion
o ICC based color rendering workflow
o Stores two separate color space settings
o Support for optional content to the PDF interpreter
o Claims to have 100 OEM customers

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-In an interview, Toshiba’s VP of Marketing, Bill Melo said that its Professional Services Group focuses on:
o Document Output Management
 Optimization of customer’s fleet of printing devices and their document workflow
 Assessment conducted
 Consolidation of hardware
 Move customer to managed print services instead of traditional copier lease
 Reduce total customer spend
 Minimize customer disruption
 Solve needs of security and compliance
o Managing Print Infrastructure
 Pull printing (aka “follow you” printing)
 Reduce waste
 Claim that 30% of print jobs in typical office are abandoned on exit tray
o Document Capture and Workflow
 Digital storage
 Archival and records management
 Fujitsu scanners
 Solutions from Nuance eCopy, Docuware and Drivve
o Security
 Fastest growing area
 Securing documents
 Hard drive encryption
 Securing sent documents

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-Lexmark, whose CEO last week announced his is departing, now announced that it is combining its laser and inkjet divisions into one, called Imaging Solutions and Services or ISS, led by Executive VP, Marty Canning, reporting to new CEO, Paul Rooke.

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-Former IKON executive, Jim Gallagher, was hired as VP of Sales for McGrath Systems, a human capital management firm

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-Apple sued Motorola, alleging that the company’s smartphone lineup and operating system it uses infringe on iPhone patents

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-Hewlett Packard’s VP of Healthcare Business, Mike Humke, is being replaced by Matt Smith. While Mr. Humke was named as on of the “Top 25 Channel Sales Leaders” by Computer Reseller News, no reason was given for his dismissal.

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-According to the Department of Health & Human Services, more than 5 million Americans have been affected by HIPAA data breaches since, 9/2009.

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-Xerox copier history trivia:o The first Xerox copier, the 914, was introduced in September, 1959, and put on sale in March, 1960
o Main competitors were 3M Thermofax and Kodak Verifax (thermal coated paper machines), which sold for $350 each, with copy sheets costing 19 to 25 cents each
o Cost for Xerox to build 914 was $2000 each
o Xerox only rented the devices, with monthly fee including a set amount of copies, and then overages were 5 cents each
o Machine weighed 650 pounds
o Top speed of one copy for every 26.4 seconds or 136 copies per hour
o Max original size of 9”x14”
o By 1962, had placed 10,000 machines

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-The Flagstaff, AZ fire department reported that a fire in the University of Northern Arizona Student Union was caused by an overheating copier.

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-The 2010 HIMSS (health information management systems society) Security Solutions Survey found:o 50% spent 3% or less of their IT budgets on security
o 14% of hospitals have yet to conduct a risk analysis
o 33% of clinics have yet to conduct a risk analysis
o 31% have encrypted data on laptop computers
o 16% have not encrypted any laptop computers
o 69% have plan in place to respond to a data breach
o 33% of hospitals have fulltime chief security officer
o 8% of clinics have fulltime chief security officer
o 38% have designated a staffer to handle security responsibiities

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-A document management survey conducted by Version One revealed:
o 86% of senior IT professionals are still reliant on paper records
o 51% stated that they are “very reliant” on paper based records
o 1% stated that they “hardly ever” rely on paper
o 13% stated that they are “occasionally reliant” on paper
o 32% would switch to document management system (DMS) to improve customer service
o 20% said that assurance that electronic documents are legally admissible would be key driver for eliminating paper
o 48% want to be assured that DMS would provide enough security

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-Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller has sued health insurer WellPoint Inc. for $300,000, alleging the firm took too long to notify Indiana residents affected by a HIPAA data breach, affecting 32,000 people. The breach was related to a website that inadvertently exposed personal financial info and SS#’s.

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-Fuji announced it has opened a new research and development lab for printing technology, called the R&D Square in Yokohama, Japan. Other details mentioned:o In 1985 is made its first laser printer for relabeling by other vendors
o In 1986, launched first printer that it marketed on its own, called the Fuji Xerox 4105
o In 2001, purchased laser printer business from NEC Corp.
o Its other R&D lab for printers is the Ebina Center in Kanagawa, Japan
o Tadahito Yamamoto is President and Representative Director
o Has developed new technology called “SLED”
o SLED is “Self-scanning Light Emitting Device”
 features an electronic pulse each time the opening is only one point of light-emitting LED light, LED light points, one by one, move to the front.
 A line of LED light-emitting operations signal to control an input.
 Each SLED chip has a total of 57 LEDs
 In conventional LED printer, to offer up to 1200dpi, it needs to double the drive chip and twice the signal line, but the multi-chip Fuji ASIC drive can operate 14, 592 light points
 Traditional LED technology print images with color transitions that are not natural

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-Survey results from Medical Group Management Association (MGMA):o Hospitals with EHR systems reported $49,916 greater total medical revenue after operating cost per physician than practices using paper
o After 5 years of use, practices reported an operating margin 10.1% greater than practices in their first year of EHR

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-Canon will spend $184 million to build a new inkjet printer plant in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand. It will employ 5,000 workers, and make 5.5 million units per year.

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-Sharp announced it paid $305 million to complete acquisition of Recurrent Energy of San Francisco, which develops solar projects. (however, the company apparently still has not yet spend any R&D for production print products for its copier dealers and branches to sell)

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-Sharp gave out details of its last quarter’s financials:
o Company slashed its full year profit projection by 20%
o Warned of “increasingly severe business condition”
o Net profit of $175.2 million for last 6 months
o Revenue up 16.7% to 1.5 trillion yen
o For full fiscal year expects net profit of 30 billion yen
o Big decline in demand for large size color LCDs
o No mention made of its office equipment division

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-More reason why healthcare firms should use biometric finger vein reader options:o 100 times more accurate than finger print scans
o Nearly impossible to hack
o Scanner converts subcutaneous vein pattern into thousands of zeroes and ones
o All data encrypted and hidden behind firewall
o Encrypted to AES 128 bit
o You can not leave your vein pattern at a crime scene
o Prevents medical records overlays and merging
o Prevents identity theft
o Prevents lack of ID for unconscious patients

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-Results of survey conducted by CompTIA:
o 34% of healthcare providers report using EHR system
o 16% report using a partial EHR system
o 29% are evaluating their options
o 20% have not yet started research

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-A skin printer? The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine announced they have developed an inkjet printer that deposits skin cells directly onto a wound to help it heal faster.

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-Allscripts CEO, Glenn Tullman stated that the federal government will spend as much as $27.4 billion between 2011 and 2021 to encourage health professionals to install EHR systems.

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-EHR federal government timeline:
o Fall of 2010 = certified EHR technology available and listed on ONC website
o January, 2011 = Registration for EHR incentives begin
o January, 2011 = State Medicaid providers may launch the programs
o April, 2011 = Attestation for EHR incentive programs begins
o May, 2011 = incentive payments begin
o November 30th, 2011 = last day for hospitals to register and attest to receive incentive payment for FY2011
o February 29, 2012 = last day for physicians to register and attest to receive incentive payments for CY2011
o 2014 = Last year to initiate participation in program
o 2015 = Medicare payments are reduced for those that have not installed EHR system and shown meaningful use
o 2016 = last year to receive incentive payments and last year to initiate participation
o 2021 = last year to receive incentive payment

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-Microsoft launched a beta version of Microsoft Office 365, which is a cloud based package that offers a complete set of business functions

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-A study conducted by Reboew & Co., found that the Jefferson Parish public school system of Louisiana could have saved more than $258,000 had all of its principals acquired copiers under the state contract rather than negotiating their own leases. The school board is now considering whether to take legal action against the dealers who sold to the schools without acknowledging the state contract.

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-According to The Ponemon Institute, hospitals spent $6 billion annually because of patient data breaches, and Federal regulations (i.e. HIPAA) have not improved the safety of patient records. Research showed:
o hospitals are not protecting patient data
o hospitals admit to being vulnerable to data breaches
o breaches are occurring frequently and often go unreported
o only a small percentage of healthcare organizations rely on security technology

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-Former employee, Cam Giang, pled guilty to stealing personal information (name, date of birth and Social Security numbers) from 218 coworkers while at University of California San Francisco Medical Center. Mr. Giang was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison.

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-ScImage Inc. of Los Altos, CA announced that it has developed software to integrate EMR software systems with Konica Minolta ImagePilot digital radiography systems, using HL7 communications and web-viewing technologies.

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-According to survey conducted by KLAS, the most popular EHR providers for community hospitals:
o For small hospitals of 1 to 150 beds = Meditech
o 151 to 300 beds is Cerner
o 300+ beds is Epic

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-Scientists from the University of Oxford have shown that they can improve a person’ math abilities for up to 6 months by applying an electrical current to the human brain.

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Tidbits

2010-11-02T08:10:00.002-04:00

-Survey data released by during the recent Medical Group Management Association (MGMA):o Practices with EHR systems that were not owned by hospitals or integrated delivery systems (IDNs) reported $49,916 greater total medical revenue as compared with those with paper medical records
 These practices also reported greater expenses per physician ($105,591), but had greater median revenue per physician ($178,907) than those with paper medical records systems
 After 5 years of EHR use, had operating margin that was 10.1% greater than practices using EHR for 1 year
o Practices with HER system that were owned by hospitals or IDNs had operating margin that was $42,042 higher than those with paper records
o Medical records staff per physician decreased by 44.12% after install of EHR
o 62% of medical practices will limit the number of new Medicare patients they accept if scheduled reimbursement cuts, totaling more than 30%, go into effect
o Almost 50% stated that they will stop seeing new Medicare patients altogether
o 75% said they planned on delaying purchase of new equipment or facilities
o 50% are planning on reducing staff
o 45% may put off purchasing EHR

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-OpenText of Canada, maker of fax servers (FaxPress & Rightfax) and DMS (Hummingbird) announced it has purchased StreamServe Inc., for $71 million, which makes electronic forms software.

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-Intel announced it has formed a partnership to create a new standard for solid state hard drive technology, including:
o Dell
o EMC
o Fujitsu
o IBM
o Amphenol
o Emulex
o Fusion-io
o IDT
o Marvel Semiconductor
o Micron Technology
o Molex
o PLX
o QLogic
o STEC
o SandForce
o Smart Modular Technology
o Noticeably absent is HP

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-HP Toner cartridges apparently now involved in terror plots. Packages originating in Yemen, placed on cargo airplanes, were discovered with toner cartridges containing explosive materials, wires and cell phone electronics designed to set the bombs off.

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-Solimar Systems of San Diego, CA announced new version of its iCONVERT software:
o Compatible with MS Windows 7 Professional and Windows Server 2008
o Emulates IPDS printers commonly used in mainframe and midrange environments
o Generates PostScript, PCL, PDF and TIFF data for printers that do not support AFP
o Printer monitoring for SNMP enabled devices
o Can email administrators when problems occur
o Can specify is blank back pages are to be included in the output
o Can tune appearance of gray shading

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-Laserfiche, maker of document management software, sued SAP, accusing the company of stealing its “Run Smarter” trademark.

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-Canon’s CEO, Fujio Mitarai, announced that it won’t make a higher offer for the Oce’ shares that it does not already own. 10% of the shares are still held by investment firms that are hoping for a better offer.

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-Lexmark CEO, Paul Curlander, announced he will be quitting his post in spring of 2011:o He led Lexmark for 12 years
o He will be replaced by Paul Rooke, who is currently President of Imaging Solutions division, and has been with company since its inception
o Shares of Lexmark plunged 20% after announcement
o Total quarterly revenue of $1.02 billion, up 6% from last year
o Quarter’s net income of $72 million
o Current market capitalization of $3 billion
o Is constant source of buyout rumors

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Xerox announced it will let go of 2,500 jobs in 2011, to increase its net income by $250 million

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-Japanese companies complained that their profits are being affected by the weakness of the U.S. dollar, which sunk to a 15 year low of 81.7 yen this past week.

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-Results from healthcare survey conducted by SK&A:o Survey of 213,500 medical offices
o EHR adoption at hospital-owned offices grew from 44.1% to 54.9% (10.8% increase)
o EHR Adoption at health-system owned offices grew from 50.2% to 61.2% (11% increase)
o Overall, medical office EHR adoption has grown from 36.1% to 38.7% (3% increase)
o Most commonly used EHR functions are:
 28.4% use electronic patient notes
 27.3% use electronic labs/x-rays
 25.9% use electronic prescribing
o Physician offices with more exam rooms, more physicians on staff, and higher daily patient volumes have highest EHR adoption rates
o Physician specialties with highest adoption rates
 Radiology = 59.9%
 Pathology = 59.8%
 Aerospace medicine = 59.5%
 Dialysis = 59.3%
 Emergency medicine = 57.6%
o Which states use EHR more?
 Northern states = 40.9%
 Southern states = 40.1%
 Minnesota = 62.6%
 Utah = 55.4%
 Wisconsin = 52.3%

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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it will implement auditing procedures to check healthcare providers that are claiming funds for install of EHR systems

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Auxilio, a company that specializes in offering managed print services to the healthcare industry, announced it won another bid in New York, with a $3.5 million, 3 year contract from New York Hospital Queens

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-Kodak announced that it narrowed its quarterly loss to $43 million due to increases in sales of inkjet printers and a digital camera patent licensing deal with an un-named rival.

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-Microsoft claims that Windows 7 is the fastest selling operating system in PC history:o Was launched on 10/22/2009
o Sold 90 million copies by 3/2010, and 240 million total as of 10/1/2010
o Most likely will release Windows 8 in 2012

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-Flexprint, a managed print services dealer, announced it won a contract from Consolidated High School District of Illinois:
o Claims it will save the schools $10,000 per year
o Includes 350 printers
o $5,241 per month
o Has a 30 day out for convenience clause
o Includes purchase of $28,747 on existing inventory
o Includes free printer replacement
o Current volume is 300,000 b/w pages and 14,000 color pages per year

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-Keane Inc., a company which specializes in offering managed IT services to healthcare industry, announced it was acquired by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) of Japan for $1.2 billion.

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-Allscripts, a vendor of EHR, announced that last quarter’s revenue was $192.5 million compared to previous quarter’s revenue of $190.3 million

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-Surescripts Inc. announced it is expanding its nationwide e-prescribing network with a new service that will allow for exchange of clinical health information. It includes:
o Up to date summaries of patient’s recent visits
o Secure messaging tools
o Net2Net Connect for sending and receiving clinical info outside their network
o Message Stream for electronic exchange of clinical info
o Clinical Message Portal for those without EHR that wish to send and receive info

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-Federal authorities arrested 4 people in connection with $200 million fraudulent Medicare claims in Miami. The companies involved were American Therapeutic Corp. and Medilink Professional Management Group, and had to do with bogus mental health therapy sessions.

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-iSalus Healthcare, maker of EHR systems, announced that the CEO it recently fired, Mark Day, is now suing the company. Mr. Day claims he was fired after reporting that he was suspicious that employees were stealing software

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-Cerner, maker of EHRs, which recently announced it will build a new office in Kansas, is now asking Kansas City for $50 million in industrial revenue bonds to pay for new computers and other equipment in the new facility. If approved, the city would own the equipment and lease it back to Cerner.

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-CapSite announced that its survey reveals that 41% of hospitals will invest in new health information management (HIM) solutions in 2011

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bizhub 423 Series of Monochrome MFPs Wins Good Design Award 2010 Best15,

2010-10-25T11:26:00.002-04:00

Ramsey, N.J. - October 25, 2010 - Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta), a leading provider of advanced imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop, today announced that the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (JIDPO), the organization involved in the comprehensive global promotion of design, designated 13 Konica Minolta products - including printers, multifunctional products (MFPs), and production print systems - as winners in the Good Design Awards 2010.

In addition, Konica Minolta's bizhub® 423/363/283/223 Series of Monochrome MFPs won the Good Design Award 2010 Best15 - one of only 15 entries designated due to their overall excellence. Winners of the Good Design Award 2010 Best15 recognition are also nominees for the Good Design Grand Award 2010, the greatest achievement of the year which will be determined during an award ceremony on November 10, 2010.

The Good Design Awards is a comprehensive program for the evaluation and encouragement of design organized by Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization since 1998. Its parent organization is the Good Design Products Selection System, established in 1957 by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (the current Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry). Approximately 35,000 products have been selected in continuation with these efforts. This award activity is not merely a product fineness competition but an action to promote good design in society thereby improving the quality of life and encouraging sound industrial development at the same time. This year, 3,136 products and services from multiple industries were submitted for consideration.

Below is the list of Konica Minolta products recognized in the Good Design Awards 2010.

Good Design Award 2010 BEST15 (Nominated for the Good Design Grand Award 2010)
bizhub 423/363/283/223 Series of Monochrome MFPs: With more than 1,000 new features than the predecessor series, the bizhub 423/363/283/223 Series offers customers the cost-efficiency of monochrome MFPs with the added benefit of color scanning and is a great choice for customers requiring the level of functionality offered by innovative mid-range MFPs.

Good Design Awards 2010
bizhub PRESS C8000: Featuring big-iron reliability, world-class color output and market-leading innovation, the bizhub PRESS C8000 is the ideal alternative to offset presses in the digital era. Combining output speeds of up to 80 pages per minute (ppm) and a 500,000-page monthly duty cycle with a variety of advanced finishing and media handling capabilities, the bizhub PRESS C8000 promises impressive overall productivity for commercial offset and high volume digital environments.

bizhub PRESS C7000/C7000P/C6000: The bizhub PRESS C7000 (70 ppm) and bizhub PRESS C6000 (60 ppm) provide high-speed print professionals with built-in print/copy/scan capability, while the bizhub PRESS C7000P offers a high-speed color print system that users can count on to stay ahead of rising and unpredictable workloads. The Series will create extraordinary color images with 1200 dpi resolution and automatic Image Density Control (IDC) that ensures consistently outstanding image fidelity over long runs.

bizhub C35: Offering fast output speeds of up to 31 pages per minutes (ppm) in color and monochrome and first printout in less than 13 seconds, Konica Minolta's first A4 Color MFP incorporates a variety of standard advanced features for higher productivity and meets the needs of demanding work environments from small workgroups to large- and medium-sized organizations.

bizhub C35P: Perfect for office workgroups that rely on high performance, the bizhub C35P prints at 31 ppm in color and B&W, delivers a first page in less than 12.9 seconds and can produce up to 120,000 pages each month. End-users will enjoy bright, vibrant, jump-off-the-page color from the bizhub C35P thanks to its 600 x 600 DPI resolution.

magicolor® 4750 Series of Color Printers: The smallest A4 color printers in their class print at 31 ppm in color and B&W, deliver a first page in less than 12.9 seconds and can produce up to 120,000 pages each month - perfect for office workgroups that rely on high performance. The magicolor 4750 Series includes the magicolor 4750EN and the magicolor 4750DN, which adds the productive convenience of duplexing.

"Earning recognition for our award-winning product lines highlights our leadership position as a global technology innovator," said Kevin Kern, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. "These 13 awards represent our continued commitment to a broad customer base and to providing the necessary means for customers to count on Konica Minolta for ongoing innovation and design quality."

About Konica Minolta
Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. is a leader in advanced imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop. For the third consecutive year, Konica Minolta was recognized as the #1 Brand for Customer Loyalty in the MFP Office Copier Market by Brand Keys. For more information, please visit www.CountOnKonicaMinolta.com and follow Konica Minolta on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

About the Good Design Awards
Founded in 1957, the Good Design Awards (generally known as the "G-Mark system") is Japan's only comprehensive design evaluation and commendation system. Having built a foundation to nurture Japan's industry and design, the Good Design Awards now accepts submissions from around the world and has earned a reputation for being a prestigious trademark for outstanding design and quality. Good Design Awards have been presented to 34,000 products to date. For more information, please visit http://www.g-mark.org/english/archive/2010/index.html.

