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By Kevin Keane, IAPHC CEO What hath we Digerati Wrought? " ... But as the pace of technological change increases so does the speed at which each new generation of equipment supplants the last. 'Right now the half life of most computer technology is between three and five years.' explains Steve Puglia, a preservation and imaging specialist with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC. In the nineteen-eighties, the Archives transferred some two hundred thousand documents and images onto optical disks -- the cutting edge of new technology at the time. 'I'm not sure we can still play them.' Puglia says, because they depend on computer software and hardware that are no longer on the market." From an article by Alexander Stille titled Overload, in the March 8, 1999 New Yorker Magazine. Copy Klatch or Klasch Holy digital confusion! Frequent readers of Tuesday Morning News (TMN) will recall that in last week's issue, we reported that a German magazine had obtained confirmation from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, that it was in talks with Eastman Kodak to purchase Kodak's copier division - the division that has been laboring to bring a high speed digital copier to market pursuant to the terms of a contractually mandated series of R & D payments from Danka Business Systems Plc. The copier is supposed to be able to produce speeds of 90 copies or more per minute, and thus be a candidate to take on Xerox's wildly successful DocuTech line of high speed copier/printers. So it was interesting to read a 3 March report out of Rochester, New York that Canon, Inc., would be buying Kodak's copier division in a matter of weeks. The report made sense, Canon just changed its marketing philosophy last month to unleash its North American dealers like IKON Office Systems, to go after Xerox market share, and Canon needs a high speed digital machine to really take Xerox on. Only thing is, Canon says the report is wrong. On 4 March, came news from Tokyo: "A similar rumour appeared about two years ago," said Canon spokesperson Richard Berger, "It was wrong then and it's wrong now." So what's going on here? Xerox has a large portion of the mid-range copy business locked up, and that's a $24 billion dollar business for digital, networkable copiers that can produce copies up to 65 pages per minute. (DocumentCentre line) And Xerox has virtually all of the $5 billion dollar market for the machines that copy at speeds over 91 copies per minute. (DocuTech line). Meanwhile, Heidelberg has actively gone after the digital prepress and digital printing market. Given the Canon