Konica Minolta Corporate Contact
James Norberto
Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc.
+1 201.825.4000
PR@kmbs.konicaminolta.us

Tidbits

2010-10-25T07:49:00.002-04:00

-Cause of data theft named after Greek god. The Zeus malware program is being blamed for many thefts of customer information. The computer virus first appeared in Europe in the mid-90s. and the makers continue to modify it to circumvent whatever security measure are put in place. It is a keylogger software, meaning it affects a PC, and then tracks keystrokes, making it ideal for tracking bank account information.

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-HIPAA data security breach. Keystone Mercy Health Plan and AmeriHealth Mercy Health Plan, insurance providers in Pennsylvania, reported the loss of an unencrypted portal flash drive that contained patient data for 280,000 members.

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-Siemens, maker of EHR system and other technologies, announced it will layoff 17,000 people worldwide due to slow sales.

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-Loffler Companies, a Konica Minolta dealer in Minnesota, was named to the prestigious Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the U.S.

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-CVision of Queens, New York, announced it won research grants from the National Science Foundation to develop new JBIG compression technology to increase speed of OCR scanning. The company’s goal is to allow copier companies to have built-in OCR that can make a searchable PDF as fast as the copier’s scan speed

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-Adobe announced it will ship a new version of Acrobat software, called Acrobat X, featuring:
o rebuilt scanning and OCR engine
o scanned files are 50% smaller
o automatic color and grayscale detection
o uses OCR software from IRIS of Belgium
o integration with MS SharePoint
o ability to export files to MS Word or MS Excel
o basic commenting functionality

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-Hewlett Packard sued by some of its shareholders. The lawsuit claims that HP permitted or encouraged illegal kickbacks and bribes to government agencies to win bids. In August, HP had agreed to pay a $55 million fine to settle a U.S. Justice Dept. probe over alleged bribery.

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-Xerox reported financial results from its last quarter:
o Includes ACS, which Xerox acquired for $6.4 billion
o Total revenue of $5.43 billion, up 48%
o Profit of $250 million, up 103%
o Laid off 100 employees during quarter
o Projects spending $400 million on restructuring, as it will lay off 2,500 more employees
o Has 133,000 total employees currently (76,500 in the ACS division)
o Paid off $1billion in debt, with $9.5 billion remaining
o Predicts debt will be reduced to $8 billion by end of 2011
o iGen3 & iGen4 production color installs up 54%
o Nuvera production b/w installs up 2%
o 13% increase in equipment sales
o 5% increase in supply sales
o Finance income dropped 10%

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-Hewlett Packard is threatening to cancel a large number of resellers for failing to sell enough HP maintenance and warranty service contracts (HP CarePacks), according to Computer Resellers News magazine.

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-Dr. Kenichi Okada of Keio University in Japan announced that he has developed a “smell-o-vision” TV using Canon inkjet printer technology. “We are using the inkjet printer’s ability to eject tiny pulses of material to achieve precise control”. The prototype TV can squirt scents that resemble mint, grapefruit, cinnamon, lavender, apple and vanilla. Unknown if it will actually come to market.

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-EFI announced a new version of PrintMe, that will allow users of Apple iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Google Android cell phones to print to an Internet enabled device.

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-Sharp announced it will scale back its laptop computer operations and instead focus on making the new Sharp Galapagos tablet PC. Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported that Sharp will cease all PC desktop and laptop manufacturing due to declining sales.

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-Samsung of Korea filed suit against Panasonic over patents in the manufacture of secure digital memory cards.

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-IKON/Ricoh and GE Capital were sued in Florida. Apparently, customer Kenneth Hackett & Associates is trying to get out of their lease due to a dispute over click charges.

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-Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, announced the next version of Macintosh computer operating system will be called Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

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-According to Steven Waldren, director of AAFP’s Center for Health IT, the fed government payments for EHR installs is taxable.

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-Katina Candrick was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and a $163,000 fine for stealing information on 1,200 patients while working for MedAssets.

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-Cerner announced it will build a new 600,000 square foot office at Village West in Kansas City, Kansas that will employ 4,000 personnel. Total investment of $16.5 million.

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-Cerner wins customer award. Ovum, a division of DataMonitor, announced that based on a survey of the ambulatory healthcare market (not hospitals, which are acute care), that Cerner’s EHR software is number one. More details:
o “Cerner is the most versatile and multi-faceted”
o eClinicalWorks in second place
o GE Healthcare in third place

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-Hewlett Packard announced it has appointed Gail Galuppo as new Senior VP of Worldwide Strategy & Marketing for the printer/MFP division. Ms. Galuppo was hired from Western Union, and will work from San Diego office, reporting to Vyomesh Joshi, executive VP.

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-Xerox announced it has developed a video camera that could be installed on school buses to catch bad drivers. The “CrossSafe” cameras would take high quality images of vehicles that could be in violation of traffic laws by passing the blinking stop sign arm on buses. Xerox’s ACS division announced it won a contract to install them on street sweepers in the City of Chicago.

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-Kodak an acquisition target? That is the opinion recently published by George Conboy, President of Brighton Securities.

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-Gregory Lavallo and Amelia Abdulmagid were arrested for using a color copier to make fake $100 bills in Amsterdam.

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-Athennhealth, maker of EHR systems, announced that its revenue has grown 33% this past quarter to $63.1 million

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-The Hospital Corporation of American (HCA), headquartered in Nashville, TN, with locations across the U.S. , is apparently testing Cerner’s EHR. This is significant as its current system is from Meditech.

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-The Ottawa Hospital of Canada announced it awarded a contract to Telus Inc. for software system to run 3,000 Apple iPads on a wireless network, with access to its database.

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-Hewlett Packard won a managed print services contract from large law firm, Allens Arthur Robinson:
o locations across Asia and Australia
o 3 year contract
o Also includes document management system (DMS)
o Replaced 408 printers with 206 MFPs
o Reduced page volume from 61 million pages to 24 million
o Claims will reduce costs by $3 million over life of contract
o Help desk calls about printer/MFP issues down from 30% of total to 3%
o Attorneys no longer have a personal printer

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-Street pricing seen recently in the print-for-pay marketplace:o Hewlett Packard Indigo 5500 production color system with Pantone mixing station = $299,000.00
o Xerox 800 Digital Color Press with clear toner/bookletmaker/Fiery = $225,000.00
o Xerox 700 Digital Color Press w/Fiery/LCT/stapling finisher for $49,000 with color clicks @ $0.049 and b/w clicks at $0.0129. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Used Canon imagePRESS C7000VP w/Fiery/LCT/booketmaker/cover inserter/hole-punch for $79,900. Color clicks @ $0.057 and b/w clicks @ $0.013. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Canon imageRUNNER 8105 w/Fiery/LCT/booketmaker/cover inserter for $32,000 with b/w clicks @ $0.0042. 11”x17” billed as one click.

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Tidbits

2010-10-11T08:39:00.002-04:00

A data security survey conducted by Staples reveals the following about IT managers:
o 60% are concerned about security threats
o 70% said that if security threat shut them down for one day it would significantly impact their business
o 40% use external IT help
o 40% do not have email security policies in place
o 40% have not yet changed passwords associated with some departed employees

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Even though the CBS TV report on copier hard drives ran on 4/19/2010, local TV stations and newspapers are still repeating the story. For example, this past week, the Time Herald-Record of New York ran an article stating; “nearly every copier made since 2002 store copies of every image on an internal hard drive”

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Canon CEO, Fujio Mitarai, stated “We think the yen will remain strong for quite a while, and that put us in a crisis mode”, in an attempt to explain why he is considering moving more manufacturing from Japan to China to cut labor costs.

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Many business are now thinking seriously about upgrading to Microsoft Windows 7 operating system according to a poll conducted by silicon.com. (thus they will most likely need devices that have Windows XPS drivers):
o 37% will upgrade within next year
o 9% will upgrade in next 90 days
o 10% will upgrade in next 180 days
o 18% in next 12 months
o 22% have already started upgrade
o 27% will upgrade in next 24-36 months
o 13% stated they don’t want to upgrade

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Copier fraud. The Transport Workers Union Local 100 of New York, stripped Mr. Izzy Rivera of his official duties when they found out that he signed a lease for a couple of Xerox copiers. The lease was for $120,000 per year, and order was given to his live-in girlfriend, Lizette Baumgartner, who works for a Xerox agency.

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Former Xerox researchers, John Warnock & Charles Geschke, were awarded the 2010 Marconi Prize for entrepreneurial leadership. The two invented PostScript while at Xerox (which the company did not pursue), and left to start Adobe Corp. Both are now retired.

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Xerox’s CEO, Ursula Burns, was asked about how its facilities management division competes with its printshop customers that buy Xerox copiers:
o Was trying to “back up and focus on the customer”
o “If you get there first, it’s yours”
o “We have very little interest in taking away a big Xerox customer’s business”

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Brother announced that for a second time a federal judge dismissed a class action suit alleging that Brother cheated its customers out of toner by making printers that shut printing down and forced end users to replace the toner cartridge even if it was not yet empty.

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Scott Arthur Waddell of Raleigh, NC was sentenced to 51 months in prison for stealing more than $1 million from US Bank, Marlin Leasing, Leasing One, CIT, & SunTrust Bank by turning in fraudlent copier lease deals. His copier dealership was named Modern Office Solutions.

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HIPAA data breach. Jasmine Smith, a former employee of Johns Hopkins Hospital, was arrested and charged with stealing social security numbers from patients and giving them to friends who used the info to get credit cards, and purchase $600,000 worth of goods. She faces up to 30 years in prison.

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A survey of 710 medical college students reveal that 70% expect their future employers to have a fully implemented EHR system.

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By 2015, one year after health reforms will take effect in the U.S., the Association of American Medical Colleges predicts that there will be a physician shortage of roughly 63,000 doctors.

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According to study conducted by Health Affairs, only 11.9% of hospitals in 2009 had EHR systems, and only 2% had systems that comply with new law.

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The Mayo Clinic of Minnesota announced it fired 6 employees for violating HIPAA data security rules.

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EFI announced it won a $2.4 million contract from the Department of Defense for its Digital StoreFront web-to-print software. The contract awarded by DLA Document Services (formerly known as DAPS), and will be used by 150 locations.

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Only 6.7% of physicians use email to communicate with their patients according to survey from Center for Studying Health System Change. More:
o Only 34.5% were equipped to handle email about clinical info with patients
o 76.6% have electronic access to lab tests
o 56.8% had electronic access to patient notes
o 42.2% had electronic access to prescribing tools

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37 people in the U.S. and 19 in England were arrested for using the Zeus malware to steal identities of unsuspecting computer users.

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2010-10-11T08:22:00.002-04:00

Newest Color Digital Presses Deliver Big-Iron Reliability, Outstanding Color Quality, and Exceptional Productivity at an Extraordinary Value
Witness the bizhub PRESS C7000/C6000 Series in action at GRAPH EXPO 2010 / October 3-6, McCormick Place, Chicago

CHICAGO - GRAPH EXPO 2010 - October 3, 2010 - Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta), a leading provider of advanced imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop, today at GRAPH EXPO 2010 will introduce the next three systems in the bizhub® PRESS Series of color digital presses. With the bizhub PRESS C7000, bizhub PRESS 7000P, and bizhub PRESS C6000, Konica Minolta is introducing disruptive, industry-leading technologies that further strengthen its market-leading position in the production print arena and enhance print professionals' return on investment (ROI). Building upon the advanced imaging technology in the award-winning bizhub PRESS C8000, customers will immediately recognize how the product line's innovative new engine improves image quality while reducing costs.

Konica Minolta's powerful trio of new digital color presses, along with the recently launched bizhub PRESS C8000, raises the bar in color quality, providing customers with world-class imaging at up to 70 color ppm to meet the needs of fast-paced production environments. The bizhub PRESS C7000 (70ppm) and bizhub PRESS C6000 (60ppm) provide high-speed print professionals with built-in print/copy/scan capability, while the bizhub PRESS C7000P offers a high-speed color print system that users can count on to stay ahead of rising and unpredictable workloads. Thanks to Konica Minolta technology innovations that improve throughput speed and output quality, customers will experience outstanding color stability from the first print to the last print of any job.

Setting New Color Standards
With the growing bizhub PRESS line of color digital presses, Konica Minolta is setting a new color standard in light production printing while also reducing overhead costs. The bizhub PRESS C7000/C6000 Series will create extraordinary color images with 1200dpi resolution and automatic Image Density Control (IDC) that ensures consistently outstanding image fidelity over long runs. By employing true 8-bit data compression, Konica Minolta has minimized RIP time while keeping color production in high gear from start to finish. An air assist paper separation system provides enhanced support for heavy and coated stocks and powerful print control combined with flexible in-line finishing options let users build a system customized to their production environment. The bizhub PRESS C7000/C6000 Series will integrate with a host of third-party workflow solutions. Additionally, in another Konica Minolta first, the Series will offer the home-grown IC-601 color image controller, which was uniquely designed for the high-demand needs of print professionals.

"With our bizhub PRESS product line, we have succeeded in delivering an even higher color quality, lower total cost of ownership and increased customer satisfaction - all great reasons to count on Konica Minolta," said Kevin Kern, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. "The bizhub PRESS C7000/C6000 Series is comprised of big-iron production systems that will meet rising production needs in corporate, commercial and print-for-pay applications, and print professionals will see an immediate difference with the brilliant, natural image quality."

A Decided Advantage for Print Professionals
Konica Minolta's exclusive Simitri® HD color polymerized toner uses biomass, an organic resource that reduces environmental impact compared to conventional toner. It leverages smaller, more uniform particles to reproduce ultra-fine image detail. In all three new bizhub PRESS models, optimized 1200 dpi print resolution achieves sharper lines, smoother graphics realism, and edge distortion, all while being easier on the environment. Another advantage of Simitri HD color polymerized toner is its thinner core shell structure, requiring a lower fusing temperature than conventional toner particles. This allows print professionals to achieve faster print processing speeds and increased image stability, a major benefit for production jobs demanding heavy paper stock.

Availability
The bizhub PRESS C7000/C6000 Series of Color Digital Presses is available now through Konica Minolta's North American direct sales and authorized dealer sales channels.

Konica Minolta Press Conference @ GRAPH EXPO 2010
Konica Minolta will hold a press conference on October 4th - starting at 11a CT - in Room S505A to review our award-winning technologies geared towards the Production Print marketplace.

GRAPH EXPO 2010 takes place at McCormick Place South in Chicago, Illinois from October 3 through October 6. To schedule a personal tour of the Konica Minolta Booth (#2244), reserve a spot at the Konica Minolta Press Conference, and/or an executive interview, please contact Doreen Maciak at dmaciak@kmbs@konicaminolta.us.

About Konica Minolta
Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. is a leader in advanced imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop. In 2009, Konica Minolta was named Supplier of the Year by both the Allegra Network and the National Association of Quick Printers (NAQP), as well as received the Sales Support Award from Mail Boxes Etc., Inc. For more information on our award-winning technologies, please visit www.CountOnKonicaMinolta.com and follow Konica Minolta on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Tidbits for the Week of 09/05/10

2010-09-07T06:44:00.002-04:00

-Canon updated its managed print services program, called Canon Managed Document Services:
o Offers infrastructure for centralized service dispatch
o Billing and helpdesk support
o imageWARE Enterprise Management Console for network device management
o Ecology Information Plug-in provides accurate measurement and analysis of CO2 emissions based on power consumption and paper volume usage
o Remote Diagnostic System (RDS) Plug-in facilitates automated meter collection and pre-emptive service alerts

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-Xerox, through its Global division, purchased a large Canon dealer. Georgia Duplicating Products, was owned by Ed Greene, and also sold Kyocera and HP.

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-Adobe announced it will partner with Monotype Imaging to provide print drivers to MFP and printer makers. The two companies will offer a package that includes PCL, PostScript and XPS drivers, to compete against other makers like Global Graphics & Zoran.

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-International Data Corporation (IDC) gave out it findings of worldwide market sales of printers and MFPs in last quarter:
o Includes inkjet and laser devices, from desktop to printshop
o total market grew 20%
o 29 million units shipped
o Total value increased by 14% to $13.3 billion
o B/w laser MFPs grew 39.7% (the first time that b/w had more growth than color)
o Color laser MFPs grew 33%
o HP shipped 2.8 million laser units, and 11.9 units total including inkjet
o Samsung color laser MFPs grew 55% to 108,731 units
o Samsung b/w laser MFPs grew 54% to 500,777 units
o 9 million total laser based units shipped
o 66% of market belonged to inkjet technology (primarily home use devices)
o Inkjet grew 14% to 19 million units
o 78% of inkjet units were MFPs
o In U.S., total shipments grew 14.4%

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-In a study of 410 small companies conducted by 1&1 Internet Ltd:
o 37% reported that money is lost from employees failing to share updated versions of documents
o 53% are held back by poor archiving of emails and documents
o 59% of business owners are unable to amend documents when they are off premises
o Over half of business owners believe that their staff is wasting money with excessive printing

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-Microsoft cofounder, Paul Allen is suing Apple, Google and 9 other companies claiming they are violating patents he owns

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-TIFF format works better with OCR than PDF? According to Sam Schrage, president of AnyDoc, maker of document capture software, “It’s really about applying the least common denominator. With TIFF files, you have a better idea of what you are getting. The only variation is going to be the layout. With electronic files, you have to worry about different formats, versions of formats, and even things like macros.”

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-Survey results from Imprivata about healthcare customers readiness for HIPAA rules:o 76% claim a data security breach is their greatest security concern
o 38% report that they can not track inappropriate document access
o 76% report that top budget priority is buying an EHR system
o What type of authentication will you deploy to meet HIPAA?
 83% = passwords
 37% = biometrics
 35% = proximity ID cards
o 90% believe that use of passwords slows down patient care from doctors
o 48% are still not sure if their existing EHR qualifies for fed gov reimbursements (under ARRA/HITECH act)
o 46% believe the biggest challenge for complying with fed rules is educating employees
o 47% are not sure if they are subject to any state laws regarding data security
o 97% state that new fed rules drive their purchasing decisions

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-Aon Consulting is notifying 22,000 State of Delaware retirees that it inadvertently included their Social Security numbers in a request for proposal that it prepared to the state.

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-Another healthcare data breach. The University of Kentucky is notifying 2,207 people that their personal information including Social Security numbers was on a laptop computer that was stolen.

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-Lexmark was ordered by a judge to pay $8.3 million to compensate its California employees for a flawed “use it or lose it” vacation pay policy. Judge Greg Alarcon ruled that 178 employees should be compensated for vacation time they did not use before they were terminated.

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-NER Data Corp, which was a maker of compatible toner cartridges, announced it has sold that business, and now plans on becoming a national provider of managed print services, using genuine HP cartridges.

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-IT departments across the country are facing a looming Microsoft Windows 7 migration deadline, as support for Windows XP will end in 4 years. Gartner study shows:
o Many are starting their migrations at end of 2010
o IT budgets will need to increase between 20% to 60% to accommodate the updates
o Cost of IT labor will also increase
o Estimated migration cost per PC will be between $1205 and $1999
o Capital costs account for 60% of total replacement cost
o Average business will have to replace 25% of its PC early

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-Hewlett Packard won a bidding war against Dell over both companies’ attempt to buy 3PAR Corp., which make data storage technology for cloud computing. HP will pay $2.1 billion for the firm. Details on 3PAR:
o founded 11 years ago by former Sun Microsystems employees
o original stock price was $10 per share, but sold at $33 per share
o the letters “P”, “A” and “R” stand for names of three founders
o based in Fremont, CA
o 670 employees

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-Hewlett Packard is sued. About 1 year ago, HP announced a partnership with large commercial printer, R.R. Donnelley, to develop variable data technologies. Now R.R. Donnelley has filed a lawsuit against HP over alleged patent violations, claiming that the violations are “willful and deliberate.”

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-Fuji, maker of most Xerox printers and MFPs, announced it will invest $23.4 million to increase capacity of its manufacturing plant in Guangdon Province of China.

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-Intel announced it is spending $1.4 billion to buy Infineon, maker of wireless network technology, which is found in Apple products.

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-Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from AIB in Ireland.
o 5 year contract
o Reduced fleet from one device for every 4 employees to one for every 12
o Included MFPs and LaserJet 4250dtn and Color LaserJet 4700dtn laser printers
o Included SafeCom solution to allow ID card readers on devices for authentication
o Claims to have reduced operating costs from 20-30%

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-Pitney Bowes announced that it spent $210,000 in the second quarter of 2010 to lobby the federal government. The company’s FM division, called PMBS, is now run by Vicki O’Meara, who was hired after the division reported a 5% drop in revenue in early 2010.

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-The Detroit Medical Center claims that its new EHR system from Cerner will save the hospital $5 million per year. The system cost the hospital $50 million to implement

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-The CFO of Danbury Health System of Connecticut was arrested and charged with cutting checks totaling $140,000 to an EHR software company he ran out of his house.

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-A study by Frost & Sullivan predicts that revenue for the U.S. ambulatory electronic health record (EHR) market will double from $1.3 billion in 2009 to an estimated $.26 billion in 2012.

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-Hewlett Packard is fighting a claim by security firm, Zscaler Labs, that hackers can use the Webscan feature to capture images from documents that are left in Hewlett Packard scanners and MFPs that have an embedded Web server. Michael Sutton of Zscaler Labs claims that he was able to find many HP scanners on the Internet.

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Tidbits for the Week of 8/22/10

2010-08-24T07:18:00.003-04:00

Hewlett Packard gave out details of last quarter’s financials from Imaging & Printing Group:
o Total revenue up 9% to $6.2 billion
o Supplies revenue up 5%
o Commercial hardware revenue (printers & MFPs, mostly made by Canon) up 4%
o Commercial hardware units up 44%
o Operating profit was $1 billion

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Shares of Pitney Bowes booked a new 52 week low by trading below $19.50 per share.

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Toshiba Corp. announced that it will implement plans to cut costs by $11.6 billion over the next 3 years. It hopes to accomplish this by negotiating better pricing from its suppliers.

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Xerox inventor passes away. Robert W. Gundlach was one of Xerox Corp .'s most prolific inventors, while his pioneering work in the science of photocopying made him a 2005 inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
o Mr. Gundlach died of aspiration pneumonia at The Shore Winds nursing home in Charlotte. He was 84.
o Mr. Gundlach was born Sept. 7, 1926. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics in 1949 from the University at Buffalo, where he did additional graduate studies in physics.
o He started with Xerox predecessor Haloid Co. in 1952, where he worked with Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography, the science behind photocopying.
o Mr. Gundlach received 155 patents, with the technology he developed making possible advances such as desktop copiers.
o When he retired in 1995, he had 12 patent applications pending and he received his 155th in 2002.
o He received an additional eight U.S. patents outside of Xerox for inventions including a water-based heat pump system and a type of backpack.

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Some industry reporters are speculating that EFI is an acquisition target.
o The company has $490 million market capitalization and $200 million in cash.
o It is speculated that the board is currently reviewing its strategic options to boost enterprise value including buyouts by management or private equity.
o It is believed the board may be interested in a buyout proposal exceeding $600 million.
o EFI reported $ 400 million in revenue and a $2 million net loss in 2009.

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World Software Corporation, maker of Worldox, a very popular document management system (DMS) for law firms, announced launch of Worldox CompleteCloud, a secure virtual data center for law firms.
o Powered through a partnership with cloud provider CoreBanc Inc.
o CompleteCloud is a hosted environment complete with server and desktop software including Worldox, Microsoft® Office Professional and Microsoft Exchange – a full Windows desktop for one monthly price.

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About 80% of IT professionals at hospitals in the survey, conducted by Imprivata, say locking down patient information from breaches and unauthorized access is a top priority, up from 62% last year.
o 76% are most worried about confidential data breaches or abuse of their clinical applications as their biggest security concerns.
o 62% say they are able to track inappropriate access to data in order to comply with the HITECH Act's disclosure rules, while 38% cannot.
o 48% of the hospitals say they aren't sure whether their EMR deployment qualifies for the funding
o More than 80% use passwords for their strong authentication; 37 percent, biometrics; 35 percent, facility access cards; and 17 percent, tokens.
o 74% of the hospitals in the survey say they plan to spend more on security this year than they did in 2009.
o Around 97% say their purchasing decisions are driven by HIPAA and HITECH Act regulations.

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A man has been charged with smashing in a store window after they refused to refill his printer cartridges.
o Police said back in April, Scott Damsgard, 42, went into a business located in the 1300 block of Mendota Road in Inver Grove Heights, Minn., to get his printer cartridge refilled.
o Employees told Damsgard that they do refill cartridges, but only if they have a special sticker on them that shows they were bought there. His didn't have the sticker and he didn't have a receipt.
o Damsgard got upset and got into a heated exchange with employees and started swearing at them. Then while leaving the store, Damsgard picked up some landscaping stones and threw them at the windows.
o The windows smashed and had to be replaced. In all he cause more than $1,345 in damages. Damsgard was charged with first degree damage to property which can have a punishment of up to 5 years in jail and/or up to a $10,000 fine.

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A study of California hospitals shows minimal positive effects of EMRs.
o It concludes: “EMR implementation was associated with 6-10 percent higher cost per discharge in medical-surgical acute units.
o EMR stage 2 increased registered nurse hours per patient day by 15-26 percent and reduced licensed vocational nurse cost per hour by 2-4 percent.
o EMR stage 3 was associated with 3-4 percent lower rates of in-hospital mortality for conditions

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NSi (Notable Solutions Inc.) notified its customers of an issue it has with the OCR function of AutoStore. Apparently, it sources the optical character recognition (OCR) software from ABBYY of Russia (called FineReader), and recommends that customers do not use a setting below 70% for JPEG data compression, due to image quality issues. (in contract, Nuance eCopy uses OmniPage for OCR)

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Fujitsu announced it is now offering a new option for some of its scanners, the NSi AutoStore middleware software. This allows customers to use Fujitsu scanners and through AutoStore, have the images OCR’d and forwarded to document management systems

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Rice University announced it is ending its printshop’s experiment to go all digital:
o was launched in 2006
o Eugene Levy, Rice provost, said; “The hope was that, without the burden of having to maintain a print inventory, the press might sustain itself largely on revenues from print-on-demand book sales. Unfortunately, book sales remained very slow, and projections discouraged the anticipation that revenues would, in the foreseeable future, grow to a level that oculd materially cover even the minimal costs of operations.”
o The digital press was costing $150,000 to $200,000 a year.

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The founder of Minuteman Press International, Roy W. Titus, passed away on 8/12/2010. He started the print-for-pay franchise chain in 1974, which now has 940 locations world-wide.

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InfoTrends has released its annual United States Production and Copying Market Forecast, covering 2009 to 2014.
o This year's forecast predicts color printing will erode the monochrome market in placements and impressions during the next four years, rising from a 65% revenue share in 2009 to 77% in 2014.
o Light coverage color pages will become more cost effective and account for a higher percentage of color pages, particularly on high-speed roll-fed color devices

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Intel announced that it would acquire antivirus/security firm McAfee for about $7.68 billion, placing a price on the company’s common stock of about $48 per share.
o Santa Clara, Calif.-based McAfee will become a fully-owned subsidiary of Intel, and become a part of Intel’s Software and Services Group.
o The deal will close pending McAfee shareholder approval and regulatory clearance.
o Intel is apparently planning on using McAfee’s technology to add security to its Atom chip.
o Intel’s objective may be to grow its low-powered chip sales, by offering more and more functionality right on the chip (i.e. security, GPS, fax, scan, print, etc.)

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Xerox investors marked the 32nd anniversary of a date that changed the copier industry which was on 8/16/1978.
o On that date, the U.S. Federal Trade commission levied a $25.6 million fine on Xerox for anti-competitive behavior.
o The company was charged with using technical patents to lock-up the market for photocopiers and prevent competitors from getting a start.
o The company was forced to share some of the patented technology. Many of these licenses ended up in the hands of Japanese companies that quickly filled in the lower-end copy market.
o Although Xerox continued to hold onto the top-end segment for years, the loss of its patents severely shortened Xerox's ability to enjoy outsized profits for its years of R&D.

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Fuji announced it hired former Canon executive, Peter Brittliff, as its Marketing Manager for Production Printing Systems in Australia.

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Microsoft announced that it has sold 100 million licenses for Windows 7 operating system, making it the fastest selling Windows OS in history. Gartner Corp. has recommended that companies should upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 before end of 2012 to avoid compatibility problems. Microsoft will shut off support for XP on 4/1/2014. (Windows 7 has the new XPS print driver)

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Japan loses its place as the world’s No. 2 economy to China in the second quarter.
o China’s economy will almost certainly be bigger than Japan’s at the end of 2010 because of the huge difference in each country’s growth rate.
o Japan’s GDP was $1.286 trillion last quarter, while China’s was $1.335 trillion
o Japan’s per capita income is $37,800 while China’s is $3,600 (U.S. is $42,240)

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Accounting rule makers are proposing big changes to lease accounting:
o will affect some $1.2 trillion in leased assets worldwide
o under current rules, companies can keep equipment leases off their balance sheet and hidden from an investor’s view
o new rule will force companies to bring these assets onto corporate balance sheets
o companies would likely have to recognize a liability for future payments
o many companies are fearful that the change will force their balance sheets to balloon overnight, and change their leverage and debt ratios, forcing them to renegotiate covenants with their lenders
o “I guarantee it’s going to change return-on-asset formulas, return-on-equity formulas and debt servicing”, stated Jeffrey Taylor, an Arizona-based author of lease accounting.
 “People in the leasing industry think they can’t keep things off the balance sheet and operating leases disappear that it’s going to devastate not only equipment leasing, but also real estate leasing” said Taylor.
 “You’ll probably see a lot of people get out of the leasing business” said Taylor.
o The new standard would likely not take effect for several years.

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GE Capital may be brought under potentially stricter federal government oversight, due to the new Dodd-Frank Act, which aims to overhaul the financial sector. Some regulatory experts believe that it will be treated as a bank, which may impact its ability to lend. GE Capital has $41 billion lent out currently.

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Oracle Corp. filed a lawsuit against Google Corp. over alleged patent violations.
o Since Oracle, run by Larry Ellison, purchased Sun Microsystems, it also now owns Sun’s Java software intellectual property (IP)
o Java originally invented by James Gosling, a former Sun engineer
o Java serves as the foundation for many business applications, including Google’s new Android cell phone operating system, according to Oracle
o Many manufacturers are fearful that Oracle will file suit against them as well, including IBM.
o Java is used as part of the embedded system architecture in copiers from Canon, Ricoh and others

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Hewlett Packard announced it is acquiring Fortify Software, which specializing in making products that finds security vulnerabilities.

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Canon wastes up to $1.7 billion dollars according to Wall Street Journal. Canon announced in Tokyo it is giving up on its plans to enter the flatscreen HDTV market:
o Canon thought it had a new competitive technology, called SED (silicon emitter display)
o The plan was to launch the new Canon TVs during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Bejing, China with an expensive world-wide TV advertising campaign
o It also was planning on letting Toshiba relabel the TVs
o A Texas company, Nano Proprietary, sued for patent infringement and won.
o Canon has now decided to liquidate the division, and end the project

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During a recent dealer meeting, Toshiba invited a representative from Digital Copier Security Inc. to be a guest speaker. Digital Copier Security is the company responsible for the CBS Evening News feature on copier hard drive security that has caused a panic since it was aired in April, featuring Toshiba copiers.

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Industry author explains Xerox’s claim that their color systems offer 2400dpi:
o the print controller used (Fiery, Creo or generic) only sends 600x600dpi to the print engine
o Xerox VCSEL is using 32 laser beams to draw the image (vertical cavity surface emitting laser)
o toner particles are 8 microns each
o engine divides each pixel into 4 quadrants, to simulate 2400dpi (one pixel from 600dpi, divided into fourths equals 2400)

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Tidbits for the Week of 08/15/10

2010-08-17T07:32:00.002-04:00

-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

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

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-Office Products Analyst announced the results of its annual Color MFP End User survey. Details:
obased on respondents from survey sent to businesses across the U.S.
ousers 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

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-Toshiba recent held its LEAD (lead, engage, act, deliver) Conference for its dealer in Irvine, CA. Details:
o to promote its managed print services program to its dealers
o no hardware shown
o covered training for sales, service and consulting
o consultants from Strategy Development (Tom Callinan) provided content
o claims that only 5% of all pages in U.S. are under an MPS program
o Toshiba only has 7% of the A3 MFP market in the U.S.
o claims to have 80,000 devices under MPS management currently
o on display was solution software from PREO, Capella, Drivve, Fasoo & Pharos

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-A survey conducted by WhatTheyThink of printshop owners, when asked “What’s Your Next Big Equipment Investment?”
o 16% = bindery
o 35% = digital press
o 10% = mailing
o 29% = production inkjet
o 10% = wide format
o 0% = offset press

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-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.

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-According to a study conducted by Kodak about the print for pay industry:
o Total print revenues grew from 2006 to 2007 by 1.7%
o Offset press revenue grew from 2006 to 2007 by 1.7%
o From 2007 to 2008, offset press shipments declined by 1.5%
o Total print shipments were down 13% in 2009, and 5% down in 2010
o Profit from digital print averages 20-40%
o Profit from offset press is 1-4%
o Average run length is less than 10,000 pieces per job
o Run lengths have decreased by 30% in last 5 years
o Average time to run a 1,000 piece job on offset press is 30 minutes for makeready plus 15 minutes for actual printing for a total average of 45 minutes
o Average selling price for offset press prints is 6-10 cents per page with profit of 1-4%
o Average cost per page for high speed digital is 10-14 cents per page
o Average cost per page for offset press job for 500-1000 run length is 35-45 cents per page

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-According to Howie Fenton of the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (GATF), paper for digital color presses:
o when made have moisture content of 4-6% of its total weight
o in best conditions, paper is designed to be stable in a 45-55% relative humidit at 72 degrees Farenheit
o moisture content affects toner adhesion, paper jams and fuser roller temperature
o if paper is left unwrapped, it absorbs more moisture

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-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

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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

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-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.

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

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-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

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-IBM announced it acquired Datacap Inc., maker of document capture software, and headquartered in Tarrytown, NY.

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-More details on the PREO Printelligence software being offered as an option by both Xerox and Toshiba:
oused 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

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-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.

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-Legal vertical workload increases. According to Cowen Group, litigation support departments at law firms are experiencing double digit growth in workload during 2010. Data includes:
o work hours are up
o increases in eDiscovery workloads
o increase in litigation support
o many plan to add staff
o increases in budget for technology purchases

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-Prompted by the CBS report in April on copier data security, a newspaper in Europe, called News of the World, did its own investigation of copier hard drives. The newspaper purchased a number of trade-in copiers and found:
o NATO briefing notes
o Details of a bank account belonging to BAE systems (a large defense contractor)
o The information was found on the hard drive of a Canon imageRUNNER

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-Recent data on healthcare reveals:
ocurrently there are roughly 750,000 healthcare establishments in the U.S.
 6,013 hospitals
 918,000 physicians
•67% affiliated with hospital
•60% have no HER
•Less than 25% of doctors prescribe drugs electronically
o In addition to medical records and forms, the most common paper documents per department are:
 Customer Records include contracts, forms, authorizations, contact reports and email
 Human Resources include resumes, contracts, expense reports, vacation requests and reviews
 Legal includes contracts, e-discovery and auditing
 Purchasing includes purchase orders, receiving slips, invoices and confirmations
 Product management includes designs, drawings, data sheets and contacts
o The most common reasons why they will invest in technology:
 81.5% want to increase productivity
 67.7% want to lower costs
 60% want to address security requirements
o Only 40% of those surveyed had some type of document management system

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-In a recent healthcare industry trade magazine, in section titled “The Healthcare IT Guy”, recent reminders were given for doctors to qualify for federal funds for implementation of an electronic health records (EHR) system: (of which MFPs, scanners, document management and middleware can play a role)
o If starting implementation in 2012, will be eligible for full payments from Medicare ($44K over 5 years)
o Can start as late as 201 to get full payments from Medicaid ($63K+ over 6 years)
o For hospitals, payments include a base amount of $2 million, plus $200 per patient, starting with the hospital’s 1,150th patient discharged and ending with No. 23,000, beginning in 2011 fiscal year.
 Both doctors and hospitals that cannot “demonstrate meaningful use of EHR” by beginning of the 2015 fiscal year will be penalized

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-As the healthcare industry “digitizes”, one of the concerns is the amount of data storage that will be required. In a recent article in “Healthcare Technology”, the data collected by medical imaging (radiology) equipment was detailed:
o “Prior to the mid-90s, most of the scanning was only two slices. Now 3D visualization is a must-have application and a primary diagnostic tool. This has had a significant impact on the medical imaging industry. For example, if you took a head and neck scan in 1994, it was about 21 slices. Today, a single head and neck scan is 240 slices.”
o Formats/acronyms used in radiology are; PACS (picture archiving and communication system) and DICOM (digital imaging and communications in medicine)

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-Two senators attempt to expand who can get the HITECH subsidies from Medicare and Medicaid:
o Sheldon Whitehouse & Jack Reed of Rhode Island introduced bill
o Want monies to be available for EHR implementation by mental health, behavioral health and substance abuse treatment professionals
o Currently, psychiatrists are eligible, but not psych hospitals, clinical social workers and substance abuse programs

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-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.

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-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.

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-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.

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

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-Toshiba announced it will lay off 60 people in September from its Consumer Products division due to declining sales.

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-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.

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-Four Massachusetts community hospitals are investigating how thousands of patient records ended up in a pile at a local dump site that was 20 feet wide and 20 feet long. A newspaper photographer discovered the records when he was dumping his own trash, and notified the 4 hospitals; Milford, Holyoke, Carney and Milton.

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-Allscripts, maker of EHR software, announced it has hired former U.S. Attorney, Ken Alexander, as its new Executive VP and General Counsel. It also announced it won a contract from the Iowa Health System.

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Introducing the bizhub C35

2010-07-22T08:11:00.000-04:00

Tidbits for the Week of 2/1/10

2010-02-01T07:37:00.005-05:00

InfoTrends conducted a survey of small to medium sized businesses (SMB), that may give an indication of potential usage of production print systems:
- Top business priorities in 2010
- 77.6% gain and retain new customers
- 56.9% expand existing customer relationships
- 43.2% reduce costs
- 28.7% improve productivity
- 27.1% enter new markets
- 24.7% introduce new product/service
- 17.4% improve operational consistency
- 7.9% meet government compliance requirements
- 3.1% environmental goals
- 43% will spend more on marketing
- 40% will spend the same on marketing
- 60% use email to promote business
- 65% will increase use of email promotions
- 34% are using social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, etc.)
- 47% use direct mail to advertise

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Notes from the recent Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Chicago:
- Keynote speaker was actor, Dennis Quaid, and Alan Greenspan, former fed reserve chairman
- The ARRA act represents some $19 billion in potential payments to physicians and hospitals that can demonstrate “meaningful use” of an EMR
- This stimulus “lowers the financial hurdle, undoubtedly” said Dr. George Taylor, VP of Health IT Programs at Northrop Grumman. “How do you solve the problem of every doctor – trained in different places, with different styles, and different preferences – with an EMR that’s designed for one?”
- Some were concerned that the stimulus money would benefit EMR adoption, but what was necessary to support it in the long term.
- Richard Howe, VP at Healthcare Informatics Associates, stated; “There’s enough money…that if they do it right, the cost savings in there will be enough…” “The stimulus package is adamant about standards – without that, you have nothing.”
- William Buddy Gillespie, VP and CTO for WellSpan Health said; “Sustainability is the word. The infrastructure is sometimes forgotten, and it needs to be stable, expandable and scalable to protect the integrity of the system and the data.”
- Dr. John Halamka, CIO of CareGroup was quoted; “There’s too much data and not enough wisdom…you can get 10,000 data points on every patient and look at it all. You’ll never sleep again! So there needs to be a way to separate the wheat from the chaff and tell you what youneed to know.”

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Kodak announced its first quarterly profit ($443 million) in over a year due to increased sales of its desktop color inkjet printers and MFPs. In 1988, it employed 145,300 workers, now it only has 20,300.

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EFI gave out details of its last financial quarter:

- Revenue in North America declined 19%
- The Fiery division posted a drop of 34%
- In U.S., Fiery revenue was down 24%
- Net loss of $3.4 million
- Total revenue down 18% for $114 million
- Now has 1.7 million Fiery print servers in operation
- Inkjet printer revenue down 2% in U.S.
- Inkjet supply revenue up 24%

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Samsung of Korea stated it earned 3.05 trillion won ($2.63 billion) in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year. Other announcements:
- Moved its U.S. printer/MFP division from southern California to New Jersey (where it will be close to its major competitors)
- Is now world’s second largest maker of laser print engines
- In Asia, the company relabels the Toshiba MFP product line

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Canon reported info on its last quarter’s financials:- Net profit of 61.6 billion yen (compared with 217.1 billion yen last year)
- Sales of 954.1 billion yen down 4.1%
- Digital camera sales were up, but copier/printer sales were down
- Predicts that net income will rise 52% to 200 billion yen ($2.24 billion) in 2010
- Predicts sales will rise to 3.45 trillion yen
- Copier/printers accounted for 51% of 2009 revenue
- Predicts that copier sales will rise 7% in 2010

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According to imageSource magazine’s Jim Thumma, here are the Top 10 Pitfalls to avoid when implementing an ECM (electronic content management) project
- Lack of vision and leadership
- Poorly aligned business and IT goals
- Projects that are too broad or too narrow
- Failure to involve everyone who will be affected
- Overlooking front end capture
- Failure to integrate business systems
- Poor project management
- Underestimating time requirements for proper implementation
- Solution is implemented too slowly
- Insufficient change management

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Fuji of Japan (which makes most Xerox branded MFPs and printers) announced a reorganization to its copier/MFP division:
- Has realigned and consolidated its development and manufacturing functions to form
two new companies
- Fuji Xerox Advanced Technology Co., Ltd. will take on developing functions
- Image capture
- Paper feeding
- Fax functions
- Finishing devices
- Custom development
- Production print
- Fuji Xerox Manufacturing Co., Ltd. will manage manufacturing functions
- Ground toner in Japan
- Photoreceptors in Japan
- Emulsion aggregate (EA polymerized) toner in Japan
- Electronic parts in Japan
- Optical apparatus in Japan
- Shift all desktop printer production to China

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In a survey conducted by Ricoh of businesses that have in-house copy/print shops (CRDs), the results were:
- Top types of work that is outsourced
- 73% went to offset printing press
- 43% went to digital production color units
- 34% went to digital production b/w units
- 32% was variable data jobs
- Top reasons why work was outsourced
- 52% did not have right equipment
- 48% did not have enough capacity
- 30% because of cost concerns
- 23% unaware of capabilities
- 14% doubted capabilities
- 11% lack of software
- 9% quality concerns
- 7% delivery concerns

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Canon stated it will offer 8.6 euros for all outstanding shares of Oce’.- total of 730 million euros suggestion purchase price ($1 billion U.S. dollars)
- Represents a premium of 70% over Oce’s closing stock price on 11/13/2009
- Management of Oce’ recommends the offer be accepted
- Acceptance time ends on 3/1/2010
- Meeting with shareholders will be held on 2/12/2010 in Netherlands

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Quad/Graphics, a large print for pay headquartered in Wisconsin, announced it purchased rival, World Color Press of Canada (fka Quebecor), for $1.3 billion. This would create North America’s second largest commercial printer, behind R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. Expected revenue from new combined company is $5.1 billion, and includes locations in U.S., Poland, Latin America & Canada. Quad/Graphics is owned by Quadracci family of Sussex, WI.

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Iron Mountain, headquartered in Boston, announced it has acquired Legal Imaging Technologies Inc. of San Francisco, and will add it to its Stratify division. Legal Imaging focused on litigation support services for law firms in the Bay area. In 2007, Iron Mountain bought Stratify for $158 million.

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Panasonic announced it is getting out of the A3 MFP business. It would appear that the company will only make desktop A4 devices

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Michael McDonald Collins and Michael Cass were arrested in West Madison, Missouri after they were caught using a color copier to make fake U.S. currency.

Thomas Onan of Williamstown, Kentucky was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for using a color copier to turn bleached $5 dollar bills into $100 bills.

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EFI announced a new free option for its Fiery print servers, called Fiery VUE offering:
- Standalone application or plug in for Microsoft Office applications
- Users can specify complex finishing with few clicks of mouse
- Goal is no training for end users to print/finish with Fiery driver color MFP
- Result of data gathered by EFI during customer focus groups
- Uses plain English and images
- Thumbnail views of pages and documents
- Premade templates
- users can flip through pages of their document, showing paper types, tabs, inserts, etc.

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In an article in the Wall Street Journal titled; “Ten Brands That Will Disappear in 2010”, the author included Kodak

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Comments regarding the future of the PC/laptop market from David Carini, managing director of Maverick China Research in Bejing, China:
- “will we need to store all our files on a local hard drive, and will we need to carry a laptop around?” (if people use cloud computing and data storage, they could log on to Internet, and complete work without need for laptop computer)
- “If Dell and HP were to invest more into making cooler, funkier PCs, then I think it is an overstatement that they will disappear, but if they keep on competing on price, then the Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturers will continue to gain”
- “The success of Apple computers show that consumers are willing to pay when they see value”
-“The U.S. can still operate factories efficiently, but you still have to pay workers $20 per hour. In China, you could pay same workers $1 an hour”

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Canon, in a press release, stated that it was “looking into merger and acquisition opportunities and business tie-ups towards launching into biotechnology, nontechnology and life sciences”

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Forrester Research released findings of poll on cloud computing: - Data storage needs are growing 30-40% per year
- Only 3% of companies have implemented cloud storage
- 43% are not interested in cloud storage
- 43% are interested, but no plans to adopt
- 3% plan to adopt in 2010
- 5% plan to adopt in 2011 or later
- 3% have already implemented
- 1% are expanding their existing implementation
- 51% will not implement due to security concerns

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IKON, a division of Ricoh, announced a new division, called IKON Managed Document Services:- Headed by Terrie Campbell, VP
- End to end printer/MFP fleet management with IKON TRAC for automated service call dispatch
- Consulting and business process support services
- Intelligent device rationalization

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According to The Legal Intelligencer magazine, here are the Top 10 low cost ways for a law firm to market itself
- Keep attorney bios fresh (need high quality color laser MFP to print on demand rather than
- outsource to printing press)
- Record and post video to law firm website
- Make firm’s marketing materials downloading from website. (use color MFP to scan to PDF)
- Create on-line newsroom (more PDFs)
- Make marketing virtual (use of LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.)
- Blogging
- Align marketing and business goals
- Monitor reputation on-line
- Ask “why is this important” first before creating press release
- Still can’t beat face to face (make time for meetings)

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While Xerox announced last fall that it had acquired one of its biggest dealer agents, Mr. Copy (with offices in California, Nevada and Oregon), what was announced recently is that its former owner, Bob Leone, is part of a group of Xerox agents that filed suit against Xerox in 10/2007, after the Global acquisition, that may go to trial in 2010:
- Will take place in Los Angeles County Superior Court
- Their lawyers stated that Xerox agents “have suffered and will suffer losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars” due to Xerox’s “breach of their respective contractual agreements to exclusively market Xerox products”

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At recent symposium held by Lyra Research in Rancho Mirage, CA, analysts stated that growth of managed print services is being hampered by a lack of inclusion of inkjet printers and MFPs.

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Ovum Research stated following on IT hardware purchasing in 2010:
- U.S. market will grown 2% in 2010
- Will grow 3$ in 2011
- Hugh unemployment will be a drag on technology sales in 2010
- End will remain in a defensive IT spending position in 2010

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Auxilio of Mission Viejo, CA announced it won a managed print services contract with Palisades Medical Center of North Bergen, NJ:
- Partnered with Sodexo, a healthcare service solution provider
- The hospital servers 400,000 people per year
- 202 bed hospital and 245 bed nursing home
- Value and term of contract not stated

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One of the largest chains of office equipment dealers in China, Lanxum, went public. Details:
- Owners sold some 26.5 million shares on Shanzen Stock Exchange
- Ended 2009 with market capitalization of $500 million
- Has 6.1% marketshare, behind Fuji which has 17%
- In managed print services, it is behind Fuji and Hewlett Packard
- Authorized to sell Ricoh, Toshiba, Canon & HP devices
- Headquartered in Bejing, with ten other offices in China
- Plans on opening up 19 more branches

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Hewlett Packard’s VP of Healthcare Business, Chris Mertens, announced:
- HP is launching programs to take advantage of the “rolling cascade” of opportunities in the healthcare market due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) mandate of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software
- HP announced it is now a partner with McKesson, maker of EMR software
- HP dealer/VARs will be able to source McKesson products from Tech Data, a computer hardware/software distributor
- HP hopes that this will help its VARs penetrate independent physician practices
- “It’s such a huge population, and what we’ve seen plays absolutely to the strengths of partners and HP”
- “Physicians are looking for a local partner to be able to deliver the solutions they need in the new healthcare paradigm”
- Physician practices are now required to implement “meaningful use” EMR systems, or lose out on tens of thousands of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid incentives within a few years.
- “Physician practice market needs to move to technology, and they have not only a carrot, but also a stick; payments to them will be reduced if they don’t get that technology”
- HP estimates the size of the physician practice EMR opportunity at 600,000 businesses in the U.S.
- HP also works with McKesson’s competitor, Cerner, through Tech Data’s competitor, Computer Discount Warehouse (CDW).
- “Physicians want to buy from partners in their communities – people they see in the supermarket,That may be patients of theirs. They don’t want to buy from a Website.”
- McKesson products include; Practice Partner, Lytec, Medisoft, Bright Note Technology, etc.

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In Japan, Ricoh announced to its shareholders that it is revising its sales forecast downward by 3.1%, but its net income will be up by 50%, due to cost cutting measures.
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When asked about economic recovery, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft stated; “When you have a financial crisis like that, it’s years of digging out”. The current economic situation is “the toughest Microsoft has ever faced”.

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Xerox announced it is reducing what it pays U.S. workers in severance. Details:
- Will cut another 2,500 jobs
- “We are identifying various cost reduction actions to help us re-size our company in the face of significant revenue decline and to be getter positioned to invest going forward.”, according to Jim Firestone, President of Xerox.
- Instead of receiving 1.5 weeks for every year employed, now laid off workers will only get 1 week for every year with company

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Toshiba stated that its net loss for its fiscal third quarter are less from a year earlier as its memory chip business recovered on demand for mobile gadgets.
- Cut its full year sales prediction by 6% as a result of continued weakness in economy
- Expects to lose 50 billion yen in current financial year
- No comment given on its MFP/printer business.

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Sources: Bloomberg Business/Google Business/Weekend Industry Notes

Tidbits for the week of 1/11/10

2010-01-14T07:07:00.004-05:00

According to a document management survey conducted by Computer Sciences Corporation about hospitals compliancy with the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) section of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA):
- Will face severe penalties in 2015 if hospitals are not meaningful users of Electronic Health Record EHR) systems
- Only 10% have comprehensive EHRs in 2009
- Expected that 55% will have EHRs by 2014
- Only 25% of those surveyed meet at least 70% of the readiness indicators
- Only 66% have assessed where their current system has gaps
- 70% have systems with capability for Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE)
- 8% have CPOE in place
- Less than 50% have plan to convert to new coding standard ICD-10
- Currently HER systems are certified by a body called Certification Commission for Health InformationTechnology (CCHIT)
- 93% are using a product that is CCHIT certified, but only 70% reported that their systems were capable of CPOE
- Only 54% were using latest version of software
- Only 27% use the National Council For Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) version 10.5 for medications
- Only 21% had captured at least 50% of the physician documentation electronically
- Less than 33% tracked quality of care measures during patient’s stay
- Only 52% employ encryption technologies to render data unreadable or unusable in the case of unauthorized access
- Only 40% have clear awareness of the criminal penalties in the HITECH legislation

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Major data center outages of 2009:
- In early July, Fisher Plaza in Seattle experienced an outage that affected e-commerce around the globe, as Authorize.net went offline. Also impacted was Intermap, AdHost and Microsoft Bing Travel site. The outage was blamed on an insulation failure in a bus duct.
- On June 25th, the Internet slowed down due to millions of users seeking news on death of Michael Jackson.
- On October 10th, T-Mobile users had their Sidekick mobile data lost due to a server failure at Microsoft’s anger subsidiary.
- On January 30th, users lost data from Magnolia, due to database crash.
- On August 6th, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attached took down Twitter, due to crash at NTT America.
- On June 29th, power problems caused outage at Rackspace in Dallas, TX.
- On July 6th, a fire took down data center at Fisher Plaza in Toronto.
- In February, Google’s Gmail was overloaded in Europe.
- On August 3rd, performance issues prevented PayPal from processing transactions, causing eBay to lose $7 million in transaction fees.
- A power generator failure took down an IBM data center in New Zealand used by Air New Zealand.

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Heidelberg, the large German offset press maker, now supported financially by the German government, is looking to get back into the digital printers market according to Business Week magazine. Apparently, it is even considering partnering with Kodak. As you may recall, Heidelberg sold its digital press business to Kodak, after buying it from Kodak a few years earlier. This division includes the DigiMaster b/w systems and the NexPress color systems.

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According to Jim Thumma, CP of Optical Image Technology, here are the top ten challenges to implementing electronic content management programs:
- Budgeting inadequately, as most do not include necessary funds for:
- planning, consulting, designing, testing, implementing, training, evaluating and improvement
- professional services fees for customization
- staff resources
- temporary staffing for back file conversion
- ongoing training expenses
- Failing to see things through from start to finish
- Dropping the ball, by not following plan
- Staffing inadequately, by not putting extra resources in place during implementation
- Interrupting with 1001 questions
- Cutting corners that compromise system performance
- Poor communication

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The City of Troy, New York, announced it is implementing document management technology to reduce paper usage, and improve record keeping in its police department. It hopes to save several thousands of dollars, and eliminate the printing of 315,000 pieces of paper annually.

- Insufficient training
- Inadequate testing
- Insufficient backup and disaster recovery planning

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MWAi announced it is launching a new program to allow independent dealers to offer a nationwide managed print services program. The MWAi National Managed Print Services (nMPS) program will allow a dealer to access a network of 3,000+ technicians across the country, to service and supply printers, with ability to see call activity real-time, manage pricing, as well as open and close service calls on a common industry ERP.

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Printshop revenue for month of November in the U.S., was a total of $7.38 billion a decline of 8% compared to last year. It was the first November to be below $8 billion since 2003.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case of whether or not a company has the right to monitor text messages on company provided cell phones.

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According a survey of law firms conducted by Mattern & Associates:- Average charge to clients for outgoing fax was $1.17 per page
- Average cost for a color copy of $0.81 per page
- Average cost for a color print of $0.78 per page
- Average cost for a b/w print of $0.18 per page
- Average cost for phone consultation was $0.12 per minute
- Firms that capture data from local printers versus network printers increased from 38% to 50%
- Total output from printers and copiers increased by 7% year over year
- Fax volume decreasing, but replaced by increased scanning volume
- 26% now charging for scans
- Color output is now considered standard, and no longer only for marketing

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Adobe Corp. announced that it is discontinuing its Partner Connection Print Service Provider Program, which was intended to drive Adobe users to member printshops. Adobe claims it shut it down due to declining membership.

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PayNet Inc. reported that small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) with accounts behind 180 days or more, and unlikely ever to be paid, rose 0.91% in November from 0.87% in October. This is the 22nd consecutive monthly increase in loans so far in arrears they ultimately may have to be written off by lenders.

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A company that specializes in selling used copiers claims its business is booming. Copiers Refurbished Inc., run by Randy Mecheles, leases used copiers on a 24 month to 48 month term with $1.00 buyout at end of term. The company sells over the Internet, and charges $425 to ship anywhere in the U.S. However, do they tell customers that they must find a local dealer to service it for them once it arrives?

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Memjet, the company that has been promising a high speed color inkjet copier, announced it has hired a new executive. Len Lauer, former COO of Qualcomm, will be the new Memjet President and CEO, working out the San Diego office. (Memjet has 2,600 patents related to technology developed by Mr. Kia Silverbrook of Australia)

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According to Google Corp, five PC computer manufacturers have expressed interest in launching small laptop computers, called “netbooks”, that use the Google Chrome operating system. Details:
- Manufacturers include; ASUSTek Computer, Hewlett Packard, Acer
- Runs on top of a Linux kernel
- Boots up in only 10 seconds after power on
- Applications are all web based
- Plan to ship before Christmas of 2010

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Apple Computer is estimated to have sold 3.3 million Mac computers during last quarter. This breaks an all time sales record of 3.05 million Mac’s during the previous quarter, or a 31% increase year over year. In contrast, worldwide computer sales are only up 2.3% in units.

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Sony Corp.’s Vice Chairman, Ryoji Chubachi, was quoted in Business Week magazine as saying that the country of Japan may face a second recession. “There’s a risk of a double-dip recession. For companies, the most difficult position to be in is when prices keep dropping and demand doesn’t increase.”

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Apple also plans on launching its new tablet computer in March, according to the Wall Street Journal, and it will have a 11” touch screen full color LCD

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Xerox, which is trying to increase sales of its wax copier, the ColorQube, recently revealed that it used HyperWorks software from Altair ProductDesign Inc. of Troy, Michigan, to design the print engine in the ColorQube.

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One company sues another over a printer. Wet Enterprises of Sun Valley, CA, best known for designing the water fountains in Las Vegas casinos, sued Bren Instruments of College Grove, TN claiming that the company misrepresented the capabilities of an $18,000 color label printer. Bren countersued for $1.5 million, claiming that the lawsuit caused damaged the company’s reputation.

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Fujitsu workers in England started 5 days of strikes. Details: - workers are upset about cuts in pay and pensions
- includes 1,600 employees
- offices in Manchester, Warrington, Crewe and Belfast
- company may lay off 1200 workers in 2010

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Care New England Healthcare System awarded a document management solution bid to The SSI Group Inc. Details:
- healthcare firm was printing more than 47,000 reports per year
- total of 1,915,861 pieces of paper per year
- average cost per impression of 3.2 cents
- claims to be now saving up to $100,000 per year

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Tekgraf, a distributor of wide format systems, abruptly closed its doors on 12/16/2009. The company provided HP, Epson, Canon and other color inkjet systems to dealers across the U.S. Last year, the company had moved to a much larger, more expensive facility in South Carolina.

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4 men were arrested in Bensalem, Pennsylvania for making fake $20 bills using a color copier. Jesse Velez, Edward Casigne, Scott Bolden, and Avery Fitzpatrick were caught when they used the fake money to purchase over $1500 worth of electronics at a local Target. The men are now in Bucks County jail in lieu of $500,000 bail, and facing up to 45 years in prison.

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Predictions from document management analyst, Francois Ragnet about future of documents:
- Documents will be stored in a Cloud, via players like Google, Microsoft, Adobe or Amazon.
- Paper consumption will continue to decrease significantly for green and financial incentives.
- Electronic book readers (eReaders) will become ubiquitous for specific usages. Paperback books will become the exception.
- Formats of electronic documents will become increasingly standardized.

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Panasonic is being sued by a dealer that it cancelled. The case will be heard in Sacramento, where a dealer named JRS Products, was apparently cancelled by Panasonic, when the company found out it was selling remanufactured versions of toner cartridges that worked with Panasonic printers, MFPs and fax machines.

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Plymouth County, Iowa, announced it will attempt to implement a paperless court system. Attorneys, judges, clerks of court and support staff will receive training in the first 90 days on scanning and searching procedures. If the test is successful, the state hopes to launch in other counties.

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Polaroid, in an attempt to recapture mindshare after its bankruptcy, announced it has hired Lady Gaga as its spokesperson.

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Hewlett Packard announced it has appointed John Solomon as Senior Vice President over its printer/MFP division for the Asia/Pacific and Japanese markets, reporting to Vyomesh Joshi.

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Kyocera announced it will conduct a road show across the U.S. to promote its new managed print services program, and use Steve Rolla (Print Management Solutions Group of Florida) as its keynote speakers.

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Lexmark announced it offer a new embedded solution for its MFPs with color LCD touch screens. It will offer AutoStore Document Capture from Notable Solutions Inc. (NSi)

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The Australian State Public Health Department, awarded a $750,000 document management solution bid to Kofax Corp.

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According to a document on Hewlett Packard’s website, the average cost to print a letter-size, two-sided color page on its OfficeJet Pro series of printers, is a whopping 64 cents per page.

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According to Lyra Research, the wide format printer market declined 19.1% in the last year.

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According to survey conducted by The Forrester Group, 22% of respondents prefer using Microsoft SharePoint for its electronic content management (ECM) capabilities, and 52% said it will replace their existing ECM system.

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Direct Color Systems Inc. launched the Millenium 700, which can produce a full color plastic name badge in 25 seconds. Purchase price, and cost per card were not announced.

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A copier dealer buys an IT company. Loffler Companies, a Konica Minolta, Canon & Kyocera dealer, announced it has acquired Techies IT. Founded by Robert Stephens, of Best Buy’s Geek Squad fame, Techies IT had 100 business customers, and $2 million in annual revenue of managed IT services. Loffler is owned by Jim Loffler of Minneapolis, MN, and has annual revenues of $50 million with 300 employees.

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Ricoh announced that its Senior Product Marketing Manager for Wide Format, Linda Maxwell Allen, has left the company.

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The City of McKinney, Texas, awarded a managed print services contract to Marimon, Inc., a local dealer.

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A dealer wins a document management bid in Pennsylvania. Altek Business Systems, using Kodak scanners and DocuWare software, won a contract from Penn Stainless Products Inc., a stainless steel producer and distributor.

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Supplies Network announced it has hired Doug Johnson as Senior Vice President. Mr. Johnson has spent last 3 years developing the CARBON SiX managed print services program.

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A company named “Readius” claims it will launch an unfurling, scroll-like, screen-based electronic book reader.

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sources: IDC,Lyra Research, press releases, weekend industry notes

Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 01/04/10

2010-01-04T14:46:00.002-05:00

Printing decreases for first time in U.S.? According to researcher, Jake Wang, of IDC:- “Starting with the fourth quarter of 2008, we saw a definite drop in printer page outputs”
- IDC uses computer software to monitor the use of 700,000 printers and MFPs in the U.S.
- “It was like going over a waterfall.”
- Total of 1.5 trillion pages for the year, or 5,000 sheets of printouts per man, woman & child.
- Predicts drop of 10% in 2010.
- “When an economy sheds million of workers, there are that many employees who aren’t doing the printing”
- “I’m thinking fewer contracts are signed. Fewer documents sent from one person to another”
- Expects increase in 2011 after the recovery.
- Forrester Research predicts that electronic bank statements will start declining in 2010.
- In 2007, the Securities & Exchange Commission stopped requiring corporations to mail out printed annual reports to shareholders.

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Recent statistics on the print for pay industry from American Printer magazine:
- Web printers run their presses an average of 5.2 days per week in 2009
- More than half of printshop owners expect paper prices to increase in 2010.
- 33% of printshop owners are concerned about success of Amazon Kindle electronic book’s effect on reducing need for book printing.
- 23% feel that the biggest issue is improving the front end link from customer to prepress department
- 51% believe that digital toner presses threaten web offset print volumes
- 61% state that their customers are printing less direct mail pieces due to higher postal costs
- 90% of end users who receive bills in mail open them. In contrast, if they receive bill via email, only 72% open the email.
- 32% plan on acquiring a new digital toner press in 2010.

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Better Buys For Business magazine gave out Editors Choice awards to the following Konica Minolta color MFP models:
- bizhub C280
- bizhub C360
- bizhub C452
- bizhub C552
- bizhub C652

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A company that provides outsourced CRM and call center work, announced it is entering the copier services market. Service USA, headquarters in Leawood, Kansas, claims it will offer:
- maintain and repair copiers and printers
- automated customer and field service systems
- covers equipment in commercial locations like grocery and convenience store chains
- deploys technicians nationwide to provide install, maintenance and repair

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The Kansas City, MO ethics committee was appointed to investigate elected Kansas City officials in regards to a copier contract:
- Reams of depositions from a Jackson County Circuit Court case are being forwarded to the committee
- City Attorney Galen Beaufort said the depositions being forwarded are from the lawsuit filed by copier dealer, Perfect Output LLC, against the city and the winning bidder, Ricoh Business Systems.
- The suit alleges that Ricoh wrongly interfered in the city’s decision making.
- The city auditor’s office issued a report concluding that the selection criteria was biased and that the actions of an unnamed City Council member may have tainted the process.

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Copytronics Information Systems announced it won a 5 year contract that includes 320 copiers to Volusia County, Florida.

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Xerox’s ACS division announced it won a five year, $72 million contract from DCP Midstream, an energy company in Denver. The contract includes desktop support, network services, messaging, document management, IT security and managed print services.

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Big fight over a facilities management contract in California between HP and Xerox:
- California Department of Health Care Services announced its intent to award the $1.4 billion Medi-Cal contract to Xerox, to its ACS division (which it just acquired for $6.4 billion)
- The contract is for 10 years, and was previously held by Hewlett Packard (which gained the contract when it acquired EDS two years ago)
- The contract handles $19 million in medical claims from 7 million beneficiaries
- The bid contract is 40,000 pages long
- “We’re very disappointed with the decision. We’re in the process of reviewing the document before we determine our next step”, said Bill Ritz, spokesperson for HP.
- HP current employs 2,000 in California to fulfill the contract.

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In 2000, Xerox & Kodak combined employed 38,750 workers in Rochester, NY area. Now the total is 15,430.

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Xerox announced it would layoff 181 employees in its ACS call center in Houston, TX due to lack of work.

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Organovo Inc. of San Diego, CA and Invetech of Melbourne, Australia announced that they have partnered to create an inkjet printer that can create human cells:
- Uses a robot to lay down cells in precise positions in three dimensions, accurate to within 20 microns
- Puts down object on 2D layers, one of top of the other
- Particles used are made up of stem cells, formed into tiny spheres and cylinders
- When device is used for treatment, cells will come from patient, such as bone marrow, or fatty adipose tissues
- Uses adult stem cells, not fetal stem cells
- Researchers take a picture of the object they want to build, such as an artery
- Objects take an hour to build, then cells fuse together on their own in 48 hours

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Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from a healthcare firm in Connecticut. Details:
- Contract included Capella Technologies FormPort Server software that generates forms for Healthcare industry
- Contract included 65 HP LaserJet devices
- Average volume per device of 5,000 to 6,000 per month
- Grove Hill Medical Center, has more 70 physicians, and replaced over 100 dot matrix printers.

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How Internet was invented:- 1958 President Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) at the Department of Defense to fund scientific research, which includes the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) to fund computer projects.
- 1964 –IPTO head, J.C.R. Licklider, conceives of creating time-sharing to link researchers far away to ARPA computers.
- 1966 David Evans joins University of Utah to start computer science department and gains millions of dollars in federal research grants
- 1966 Robert Taylor of IPTO, wins approval for vision of ARPANET, a network that allow computers to communicate
- 1969 Four universities are chosen to be nodes of the first network, including University of Utah, UCLA, Stanford and University of California - Santa Barbara
- 10/29/1969 First message ever sent over ARPANET from UCLA to Stanford.
- 12/1/1969 All 4 colleges are connected.
- 1990 ARPANET is shut off.

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Sharp announced it has renewed its lease on a 500,000 square foot office/warehouse in southeast Memphis, TN. Pricing unknown.

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Pocket Watch Software announced a $3.99 program that allows users of Apple iPhone to print to a device on a WiFi network.

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Fujitsu announced it would start a managed print services program in Japan, called “Workplace LCM Service”. Unknown if it will launch similar program in the U.S.

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Cartridge World announced it plans on opening 250 stores in India to refill inkjet and toner cartridges.

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Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 12/28/09

2009-12-28T06:51:00.003-05:00

In a study conducted by IBM, the following was stated:
- The average cost of ink in a printer ink cartridge is $10,000 per gallon
- Electronic forms are currently used by more than 1.4 million Army personnel worldwide costing $1.3 billion annually

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Results of a recent survey conducted by AIIM regarding implementation of scanning and document management:- 40% report a return on investment within 12 months
- 66% report a return on investment within 18 months
- 30% use outsourced services
- 30% have issue with quality of indexing
- 48% have a centralized, in-house scanning service
- 78% have some form of distributed scanning with MFPs
- 32% report that consumption of paper increased after implementing scanning
- 25% of documents are photocopied before they are scanned
- 31% of documents are destroyed after being scanned
- 32% of documents are archived off-site
- 38% of paper originated documents are scanned and archived electronically
- 51% of scanned documents are 100% born digital
- 37% of organizations are scanning over half of their incoming documents
- 6.5% of scanned documents are rejected or require intervention when scanning

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A maker of generic laser cartridges announced it is expanding due to growing demand caused by managed print services programs. West Point Products is opening up a new 110,000 square foot plant in Washington, Pennsylvania, which is in addition to 6 existing locations in the U.S.

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Parts Now!, a company that sells generic laser printer parts, announced that it has posted free downloads of most Hewlett Packard LaserJet service manuals, making it easier for dealers to offer managed print service programs for HP devices.

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Inkstop, a 150 location chain of stores that refill ink and toner cartridges, announced it is going out of business due to bankruptcy.

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According to white paper released by Kofax document imaging software: - Over 20 million tons of office paper is consumed each year in the U.S.
- Federal government consumes 110,000 tons of paper annually
- Cost to file a single paper document is $20
- Searching for a misfiled document costs $120
- Reproducing a lost document costs $220
- 90% of medical patient related info is still paper based
- 31% of every dollar spent on healthcare is spent on admin costs
- Only 8% of the country’s 5000 hospitals use automated electronic patient records
- Only 17% of the country’s 800,000 physicians use automated electronic patient records
- 75% of companies surveyed employ paper based processes to manage AP
- Average cost to process an invoice is $37
- Average time to process an invoice of 33 days
- Accounts payable staff spends 40% of their time researching response info
- Document capture software market grew by 7.7M in 2008
- By 2012, document capture software sales expected to net $.27 billion

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According to a study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine:- 90% of all patient information remains on paper
- Only 8% of 3,000 hospitals studied used even a basic electronic medical records (EMR) system
- Only 1.5% of non-federal U.S. facilities use a comprehensive EMR
- Only 17% of doctors are using even a basic EMR system
- 12% are going through an EMR system de-installation

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According to survey conducted by Oce’:
- Commonly quoted 7% average toner coverage per page is actually more like 16%
- Abandoned documents account for up to 25% of all print jobs
- On average, 30% of IT helpdesk support time is spent on printers/MFPs
- The average time it takes to print a 40 page document on a desktop printer is 5 minutes

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Adobe Corp. is warning users of a virus that can allow hackers to take over end user’s PCs. The virus can be embedded in a PDF, and be inadvertently unleashed on the PC after downloading the PDF attachment in email. Adobe has yet to release a fix to prevent this problem.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to review a court case that was lost by Xerox regarding how much tax it must pay in the state.

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ACS, a division of Xerox, won a $22 million contract to manage automated toll roads in North Carolina

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Visioneer, maker of scanners, announced it has named Andy Domnauer to Director of Enterprise Sales, Jim Tamo to Director of U.S. Sales, and Ruben Suazo as Director of Latin America Sales.

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Hewlett Packard and the National Basketball Association (NBA) have partnered to provide $80,000 in technology to 90 middle schools in the U.S. This includes:
- Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, San Francisco & Washington DC
- HP tablet PC’s
- HP PhotoSmart color inkjet AIOs
- HP LaserJet printers
- Access to NBA photos, footage and other materials
- Tickets to 50 NBA games

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Xerox plans on replacing the WorkCentre 7655, 7665 and 7675 color MFPs in 2010 with the 7755, 7765 & 7775 models. The only difference apparently in these Fuji-made models will be:
- Use 1.33GHz processor from Freescale instead of the 1.8GHz processor from AMD
- 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB of RAM
- The touch screen color LCD panel will have the new icons as other Xerox models

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Lyra Research stated the following on printer/MFP sales:
- worldwide unit sales in 2009 will decline 14.64%
- worldwide revenue in 2009 will decline 14.96%
- overall revenue will not increase until 2013
- worldwide units and revenue in 2013 will still be short of levels in 2007

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The looming new healthcare reform bill in Washington D.C. is raising concerns at Xerox. The company wants to modify the Medicare tax provisions in the Senate bill that would cut the company’s earnings. Martin Reiser, a lobbyist for Xerox, said a big concern was “whether a lot of the provisions meant to contain costs will actually do so. If they don’t work – and we won’t know for years – then the bill is a failure”

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According to Raymond James & Associates, IT shipments will increase 4.3% in 2010. FBR Capital Markets is projecting IT spending to increase 1.6% in 2010.

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In cost cutting moves, Dell Computer announced it will:- spend $120 million to transfer its manufacturing plant in Poland to Foxconn Technology
- lay off 700 workers at its Malaysian plant
- close its plant in North Carolina

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Hewlett Packard’s Vyomesh Joshi, who is Executive VP of its printer/MFP division, was interviewed by Bloomberg:- Printing market is “healthy”
- “2009 was a difficult year for printing hardware”
- “But supplies were fine. What that means is that printing is healthy – even with economic pressure,customers are still printing the content”
- Has posted 5 quarters of declining printer/MFP sales
- Plans to achieve the 15% to 17% profit margin he’s on the line to deliver to investors in 2010
- Printing unit is “poised for recovery and getting on the attack”
- Forecasting this quarter “double digit” growth in printer shipments
- The printing group accounted for 21% of HP’s $114.6 billion revenue last year and
3% of its $13.4 billion profit
- Company has shortages after orders picked up sooner than it expected
- To cut costs, HP is now shipping directly from Asian factories to some distributors and retailers instead of its own distribution centers (this will dramatically increase lead times for backorder fulfillment)
- “HP overall has a $60 billion supply chain. We have a fair share of that. When you have those kind of numbers, even a small percent of those numbers are a big number”
- “We don’t need to cut prices. In the market right now, our product, compared with any of our competition, is much better in terms of innovation, in terms of ease of use, in terms of quality, in terms of connectivity. That’s what the customer will be looking at”
- “What I can tell you is that the printing and imaging business is a great business with great opportunities. I want to make sure the transformational work I’ve started – I want to see that all the way to the end”

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Hewlett Packard is running ads to counter the growth of sales of Kodak color inkjet printers/MFPs. The ads claim that:
- 36% of Kodak printer owners have had problems with heir printers
- Products have won few patents or awards
- Kodak has received an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau

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Former IKON CFO, Robert Woods, is now CFO of SunGard Corp. SunGard is on of the world’s leading software and IT services companies with 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries. IKON is now a division of Ricoh.

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Ricoh’s InfoPrint division (which it is acquiring from IBM), announced that it has opened up its second Print Innovation Center. These high end production print showrooms, have on display various technologies, including the InfoPrint 5000, a high speed color inkjet system (actually made by Screen of Israel). The new center is in Shanghai, China, while the first on is in Boulder, Colorado

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Kofax angered many of its dealers (including IKON, a division of Ricoh), when it announced that 46% of its sales now come from its factory direct sales reps. CRO, Reynolds Bish, claims that this is necessary to move the company upstream into larger deals

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Iron Mountain, a large document storage firm, announced that its digital business now accounts for 7.5% of its $784 million in third quarter revenue. The company has installed Kofax technology in 150 locations in the U.S. to serve its customers

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Canon President, Tsuneji Uchida, stated the following in an interview with Forbes:
- maintains 55 yen year-end dividend despite Oce’ acquisition
- headed for a second straight year of profit declines
- “Building up our corporate strength for next year onwards has been out target this year, and we are on track to hit that target”
- “Considering where we were at the start of the year, we have made quite some progress”
- “I’m sure what we have done in preparation for a turnaround will ear fruit next year an d later”- “It’s not like we are planning to borrow money for the investment. We’d like to uphold our stable dividend payout policy”
- “Christmas sales last year were a disappointment, but this year out digital camera sals were quite strong, with sales returning to levels seen in 2007, which was a year of robust digital camera demand”

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NEC announced it will relabel the Konica Minolta bizhub C280 as the NEC IT28C6, the C360 as the IT36C6 and the C452 as the ITC45C6.

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Google Corp. is supposedly spending $25 million to acquire DocVerse Inc. of San Francisco. Details
- Founded by former Microsoft employees, Shan Sinhas and Alex DeNeui
- Will allow users to collaborate directly on Microsoft Office documents

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A Xerox sales agent buy a Savin/Riso dealer. Hughes Xerographic of Bellarie, West Virginia has acquired one of its competitors, Stenger Business Systems of Wheeling, which was owned by Tom Stenger. The Stenger dealership was originally founded by his father, Ralph Stenger in 1945, to sell and service Royal typewriters.

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NER Data Products Inc. of Glassboro, NJ announced it is selling its compatible printer supply and parts business to Clover Technology Group, Inc. The sale will include facilities in Denver (Colorado), Plano (Texas) and Glassboro.

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Samsung announced it has agreed to settle a lawsuit filed against the company by Kodak over infringement of two patents involved with digital cameras. The settlement will include a one-time penalty payment and a technology cross-license with ongoing royalty payments.

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Kyocera announced it has developed an LED printhead that could be used to create a b/w printer that operates at 1000ppm at 1200x1200dpi.

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Good news. According to a survey by Purchasing magazine, electronics buyers are saying they will be pushing more purchase orders in the first quarter than any time in the past two years.

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OfficeMax is suing former sales reps for breach of their non-compete contract when they left for rival W. B. Mason Co. Inc. in New England.

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Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 12/21/09

2009-12-21T07:05:00.002-05:00

To promote use of electronic medical records technology, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act passed the federal government provides:
- $17.2 billion in incentives through Medicare and Medicaid
- Large hospitals can receive payments for a 4 year period starting in 2011
- Physicians can receive incentives up to $44,000
- Medicare is the biggest health care payer in the U.S.
- the CMS-1500 is the most commonly scanned form in the medical industry
- Most common documents in healthcare are:
- ID cards and insurance cards
- patient records
- lab instructions
- insurance claims (CMS-1500 and UB-04 forms)
- EOB benefit forms (acknowledgement of payment by insurance company)
- medical supplier invoices
- X-ray, EKG, MRI and other test results

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A recent study gives bad press to hospitals that adopt electronic medical records software:
- conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
- reviewed 4,000 hospitals
- adoption resulted in no cost savings
- negligible quality of care improvements
- administrative costs increased slightly

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Doc It Inc. announced version 3.3 of its Doc It document management software, featuring:
- automatically recognizes large batches of files and place them in correct folder
- intelligent scan cover page
- universal search
- integration with CCH Tax software
- PDF editor enhancements, such as watermarking, redacting, etc.

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A group of independent copier dealers has been formed to fulfill managed print services contracts. For example, if a copier dealer A wants to offer a managed print services contract to a customer that has offices outside of copier dealer A’s territory, then it can use another copier dealer in this network, who agrees to provide service for a fixed dollar amount and parts markup. The new group is the National Printer Repair Network (NPRN), and it has also formed a partnership with BEI Services, for advanced national service call routing and service performance measurements.

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Management shakeup at Samsung of South Korea. Details:
- CEO, Lee Yoon Woo is out, and replaced by Choi Gee Sung, who was in charge of Samsung’s TV and cell phone business.
- In addition, it has hired Lee Jae Yong as COO, who is son of former Samsung chairman, Lee Kun Hee.
- Lee’s appointment shows that Samsung execs expect no further fallout from the tax evasion scandal, which led to a 3 year suspended sentence for former chairman Lee and the resignation of former CEO, Yun Jong Yong.
- During last quarter, Samsung reported a huge operating profit of $3.2 billion, as the Korean currency,the won, has not risen against the U.S. dollar as the Japanese yen has, thus giving the company a huge advantage over its Japanese competitors.

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Pitney Bowes announced that it would lay off up to 10% of its workforce to cut costs due to declining revenues

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Oce’, (which Canon is attempting to acquire), announced that it won a facilities management contract from Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP, a large law firm with offices in Atlanta, Houston, Washington DC and New York.

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Large Oce’ shareholder, Orbis Portfolio Management, is still rejecting the proposed takeover bid by Canon, claiming that the purchase price is too low.

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Kodak announced that it will restate its 401K match and pay raises in 2010 for its employees.

Kodak announced that Heidelberg’s factory direct branch in Australia will resell its Digimaster and NexPress production print systems.

Kodak announced that it has sold a NexPress SE3600 production color system to Cohber Press, a print shop in Henrietta, New York.

Kodak announced that it has sold its New York state based water treatment plant to Monroe County for $9.5 million.

Kodak announced it sold its OLED (organic light emitting diode) division to LG Electronics of South Korea.

Kodak announced it is relinquishing a lease it has held for last 22 years for a large hangar at the Rochester International Airport. It was paying $112,000 per year for the lease for its company airplanes.

Kodak added executives for its scanner division, hiring Tony Barbeau as General Manager and Russell Hunt as Regional Business Manager.

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Zoran Corp, maker of generic print controllers, announced it will source fax modem technology from LSI Corp. to incorporate it into new print controllers it will launch in 2010.

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PC Magazine gave out is “Editors Choice” awards to the following desktop laser printer/MFP/AIO devices: - Brother HL-5340D
- Brother MFC-8480DN
- Canon Color imageCLASS MF8530cdn
- Konica Minolta magicolor 1600 series
- Xerox Phaser 6280dn
- Xerox Phaser 7500dn

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Business Research & Testing Laboratories (BERTL) gave out its “BEST” awards to the following products: - ABBY PDF Transformer software
- Canon imageFORMULA DR-X10C scanner
- Cima DocuClass Express document management software
- Colortrac SmartLF GX+42 large format color scanner
- docSTAR 3Ten document management software
- Drivve Image 3.0 imaging workflow software
- eCopy Paperworks desktop office utility
- Konica Minolta/eCopy integrated scanning solution
- Lexmark SmartSolution web-based application solution
- Mutoh ValueJet 1618A wide format color inkjet printer
- MWAi M2M asset management solution
- Nuance OmniPage 17 OCR solution
- Oce’ Plotwave 300 wide format color wax printer
- Ricoh PRO C900 production color system
- RISO ComColor high speed color inkjet system
- Roland VersaArt RS Series wide format color inkjet printer
- Sharp MS-M503/M363/M283 digital b/w MFPs
- Toshiba eSTUDIO 855 Series digital b/w MFPs
- Xerox Phaser 7500 color laser printers

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Adobe Corp, announced its 4th quarter’s financials:- total revenue of $757.3 million, as compared with $915.3 million in previous fiscal
- operating income of $153.6 million, as compared with $273.2 million in previous fiscal
- Predicts revenue of $800 million for first quarter of 2010

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Yielding to complaints from Hewlett Packard, and the Federal Trade Commission, Kodak agreed to modify its ads on its color inkjet printers. The ads originally claimed that customers would save $110 per year on ink costs if they used Kodak printers and AIOs. Now the ads will say; “Save an average of $110 per year on ink based on just four pages per day”

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PODi (Print On Demand Initiative) announced that sponsors for its AppForum trade show in Las Vegas (on 1/25-27/2010) are:
- Konica Minolta
- Canon
- Kodak
- PageFlex software
- Xerox

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Xerox announced that its PagePack program for managed print services, will now integrate with ConnextWise, which is a program commonly used by computer network service resellers to bill their customers.

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Xerox to launch new versions of the iGen production color systems. Details:
- Will be available in an 80ppm and 100ppm versions
- Unlike current iGen models, will use polymerized toner (Xerox EA), instead of pulverized toner
- EA stands for “emulsion aggregate”
- Unlike current iGen models, will not use fuser oil
- Offers a fifth toner, called “Clear Toner” to provide glossy finish or watermarking,similar to the Kodak NexPress, as an option for the 100pm model only
- Uses a belt fuser, instead of fuser rollers
- Will handle up to 350gsm paper weights
- Systems will not slow down when handling heavier paper weights
- Newly designed organic drum and transfer belt will supposedly last twice as long as compared to previous models
- Possible list prices will be around $500,000 and $400,000

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The Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6501 received the coveted Fogra Certification (standard in Europe) for color quality.

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During the recent Copenhagen United National Climate Change summit, the delegates printed out their presentation on 30 different Konica Minolta bizhub color MFPs. The units were chosen due to their eco friendly design.

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Former IKON executive, Rob Welcome, is now VP of National Accounts for New Leaf Brands Inc., a maker of healthy beverages in New York.

Former IKON executive, Robert Rusnack, was named the new CFO of LaJobi, a children’s furniture maker in New Jersey.

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Toshiba is bidding on a 4 trillion yen project to build a bullet train system for Brazil. The project involves construction of a railway system over a 510 kilometer route connecting Rio de Janerio and Campinas, in less than 2 hours. Brazil wants the new system up and running in time for the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament.

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IKON, a division of Ricoh, won the reseller of the year award from Kofax, maker of document management software.

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Toshiba introduced 64GB flash memory chips that it hopes will be in the next generation of Apple iPhone.

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Hewlett Packard announced that it has certified an 18point thick stock for its Indigo production color system. HP now approves running the Masterpiece Premium 18pt CIS Board Stock for the HP Indigo WS6000 system.

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Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 12/14/09

2009-12-14T07:42:00.003-05:00

The Allentown, Pennsylvania mistakenly blew up a toner cartridge, after someone mistook it for a bomb.

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Results of managed print services survey conducted by Quocirca Research reveal:
- 70% said that better management of their print infrastructure is strategic imperative
- 90% will continue with plans to deploy managed print services
- 41% said that printing accounts for more than 10% of their IT budget
- Financial services companies report that printing is 65% of their budget
- Almost 50% believe that implementing an MPS program will cut their total costs by at least 30%
- 60% of current MPS users are satisfied with cost savings achieved
- 25% of current MPS users claim their savings are exceeding original estimates
- 80% stated that when they chose their MPS vendor, the most important point was vendor’s perceived capacity to manage devices of multiple brands

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Oce’ is protesting a copier bid awarded by the Union North Public School District in South Bend, IN. Oce’ was the incumbent, but the school district decided to switch to local dealer, Adams Remco, a Toshiba/Savin dealer.

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Street pricing seen in the print for pay marketplace:- Xerox 700 Digital Color Press with external Fiery/LCT/stapling finisher for $42,050. Color clicks for $0.049 and b/w clicks for $0.0129. Single click 11”x17”
- Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE C7065 w/Fiery/LCT/booklet maker for $26,600. Color clicks for $0.05 and b/w clicks for $0.0125. 11”x17” billed as one click.
- Canon imageRUNNER 7095 w/Fiery/booklet-maker/LCT/hole-punch/cover inserter for $24,900. B/w clicks for $0.0042. 11”x17” billed as one click.

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According to Strategy Development, annual placements of A3 copiers have dropped from 1.3 million in 2007 to 900,000 in 2009, or a 30% decline in volume.

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An Australian copier dealer buys a dealer in New Zealand. CSG, with annual revenues of $197 million, purchased Onesource Group, a large Konica Minolta dealer, for $132 million.

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BLI gave out “Pick of the Year” award to document management software from Laserfiche.

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BLI also gave out “Pick of the Year” awards to the new Konica Minolta bizhub C220, C280 & C360 color MFP models.

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Sharp announced that it won “Line of the Year” from Buyers Labs Inc. BLI editor, George Mikolay, stated that reason for win was; “clear level of differentiation from its competitors”

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Buyers Labs Inc. awarded Fujitsu with “Scanner Line of the Year” award for reliability and productivity.

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Panasonic completed its acquisition of Japanese rival, Sanyo Corp.: - makes Panasonic a dominant player in hybrid car batteries
- Panasonic apparently has 1.46 trillion yen in the bank
- Reportedly paid 403 billion yen for Sanyo

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Need proof that Canon is still using pulverized toner? The warm up time for fuser on the new Canon imageRUNNER C7065 (which competes against the bizhub C652) is a whopping 6 minutes.

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Samsung of Korea recently held their annual dealer convention in Las Vegas, and announced that they plan on launching a new line of A3 models to compete against Japanese vendors. In addition, supposedly they also previewed a prototype 70ppm color laser MFP model.

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The University Medical Center in Las Vegas is in hot water, after the local newspaper, The Las Vegas Sun, discovered that someone was stealing medical records and selling them to “ambulance chasing” attorneys. Hope Hammond, Chief Privacy Officer, stated; “We’re going to have pin numbers applied to the copy machines so that employees are going to have to log in when they want to use the copier.”

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Hewlett Packard’s CFO, Cathie Lesjak, stated the following about 2010 spending:
- HP is looking to capitalize on “flush” enterprise budgets in U.S.
- Upcoming corporate IT hardware refresh cycle
- Businesses must replace aging equipment
- Has recommended the HP sales employees not take year-end holiday break to capitalize on sales opportunities
- Company was confident that HP can increase earnings per share “significantly faster” than revenue
- “We are definitely seeing an uptick in demand for printers”
- Expects to work through shortage of laser cartridges by end of first quarter of 2010

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Industry analyst, Gartner, predicts that color printing hardware, including MFPs, will have a drop in average selling price of 15.8% by 2011. Other comments:
- Half of office employee’s time is spent printing and looking for documents
- 90% of office documents are printed in b/w
- 10% of office documents are printed in color
- 50% of office’s printing costs are for color documents
- Buyers are advised to refresh their color printers/MFPs every three years to take advantage of advances
- Recommends that buyers switch from color printers to color MFPs to take advantage of cost savings and utilization of cost accounting and scanning functionality

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Ricoh’s managed print services program has 4 phases, according to Brian Healy, Ricoh’s Market Development Manager:
- Phase One: Ricoh uses DOCutivity (formerly a Lanier program) to assess current document output environment and identify technologies, associated costs, and process workflows in place
- Phase Two: System architects design a new document management workflow blueprint that focuses on security regulations, process improvement, total cost of ownership, and environmentalsustainability
- Phase Three: Transformation of old workflow to new and improved version that introduces new technologies to reduce risks, enhance efficiency and make document management easier for end user
- Phase Four: Manage the fleet, provide operation improvement, support services and remote management of new and existing systems. Assist client in changing their output practices across entire organization. Utilize a branding campaign that includes marketing materials to generate awareness, develop desire, educate and reinforce program principles.

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Xerox managed print services study causes turmoil at Cleveland State University:
- University administration awarded Xerox a contract to conduct an MPS study of campus
- Recommendations call for centralization and streamlining of print management on each campus
- Contract requires usage of a central MFP by department or floor
- Professors are complaining, as their current contract requires that the university provide them with a personal printer.
- Professors are refusing to give up their personal printers, claiming it is an issue of privacy
- University is claiming that if personal printers are given up, the campus will save up to 20% on energy bills alone, not to mention supply costs

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Xerox claims that its managed print services program now has 1.5 million devices being monitored worldwide.

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PrintWeek magazine reports that Xerox is suffering from a large toner backorder. Details:
- According to printshops surveyed, customers have been told that they may have to wait 10 days
- The main product affected is apparently the Xerox 700 Digital Color Press

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Researchers at Stanford University claim they can make batteries out of copier paper:- Liangbing Hu, author of research stated; “Standard copier paper used in our everyday life can be a solution in storing energy”
- Paper is painted with an ink made up of carbon nanotubes
- Coated paper is then dipped in lithium-containing solutions and an electrolyte
- Chemical reaction then starts to generate electric current
- Paper use could reduce weight of batteries by 20%
- Possible use is in future electric automobiles

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According to InfoTrends, the digital color market is expected to grow from 116 billion impressions in 2008 to 262 billion in 2013. This includes an expected 53% growth in output from continuous feed systems (roll fed)

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Hewlett Packard getting bad press over the lack of success with the print cartridge recycling program it offered the State of California. Details:
- HP created program to win bid to capture printer/MFP business from state agencies
- Customers must pay to ship cartridges to a facility in Virginia
- Customer accumulate points for each cartridge they send, which can be redeemed for a new HP printer
- Some color cartridges are inadvertently being sent back that are not actually empty, as some HP printers were found to have falsely stated the cartridges were at end of life
- Some believe that HP is only taking cartridges back in order to keep them away from refilling operations

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HP management shakeup. David Murphy, executive VP of Imaging/Printing Group is out, and replaced by former Pepsi executive, Ron Coughlin.

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Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 12/7/09

2009-12-07T07:36:00.002-05:00

IDC reported worldwide printer/MFP shipments for third quarter:
- B/w laser printer and MFP unit shipments were up 14%
- MFP units shipped were 17 million, representing 63% of all devices (laser and inkjet)
- Color laser MFP units up 1.3%
- Laser units trail inkjet by 42%
- Laser MFP market value of $2.8 billion
- Laser MFP units represented 11% of total market
- HP was top brand in units, followed by Canon, Epson, Brother and Samsung

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In an effort to drive down the value of the Japanese yen, and help many Japanese equipment providers who rely on U.S. sales, the Japanese government announced it would make available $115 billion in three year loans at 0.1% interest to Japanese firms. (Japan’s companies lose a combined $369 million in annual operating profit for each 1 yen appreciation against the U.S. dollar according to Daiwa Research)

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According to Kodak, in regards to color inkjet printer usage:
- Average consumer prints 1,500 pages per year
- Kodak shipped 800,000 printers in last three quarters
- Last year, during same time period, shipped 400,000 units
- In contrast, HP shipped 18.4 million units

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According to Jim Cohen, Executive VP of Consolidate Graphics:
- print shop revenues are down 25%-50%
- Before, 9/11/2001, there were 50,000 printing companies
- By 2003, there were only 35,000
- Predicts that by 2010, there will only be 20,000
- Own 70 different printshops
- 66 of the printshops they own, have digital presses
- Own 70 HP Indigos
- Own 30 Kodak NexPress’s
- Own 25 Xerox iGen’s
- Own some Xeikon’s

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Hewlett Packard hired QualityLogic to perform tests of print quality and reliability on several desktop color laser printers. The test results revealed:
- Kyocera product had 2.5 times more unacceptable print quality pages as compared to HP
- Kyocera unit had to have its amorphous silicon ceramic drum cleaned every 2,600 pages, and took up to 15 minutes
- Kyocera unit had to have its waste toner container replaced every 2,650 pages
- Ricoh product had 3.5 times more unacceptable print quality pages as compared to HP
- Dell product had 3.5 times more unacceptable print quality pages as compared to HP

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Gartner Inc., a leading research firm that monitors the printer/MFP industry, announced it will spend $64 million in cash to acquire one of its competitors, AMR Research.

Gartner also stated that computer server shipments are down 17% and server revenue is down 15%.

According to Gartner, providing data storage as a service is on of the top 10 technologies that solutions providers cannot afford to ignore in 2010.

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Hewlett Packard claims that the country of India is a huge growth market for printers and MFPs. Apparently for every employee that an IT firm takes on in India, generates 2,500 pages of printed material during the recruitment process.

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Lexmark won a managed print services contract from The Rexel Group. Details:
- headquartered in France
- distributor of electrical supplies
- has 30,000 employees
- 2,300 offices in 34 countries
- 5 year contract
- Will reduce costs 20% to 60% depending on country
- Reduced number of devices by 20%

Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from CZ Insurance of The Netherlands. Details:
- 3 year contract
- has 3,500 employees
- has 3.3 million customers in Europe
- Covers 60 million prints per year
- New hardware installed includes LaserJet M5035XS MFPs and LaserJet P4515x printers

IKON, a division of Ricoh, won a large managed print services bid at a Pennsylvania university. Clarion University replaced 540 Hewlett Packard printers with 27 color MFPs and 44 b/w MFPs. Total volume per year is 6 million b/w pages and 250,000 color pages. The university decided to make a change when it realized it was spending $60,000 per year just on print cartridges.

Innerworkings Inc. of Chicago, won a print management contract from Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, headquartered in Marysville, Ohio.

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The Business Equipment Research & Testing Laboratories (BERTL) announced it has given its highest award, 5 Stars, to the new integrated eCopy solution offered by Konica Minolta, where the solution can be accessed right from the color LCD control panel of the bizhub MFP.

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Mail Boxes Etc. aka The UPS Stores, gave out its annual outstanding Sales Support Award to Konica Minolta, for the second time in last 3 years

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According to survey conducted by Ricoh, the following responses were collected from businesses in countries who are trying to cut back on printing waste:
- France = 43.5%
- Italy = 42.7%
- Germany = 41.7%
- England = 38.5%
- Only 33% of companies claim to have implemented a strategy
- Total spent on documents per year in Europe = 14 billion euros
- 32% of business owners allow employees to do what they like

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Due to the acquisition of IKON by Ricoh, Canon has ceased providing all technical support to IKON as of 12/1/2009. Apparently, IKON published a letter to its customers stating that it had Canon’s approval to get support from other Canon dealers. Canon retaliated with a letter stating that it and its dealers will not provide support for Canon machines in field under current IKON service contracts.

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A dealer in Georgia wins a document management bid. Computer Troubleshooters NRD, using Cabinet NG software and Kodak scanners won bid from National EMS, an ambulance service company. The company claims it will save the customer 80 labor hours per week with the new solution.

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Sharp named Rich Boomsma Senior Vice President of U.S. Sales. In his previous 9 years with Sharp, he worked with Government and Major Account Sales and Dealer Sales. Prior to Sharp, Rich spent 28 years with Xerox.

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Fuji of Japan announced it has hired a champion Sumo wrestler, Hakuho, to promote its printers and MFPs (which are sold under Xerox name in U.S.) The company wants to promote the products strong reliability to the Asian markets.

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According to some industry analysts, Canon will be launching a program to authorize copier dealers in the U.S. to sell its products with the Hewlett Packard name on them. In theory, this would allow the company to create another wholesale distribution channel, and open up more distribution in cities where it already has Canon branches and Canon dealers.

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Xerox closed on $2 billion in unsecured notes to help finance acquisition of ACS. $1 billion will mature in 2/2015 with 4.25% interest, $650 million will mature in 12/2019 at 5.625% interest and $350 million will mature in 12/2039 at 6.75% interest.

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Xerox announced that as part of the deal to buy ACS, it will take on $3.5 billion in debt, and pay out $52 million to ACS, founder, Darwin Deason. This is in addition to the $800 million in stock that he will receive.

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Google is about to launch its first computer operating system, called “Chrome”, which it hopes will compete with Microsoft Windows. Google stated that one of the reasons it will be more reliable is; “We want to get out of the business of printer drivers. All the problems related to drivers we want to go away.” This quote comes from Linus Upton, Google’s engineering director who has a new “wonderful printing solution”.

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Forrester Research gave out its rankings on leaders in enterprise content management:
- Leader in traditional ECM suite providers:
- IBM
- EMC
- Oracle
- OpenText
- Strong Performers, but lack breadth and sophistication of above:
- Hewlett Packard
- Hyland Software
- Microsoft

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According to RMG Enterprises, the image capture software market appears to be bouncing back from the recession. Three vendors, Datacap, Top Image Systems and Kofax, all reported revenue growth during the last quarter.

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According to Tenon Recovery, an insolvency specialist, 9 out of 10 printshops are in danger of collapse due to the economy.

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In an interview with Charles Holliday, chairman of DuPont, he related a story about his visit to Canon’s headquarters in Japan. He took a team to visit Canon’s CEO, Fujio Mitarai, and at end of visit, he noticed that someone had put a brand new Canon digital camera on each of his employee’s chairs. Mr. Holliday and his staff wondered what to do, as their company has an ethics policy which prevents them from accepting such a gift. They wondered if they would offend Mr. Mitarai if they returned the gifts. When they returned the gifts to Canon and explained why, Mr. Mitarai said; “you are a step above everybody else we deal with…what other company would have returned the cameras for such a good reason?” Canon has since adopted a similar policy.

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Three men were arrested in Bensalem, Pennsylvania after they were caught ordering $90,000 worth of Xerox Phaser color printer supplies, and never paying for them using three shell companies.

Wayne Prinkey, a 79 year old man in Springfield, PA, was arrested for making fake $20 bills with a color copier and attempting to use them at a local store.

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Have customers who wish to print from their Apple iPhone? As you may know, this cell phone does not offer Bluetooth technology for remote printing. Instead, an application named “Print Magic”, was launched, and sells for $6.99 and supposedly allows customer to print via WiFi to a printer connected to a Macintosh

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Toshiba announced it has hired a former DANKA executive as VP of Operations. Jim Hawkins, formerly Senior VP of Field Operations for DANKA, will now report to Wayne Wilkinson, Senior VP and GM of Toshiba’s copier division in Irvine, CA.

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Electronics For Imaging(EFI), maker of Fiery print controllers, announced it won a patent litigation case against Durst Fototechnik of Germany, over EFI’s white ink technology used in its VUTEK large format color inkjet printers.

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eCopy and EMC won a bid for document management at Easton Vance Corp., an investment management firm. The customer plans on scanning 200,000 records per month into the Documentum application.

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Are Ricoh dealers providing their customers with new parts or used parts? Equipment Brokers Unlimited of Van Nuys, CA announced that it is expanding its used Ricoh parts division due to increased sales of used parts to dealers. The company claims that used parts are 40%-80% less expensive than buying new parts from Ricoh.

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Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 11/30/09

2009-11-30T06:54:00.002-05:00

The falling value of the U.S. Dollar is having huge impact in Japanese manufacturers. Details:
- Japanese yen was trading at its strongest against the dollar in 14 years, climbing to as high as 84.83(in other words, the dollar is worth only 85 yen, in contrast, it was worth 110 yen a few years ago)
- Canon’s CEO, Fujio Mitarai, said Japan is “standing on edge of a cliff”, and that Japan needs “urgent steps to counter this critical situation”
- Japan’s electronics companies lose a combined $369 million in annual profit for each 1 yen appreciation against the dollar according to Daiwa Research Institute Ltd.
- In contrast, the South Korean won has fallen 20% against the U.S. dollar, thus helping the record profits of Samsung.

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According to research firm, IDC, Samsung is the number one supplier of A4 MFPs during the last two quarters worldwide.

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Panasonic announced it has purchased India’s top electrical accessories company, Anchor Electricals, for 9.2 billion yen.

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Hewlett Packard gave out information on using dots per inch (DPI) versus bit depth with color printing:
- “DPI (dots per inch) is the traditional measurement and indicator of a print device’s out quality. With the advent of color printing however, other factors have a dramatic effect. In particular, increasing the number of colors per dot (bit depth) greatly improves image quality. Amazingly, some inkjet printers with only 600dpi print resolution are able to produce photographic results due to the range of color they can fit in to a single dot. The image enhancement technology that provides this capability……has forever changed the usefulness of DPI as the sole metric for determining print quality”
- “Ironically, the historical emphasis on DPI as the critical factor for assessing print quality has made these print quality improvements difficult to explain.”
- “The bottom line, use your eye, not DPI, when evaluating image quality”

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Hewlett Packard gave out more details of its last quarter’s financial performance:
- Net revenue down 8% to $30.8 billion
- down 3% in Americas
- down 17% in Europe
- Net revenue for full fiscal year down 3% to $114.6 billion
- Operating profit for full fiscal year was $10.1 billion
- Services revenue increased 8% to $8.9 billion
- Imaging and Printing Group (printers and MFPs) was down 15%
- Printer/MFP supplies revenue down 8%
- Commercial printer/MFP hardware sales down 32%
- Commercial printer/MFP unit shipments down 38%
- Profit of $1.2 billion
- CEO, Mark Hurd, stated the following on this division; “IPG is poised for recovery and is getting on the attack. Demand is improving for our printers. We are also encouraged by our managed print services funnel, which are at record levels. Now with a printer refresh coming, we feel pretty good about it.” (is he referring to the impending launch of the full Canon MFP product line?)
- CDO, Cathie Lesjak, stated; “if we have to trade off some operating dollars for growth we will”
- HP predicts that 2010 total revenue will be $119 billion

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Ricoh announced that its Aficio MP 9001, a 90ppm b/w MFP, won 4.5 stars from Buyers Labs Inc. BLI’s duplex productivity test results were high on the Ricoh due to its document feeder that scans both sides of original at same time.

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PC Magazine gave Canon its “2009 Readers’ Choice Award for Service and Reliability” for its digital cameras and desktop color inkjet printers/AIOs.

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A recent article in Graphic Arts magazine, had following statistics about toner:
- “companies persist in calling their toner “dry ink”, even though it’s really a minutely milled plastic powder”
- “with a couple of exceptions, toner is produced as blocks or sheets of plastic….these are pulverized”
- With pulverization process, toner particles are 4 to 15 microns in size, and are
random-sized, rough-edged, shards of plastic.
- Particle of talcum powder is 10 microns
- Human hair is 70 microns
- Hewlett Packard’s Indigo production color system uses toner particles that are pulverized in Israel to as little as 1 micron, and then mixed with liquid carrier, to create a viscous paste.
- Indigo inventor, Benny Landa, stated that particles are so small that if they were not contained in liquid carrier they would just float around the room.
- HP’s Indigo is only digital system that offers option of white toner

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MedAssets Supply Chain Systems announced that Konica Minolta is its preferred vendor for MFPs. The 3 year agreement is accessible by its 33,000 member locations in the U.S., including health systems, hospitals and non-acute care providers.

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QuoCirca Research, announced that Xerox is the Market Leader in its evaluation of managed print services in Europe.

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Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox, and Antonio Perez, CEO of Kodak, were named by President Barack Obama to lead a $260 million program called Educate to Innovate, which will explore how social networks can be used to connect teachers with companies and improve student performance.

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Toshiba announced it will partner with Nantong Huada Microelectronics Group in China for computer system chip assembly, to move more manufacturing out of Japan.

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Some questions have been raised about copier bid award in New York. Oneida County awarded a 5 year copier contract to Arlott Office Products, even though its president is Oneida County Legislator, James D’Onofrio.

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PrintAudit, provider of managed print services software, announced that is won a contract from Pitney Bowes Management Services, Inc., which will use it to sell MPS to its customers in the U.S.

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The country of Indonesia announced that it wants to have copiers made in the country, instead of bringing them in from Japanese manufacturers. Details:
- Currently spends $210 million per year on copiers in the country
- Dataproducts of Malaysia and Teco Group of Taiwan both will spend up to $25 million each to build copier plants in the country
- Indonesia’s Industry Minister, Ramon Bangun, stated; “I’ve promised them that the government will gradually stop imports once they have realized their plans.”
- Ramon also said he would invite three Chinese manufacturers to invest in copier plants in the country.

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The Equipment Leasing and Finance Association (ELFA) announced:
- Business volume for month of October was down 32.8% year over year
- Receivable over 30 days increased 17%
- Charge-offs rose by 25%
- Credit approvals dropped 71.7%

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Three 16 year old boys were arrested in Easton, MD for making fake $20 bills using a color copier.

Lafayette County Arkansas Sheriff Victor Rose announced that Demarcus Tucker, Dexter Lowe & Edzell Wyrick were arrested for making fake $10 bills using a color copier. They were caught when they attempted to buy cigars with the counterfeit money.

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According to the Printing Industries of America:
- number of printshops in U.S. declined 18% compared to last year
- total industry employment is down 11.6%
- real output per employee is up 11.8%
- industry output down 4.5%

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Madison Advisors of New York announced findings of a study of companies who are trying to reduce their employees’ printing habits:
- Average amount of suppression is 8% to 16%
- Some as high as 70%
- Majority of companies have a 5 year plan of 26% to 50% reduction of paper
- Financial institutions planning for 50% to 75% reduction in paper

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Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 11/23/09

2009-11-23T07:55:00.003-05:00

Canon is making a bid to acquire all of Oce’. Details:
- Purchase price is roughly $1.1 billion, a 70% premium of Oce’s current stock price
- Cash consideration of offer is 730 million euros, while Oce’s total debt was 704 million euros
- Oce’ would remain a wholly owned division of Canon, running separate for now
- Oce’ management would stay in place for time being
- Oce’s three divisions will be Commercial Printing Systems, Wide Format Printing Systems and Business Services
- Steering committee will be formed to lead integration of two companies over next 3 years
- Oce’s management board would be Rokus Van Iperen, Mr. Kerkhove, & Mr. Schaaf from Oce’, as well as Toshizo Tanaka (CFO), Mr. Elverding & Mr. Baan from Canon, as well as three other Canon executives.
- Acquisition is supposed to conclude in spring of 2010
- According to Oce’ senior VP of corporate communications, Jon Hol, Oce’ began seeking a partner in August of 2008, and negotiations began with Canon in March, 2009
- Oce’ has 1,400 sales reps in the Americas
- Canon’s president and COO Tsuneji Uchida said; “We are delighted to welcome Oce’, the ideal partner in every respect, into the Canon Group. Through the merger of Canon and Oce’, we believe that we will be able to realize clear benefits, no only in the area of R&D, but also in terms of product mix and marketing and are confident that this winning combination will contribute greatly to our goal of becoming the overall No. 1 presence in the printing industry.”
- If Oce’ were to back out, they would have to pay Canon a 7.9 million euro penalty

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Xerox provided a few details about the sales of the ColorQube color wax copier so far:
- Claims that over half the units sold replaced competitive color or b/w MFPs
- 25% of clicks are “useful color pages” (contain b/w and very small amount of color)
- 50% of clicks are “everyday color pages” (some color)
- 25% of clicks are “expressive color pages” (lots of color)
- “color pages are running higher than expected”
- Would not disclose how many units were sold so far

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Xerox announced it will now offer an embedded version of Equitrac usage tracking/control software for its EIP (extensible interface platform) equipped MFPs.

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Xerox is using a test report from Buyers Labs Inc. (BLI) to tout that its MFPs are faster and more productive as network printers than its competitors. However, what Xerox may not tell your customer is that the tests that were done used “banner sheets”, to separate the print jobs. Banner sheets are rarely used by end users, as they are considered wasteful. However, since many MFPs treat these banner pages as separate print jobs, they process slower than a Xerox MFP that treats banner pages as part of the print job. Summary: if customer does not use banner pages, they most likely will see no speed increase with a Xerox.

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Dell Computer reported its last quarter’s financials: - Revenue down 15% to $12.9 billion
- Income down 54% to $337 million
- Large enterprise business revenue fell 23%
- SMB (small to medium size businesses) revenue fell 19%
- Consumer revenue down 10$
- Public sector revenue down 7%
- Perot Systems division revenue fell 12% to $629 million
- Desktop PC revenue fell 26%
- Desktop PC units fell 15%
- Mobile PC revenue fell 14%
- Server sales fell 6%, units down 7%

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Premier Purchasing Partners, which is a healthcare alliance of more than 2200 hospitals and 63,000 healthcare sites, announced that it will now offer Konica Minolta, Ricoh & Xerox products to its membership. The new contract, with these offerings, will be launched 1/1/2010.

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ABBYY Software Ltd., the OCR manufacturer headquartered in Russia, announced that Ingram Micro will distribute its products to resellers (VARs & dealers) in the U.S.

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Secunia, a network security alert firm, announced that denial of service network attacks could be carried out using a vulnerability found in some Hewlett Packard Color LaserJet models.

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Okidata announced that it will relabel Nuance document management software (PaperPort) as an option for its MFPs and call it the Okidata Desktop Capture Solution.

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Ricoh’s factory direct branches will now offer the ability for their sales reps to:
- bundle in software and computer hardware into a lease
- bundle in professional services/network service, by a pass thru approach on a lease, so end users can pay for the service monthly

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The U.S. Postal Service announced it will end 2009 with a $.38 billion loss

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Lexmark announced it will now offer Ringdale’s FollowMe for its printers and MFPs that allow for an embedded application. FollowMe enables end users to enter a PIN code, Windows login, ID card reader or biometric reader to authenticate and track usage.

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Due to downsizing, Lexmark is now trying to lease 135,000 square feet of office space in Lexington, Kentucky.

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Another imaging software company plans on entering the market in the U.S. to compete with Nuance eCopy and NSI’s AutoStore:
- New Dynamic Solutions (NDS) is based in Brugge, Belgium and is now selling products in Europe
- Will enter U.S. in early 2010
- In Europe is now selling its “ScanFlow Suite” to work with Ricoh (ScannerVision),
Konica Minolta (Document Navigator) and Toshiba (eBRIDGE Capture & Store)
- Founded in 1983
- CEO is Rene Brunt, who formerly worked for Ricoh
- Is a C++ based application
- Employs 25 people
- Software is embedded in the MFP, and uses color LCD touch screen control panel
- Approximately $223 for entry level “Express” version
- $748 for “Office” version
- Each additional MFP licensse is $148
- Optional modules for OCR/ICR, forms recognition, barcode recognition ($298 to $1497 each)
- Customizable control panel
- Has two dozen connectors to third party applications

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Quark of Denver, makers of QuarkXPress desktop publishing software, announced it is launching a web-to-print website, so it can better compete with Adobe InDesign. The website, QuarkPromote.com, allows end users to use a free design tool, and choose from hundreds of templates, and then order prints from a Sir Speedy, PIP or Signal Graphics printshop.

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Since Xerox bought ACS, HP bought EDS and Dell bought Perot Systems, many have speculated if Computer Sciences Corp. is also up for sale. According to company president, David Booth; “We like our position. We truly believe that there’s a role for companies like ours in the market”

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According to a Chinese newspaper, Toshiba is considering selling off its notebook computer manufacturing division to Asustek of China. Asustek makes computer motherboards, and its own PCs, selling in the U.S. through Best Buy and other retailers.

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According to survey conducted by the Photizo Group, half of the companies that are using a managed print services program, have done so by partnering directly with an equipment manufacturer.

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Canon announced it won a 4 year managed print service contract from Resorts World, which runs hotel/resorts in Asia.

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Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 11/16/09

2009-11-16T15:05:00.004-05:00

Canon, the Japanese maker of cameras, copy machines and other electronics, will make a tender offer worth €730 million for Océ, the biggest European printer maker, the two companies said Monday.
At €8.6 per outstanding Océ share -- 70 percent higher than their price at the close on Friday -- the all-cash offer values the Dutch company at nearly $1.1 billion.

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According to InfoTrends, the following are projections:
- Compound annual growth rate for U.S. color MFP and single-function printer placements will be 12% through 2012
- Growth for b/w MFP and printer placements will decline 2.3%
- By 2012, color will account for 39% of devices

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Hewlett Packard announced it will spend $2.7 billion to acquire 3Com Corp. Details:
- will now compete head to head with Cisco for network switching and routing equipment
- 3Com was founded in 1979 by Bob Metcalfe, and retired in 1990
- Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet, while working for Xerox
- ship the first Ethernet adaptor in 1981
- 3Com sold its first PC Ethernet in 1982
- becomes world’s largest manufacturer of network interface cards (NICs)

Hewlett Packard reported info on its fourth quarter financials:
- Revenue down 8%
- Revenue estimate for fiscal year of $119 billion
- MFP/printer division revenue dropped 20% to $5.7 billion
- Printer shipments dropped 23%

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Intel agreed to pay AMD a whopping $1.25 billion to settle an anti-trust lawsuit filed against the company by AMD.

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More details on the high speed color inkjet presses from Kodak:
- called the Versamark series
- was originally started by Kodak, who sold technology to Scitex of Israel
- Kodak reacquired the division in 2004
- Uses continuous inkjet technology, where ink droplets are continually ejected and are steered to or away form the paper using electrostatic forces
- Versamark VT3000 and VX5000 have top speed of 3080ppm
- Versamark VL2000 offers 75 meters per minute at 600 x 600dpi
- Versamark VL4000 offers 125 meters per minute at 600 x 360dpi
- Versamark VL6000 offers 150 meters per minute at 600 x 600dpi (4 bit)

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Kodak announced it is reducing its staff in British Columbia and shifting work to Israel. This will reduce the Canadian staff from 1265 to 500. The Canadian office was part of the $980 million acquisition of Creo in 2005. Also, Kodak sold some of its office space in the area for $43 million.

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Ricoh announced it is forming a Business Process Automation Group, as part of its Document Solutions & Services Division. “BPA is a true value-add for Ricoh customers because we’re able to offer a suite of services from consultation to sales to implementation under one roof” said Mark Miller, Senior VP & Deputy General Manager at Ricoh. Ricoh’s BPA consultants will “assist customers in turning their current processes into turnkey solutions to fit their workflow requirements”

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X-Rite, maker of color measuring devices, and Pantone color systems, announced its last quarter’s financials:
- net loss of $9 million
- net sales down 25.6% to $45.6 million
- operating income of $1.6 million

X-Rite, which recently launched Pantone color software for the Apple iPhone, called “myPANTONE”, had the software tested by the Flemish Center for Graphic Communication. The research firm found that when it viewed certain Pantone colors on several iPhones, that each one had a different shade of color. (there is currently no way to calibrate the screen of an iPhone)

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After being acquired by Nuance Corp. last week, eCopy has laid off a portion of its staff. Details:
- Richard Mack, VP of Corp. Communications, stated that less then one-third of staff was affected.
- Any layoff larger than that would have triggered the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to provide advance notice of a mass layoff.
- Before layoffs, eCopy had 220 employees
- some of jobs will be transferred to Budapest, Hungary, where Nuance has office
- Nuance has 6,000 employees worldwide in 30 offices
- eCopy was started by a handful of people working out of Edward Schmid’s condominium in 1990, and was originally called Simplify Development Corp.
- Nuance, through its OmniPage division, provides OCR software to OmTool

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Tech Data Corp., a leading IT products distributor, announced a new Healthcare Specialized Business Unit to assist its computer resellers (VARs) meet growing demand in this vertical market:
- healthcare industry will spend $81 billion on IT in 2010, according to Gartner
- $22.8 billion will be spent on healthcare IT over next 6 years according to INPUT Research using federal funds from American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
- Department of Veterans Affairs has 2010 budget of $3.3 billion in IT spending

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American TonerServ, provider of generic laser print cartridges in Santa Rosa, CA, reported a 192% increase in last quarter’s revenue

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Xerox scientists have developed a new coating to extend the life of organic photoreceptors (OPC drums). The new “armor” can extend the life of the drum by 33%. Goal is to improve the coating so that drums could last the life of the copier.

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Xerox announced it purchased one of its largest dealers, Mr. Copy, which is headquartered in San Diego, CA. Former owner, Bob Leone, will stay one, and plans to add 30 more employees. Details:
- Started the Xerox agency in 1994
- Last year reported $44 million revenue
- Has 130 current employees
- purchase price not disclosed
- Offices in San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, Oakland, Silicon Valley, Reno, Portland and Eugene.
- When asked for reason for his success, Mr. Leone said:
- “We just plain outwork and out-hustle the competition”
- “This is not the place to work if you’re not a performer”
- “We measure activity and we measure results”
- “If you are not driver, you’re not going to last here”
- “We spend a lot of time training our people”
- “You can’t train attitude”

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Adobe Systems announced that it will layoff 9% of its workforce to cut costs. This will amount roughly 600 of its current 7,000 workers.

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Sun Microsystems announced it will layoff 128 workers at its Broomfield, Colorado campus. Oracle Corp. is attempting to buy Sun, but acquisition is being held up by European Union over antitrust concerns.

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Samsung of Korea lost a lawsuit to Sharp. Sharp’s lawsuit claimed that Samsung violated 4 of Sharp’s color LCD manufacturing patents.

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A report released by Samsung reveals that 83% of companies surveyed are not implementing basic technologies to reduce the volume of printed materials. Other findings:
- only 11% use a solution to track amount of pages printed
- over half of all document output costs are associated with purchasing paper and toner
- 69% of workers still prefer paper printouts

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A consortium of inkjet manufacturers have donated money to Cambridge University of London, England, to pursue development of a robust single pass production color printing system.

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Heidelberg, the world’s largest offset press maker, announced its last quarter’s financials:
- operating loss of 110 to 150 million euros ($165-$225 million) predicted for the fiscal year
- 65 million euro loss for quarter
- Received more than 800 million euros in emergency state (Germany) aid
- secured a new 1.4 billion euro credit line backed by German government
- order backlog was down 50%
- has laid off a total of 2,400 employees in last year

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According to survey, the average selling price of a b/w copy in a printshop is now 4.5 cents.

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EFI lost a lawsuit it filed against Leggett & Platt over supposed patent infringement regarding wide format color inkjet printers. EFI claimed that the company’s patent on UV ink curing was invalid.

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Canon announced it has hired John Hamm, former owner of Balmar Printing of Washington, to develop content for Canon’s imagePRESS Essential Business Builder Program. This is Canon’s option that can be sold to customers of Canon production color system to assist them in marketing and selling the output.

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Duplo, maker of duplicators, and finishing systems, announced it will create a sub brand, called Duplo Digital, to emphasize its finishing systems that are fully digital. (the company also sells relabeled Sharp digital b/w copiers)

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Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 11/09/09

2009-11-09T06:57:00.002-05:00

The Printing Industries of America released the following data about sales in the print for pay marketplace:
- Sales in first half of 2009 are down 4.75%
- Digital print sales are down 10.63%
- Inkjet print sales are down 96.48%
- 68% of printshop owners reported a decline in profits
- Employment levels decreased by 6.9%
- 73% of owners do not expect hiring levels to pickup thru first half of 2010
- 15.9% of sales are from digital devices

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A company in China that makes offset printing presses, is going public to raise cash for growth. Details:
- Douyan Printing is incorporated in Wyoming, but manufacturing is in China
- Company manufactures 15 different types of single color presses
- In future will launch multicolor presses, auto booklet maker, and a paper cutter.
- Company has 1,339 employees
- reported net income of $32.6 million on revenue of $10.6 million
- hopes to raise $47 million
- CEO is Christopher Holbert, who is paid $280,000
- COO is Xiqing Diao, who is paid $42,650
- CFO is William Suh, who is paid $$192,000
- Will market to the 90,000 printshops in China.

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Since Fujitsu (no relation to Fuji) sold its hard drive business, the only unit continuing to operate out of its Sunnyvale, CA, North America headquarters is the document scanner business. CEO is Etsuro Sato, and Scott Francis is VP of Marketing.

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According to IDC Research, MFP sales were down only 6% during second quarter of 2009, versus second quarter of 2008. In contrast, the entire hardcopy peripherals market (including printers), was down 21%

IDC Research stated the following on imaging infrastructure in corporate America:
- as much as 5% of business’s revenue is spent on document production and management
- as much as 0.2% is spent directly on printing hardware, supplies, maintenance and help desk support
- remote management of imaging assets allows companies to save as much as 8% to 41% per year on spending on hardcopy devices, IT support and consumables
- current installed of fleet of faxes, copiers and printers are operating at just 5% of their capacity

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InfoTrends states that the recession has driven more to consider outsourcing their document needs. 20% of businesses surveyed stated that they will outsource in 2010.

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More details on Canon’s third quarter financials:
- revenue down 21.5%
- operating income was down 53.6%
- operating profit up 33.6%
- net income fell 55.8%
- revenue from America’s fell 24%
- Office equipment accounts for 2/3’s of revenue
- Copier revenue down 28%
- B/W MFP revenue down 31.3%
- Color MFP revenue down 29.4%
- B/W MFP unit sales down 26%
- Color MFP unit sales down 15%
- Color MFPs account for 27% of units and 48% of total MFP revenue
- Laser printer sales down 26.8%
- B/w laser printer sales down 38%, color down 15%
- Laser printer unit shipments (most sold by HP) down 60%

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Hewlett Packard has 40% of the computer peripheral market in units, according to IDC Research. Following HP is Canon, Epson, Brother and Lexmark.

A group of HP pension fund investors, who claimed that HP erred in handing former CEO Carly Fiorina a $21 million severance package, lost their lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals.

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Mark Bardin of Granville, Washington, was sentenced up to 6 years in prison after he pleading guilty to making fake $20 bills using a color copier.

Ronald Thacker of Nashville, TN was arrested after attempting to use fake $20 bills to go bowling at Just One More Sports Bar. Police stated bills were made on a Canon color copier.

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Okidata announced it has promoted Doug Whetzel to VP of U.S. Commercial and Public Sector Sales, reporting to Greg Van Acker, VP of U.S. Sales.

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Riso donated a working, see-through HC5500 high speed color inkjet printer to the Museum of Printing in Andover, MA.

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MWAi, maker of remote device management software for dealers, announced it hired former IKON executive, Steven Stegman as Customer Engagements Manager.

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The following data was released about consumers: - Wikipedia has more than 13 million articles
- 100 million videos are viewed on YouTube every day
- 65,000 new videos are uploaded to YouTube every day
- 400 million blogs are now in existence
- Flickr contains more than 3.6 billion images
- 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook every day

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EFI announced that it will hold its next EFI Connect trade show in Las Vegas on 4/18-21/09.

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eDigital Corp. of San Diego, CA announced it is filing a patent infringement suit against companies it claims are violating its flash memory patent, including; Canon, Kyocera, Nokia, Pentax, Panasonic, Roland, Marantz, Imation, Polaroid, TEAC and others

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CFO magazine reported data on equipment leasing in the U.S.:
- Volume of new business declined by 31%
- 5.6% of receivables were not paid in more than 30 days
- Losses rose from 2.05% to 3.01%
- Total number of employees at leasing companies down 10%
- Income down as much as 20% due to increased credit losses

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During Kofax Software’s recent TRANSFORM event, it had some of its customer speak about the use of Kofax products for document management, including executives from:
- Catholic Healthcare West (CHW)
- Boeing Corp.
- Pharmaceutical Product Development, Inc.
- Oppenheimer Funds

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In an effort to cut costs, David Patterson, governor of New York, ordered state agencies to:
- “except under compelling circumstances, agencies are to implement double-sided printing”
- “eliminate personal printers, except in cases where an accommodation must be made for a person with a disability”
- “replace multiple individual printers in adjacent offices with standardized, centralized networked copiers”

New York attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, filed an 83 page complaint in a U.S. District Court, claiming that Intel Corp. bribed and threatened computer manufacturers to block the sale of rival’s products in a “worldwide, systematic campaign of Illegal conduct

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Arizona State University announced it is saving $10,000 per year in its construction purchase order department, by implementing eCopy systems. (ASU has contract with Canon Business Solutions)

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Xerox received the 2009 Harold W. Gegenheimer award from NPES, the association for suppliers of printing, publishing and converting technologies. Xerox is the first manufacturer of digital printing equipment to win the award. The award is named for former NPES president, whose innovations helped increase usage of offset printing.

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Panasonic made its tender offer of $4.5 billion to acquire all shares of its rival, Sanyo.

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U.S. District Court judge, Joe Farnan, declared that Honeywell’s claim of a sole patent for LCD technology was invalid, thus ending Honeywell’s lawsuit against Fuji and Samsung.

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Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 11/02/09

2009-11-02T06:56:00.003-05:00

Company Quarterly Results

Canon reported its last quarter’s financials:
- 56% drop in net profit
- Total revenue dropped 22%
- Office equipment division income dropped 45.5%
- Office equipment sales account for 60% of revenue, and 80% of profit
- Digital camera sales account for 30% of revenue
- Digital camera unit sales down 14% (predicts it will grown 10% in 2010)
- 7th straight quarterly profit drop

Toshiba released its last quarter’s financials:
- Net loss of $2.2 million
- Sales fell 14%
- Will cut fixed costs by 10% on top of existing plan to cut 300 billion yen
- Will cut 3900 employees
- Will reduce research & development costs by 15%
- Will cut spending on equipment and factories by 59%

Lexmark released its last quarter’s financials:
- total revenue down 15% over last year but up 6% over last quarter
- supplies revenue up 4% over last quarter, but down 12% over last year
- hardware revenue up 13% over last quarter, but down 24% compared to last year
- hardware units shipments up 4%
- laser unit sales down 22%
- inkjet unit sales down 38%
- operating income down 54%
- net income down 73%
- will cut another 825 employees

EFI announced details on its last quarter’s financials:
- revenues of $100.9 million, down 30%
- net loss of $12.2 million
- net income of $1.2 million
- 22% growth in inkjet business
- Fiery revenue down 38% to $42 million
- Gross margin was down 57%

Sharp reported its latest financials:
- net loss of $196 million for first half of fiscal year
- operating profit fell 96.9%
- total revenue fell 17.5%
- copier sales revenue down 19.2%

Kodak reported its last quarter’s financials:
- revenue fell 26%
- net loss of $111 million
- revenue in production print fell 18%

Ricoh reported that during the last quarter, its net profit declined 89.5%

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- Hewlett Packard loses one of its largest distributors in Australia, Phoenix Toner. The general manager, Don Bentley, stated; “The business didn’t want to have that amount of cash tied up in something that was not profitable”, referencing the HP printer supplies that it sold. The company will now concentrate on other brands.

- Hewlett Packard has filed an injunction with the U.S. International Trade Commission in an attempt to bar Asian companies from importing print cartridges into the U.S. that violate HP’s patents and work with HP printers. The companies involved include Ninestar Technology of China, InkTec of South Korea and Acer of Taipei.

- Hewlett Packard announced a partnership with the University of Michigan to sell physical copies of over 500,000 rare books, while making digital versions available online for free. HP’s BookPrep service will take in raw scans of books, clean them up, and then offer print-on-demand copies for sale.

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A study conducted by Harris Interactive reveals that two out of three Americans prefer print media to email ads:
- 58% believe that the paperless office will never happen
- 64% prefer reading print on paper versus computer screen
- 67% would rather save money than save the environment
- 11% believe their company is now less likely to “be green”
- 26% say their company outsources print jobs at least once per year
- 19% say their company orders print over the Internet

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University researchers trying to find way to remove toner from paper. Thomas Counsell & Julian Allwood of the University of Cambridge, claim that when they expose a printed image to 60% demethylsulphoxide and 40% chloroform, followed by ultrasound, toner is removed, and paper is reusable.

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IDC announced that the enterprise publishing market (transpromo VDP production print) grew 8.3% in 2008, and “will continue to post strong growth over the next 5 years”.

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BEI, a company that tracks service data for copier dealers and market service management software, announced it has hired former Global/Xerox executive, Steve Rolla. Previous to Global, he was an executive with IKON.

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EFI, in an effort to boost value of its stock, announced it will buy back $70 million worth of its shares

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More info on Xerox/ACS merger. According to paperwork filed with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, if the acquisition failed to go through, Xerox would have to pay a breakup fee of $323 million, and ACS would have to pay $194 million. To help pay for the $6.4 billion purchase, Xerox received a commitment for up to $3 billion from JPMorgan Chase in part to refinance ACS’s $1.8 billion in debt. Both companies are now fighting numerous lawsuits that have been filed to prevent the deal from happening.

Also benefiting from the Xerox/ACS deal are the banks involved:
- Citigroup, which advised ACS, will take home $32.5 million
- Evercore, which advised ACS, gets $16 million
- Blackstone Group, which advised Xerox, gets $20 million
- JPMorgan Chase, which advised Xerox, gets $20 million

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In a speech at the Rockerfeller Center in New York last week, former Xerox CEO, Anne Mulcahy, stated that while at Xerox, the three planks she identified to turn around the company were to make Xerox:
- environmentally conscious
- services led
- technology enabled

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Xerox scientists in Norwalk, CT, announced they have invented a way to imprint electronic circuits on materials, such as plastic and fabric. In theory, this technology could pave way for products like:
- Smart pill boxes that track how much medication a patient has taken
- Display screens tha troll up to fit into a briefcase
- Clothing that monitors body temperature or heart rate

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Xerox launched its new Enterprise Print Services initiative, including:
- Supports employees of its customer who use remote or home use printers, via phone, email or Web
- New universal print driver for remote employees to access printers when working in corp. offices
- Print routing based on analysis of employees work habits
- Setup up guidelines to direct documents to most appropriate device
- Allow print requests to be sent to internal provider via web interface

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The Meridian Public School District, of Idaho, will restart its copier bid in November. This is after is was forced to cancel the award it gave to Xerox, after local dealer, Fisher’s Document Systems, filed a complaint. The school board hopes to give out a new award in January, 2010.

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Another obscure company acquires patents and sues for licensing fees. St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants, of Michigan, is now suing Apple Computer as it claims the company is violating patents it owns regarding digital camera technology. The company already has won the following lawsuits:
- $25 million from Sony Corp.
- $34.7 million from Canon
- $3 million from Fuji
- Other deals were struck with HP, Kodak, Verizon, Motorola & Sanyo

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Red Bend Software Inc. of Israel, is suing Google for patent infringement, claiming that the company violated a patented algorithm in Google Chrome Web browser.

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A managed print services company gets purchased. MyPrint Corp. of Irvine, CA, announced that a majority interest in the company was purchased by Triton Pacific Capital Partners, a private equity firm in Los Angeles. MyPrint’s president, Jeff Carlson, stated; “We are all excited about the opportunities to work closely with the Triton Pacific team in growing MyPrint to the next level”

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Sanyo, which is about to become a part of Panasonic, announced it sold its battery plants to Fujitsu for $71 million.

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Oce’ announced that the president of its Production Printing Systems division, Mel Babolyian, was named to the board of directors of NPES, the association for suppliers of printing, publishing, and converting technologies

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Konica Minolta is partnering with companies in Russia to develop nanotechnology. The partnership with Sun Innovations and RUSNANO Corp, will apparently use industrial inkjet printers to make special coatings for solar panels.

The Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (JIDPO), has given Konica Minolta four “Good Design” awards for the bizhub C220, C280, C360, C452, C552, C652, PRO 1051 and PRO 1200.

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The Equipment Leasing and Finance Association (ELFA), which tracks lending practices, stated that equipment leasing revenue fell 30.9% in September from the same month in the previous year to $4.7 billion. This is because of increase in delinquencies

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Image Print & Sign Ltd. of New Zealand was fined by local government for illegally making copies of copyrighted books.

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PrintFleet is partnering with De Lage Landen in Europe to help copier dealers sell managed print services with a cpc lease program.

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In a survey of independent copier dealer service managers, Office Products Analysts found:
- average scanned pages per month on a scan-enabled MFP is 3,000 pages per month
- favorite brand based on reliability was Kyocera
- 54% admitted that they use Non factory original parts when they fix their copiers in the field
- 52% admitted that they provide their customers with Non factory original toner

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Toshiba announced it is now reselling new solution software from Prism:
- deskRecord
- deskSystem
- deskForm

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A Chicago area man faces up to 20 years in prison for falsely claiming he was reselling high speed production print systems. Matthew Scott, owner of Gelsco Inc. of Northlake, Illinois, started as a printer repair company. However, in last 9 years Mr. Scott supposedly bilked 60 investors out of $28 million, claiming he was buying printers worth more than $100,000, and was able to resell them in under 90 days for 20% profit.

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Kofax, maker of document management software, announced that when businesses acquire a Fujitsu business scanner, they can get 50% off on Kofax Express software.

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MyFax Inc. announced that end users can download a free program that will allow anyone to fax from an application, using Internet Fax. The free software, MyFax Print-to-Fax Assistant, allows end users to Internet fax, by choosing Print from their application. End users must have an Interfax service, which MyFax can provide for a monthly subscription fee.

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A printshop fires one of its largest customers. R.R. Donnelley announced that it would incur charges of $130 million to terminate a contract it had with one of its customers. The early out would allow the company to “end their contractual relationship allowing Donnelley to exit from certain unprofitable operations.” The customer was not named.

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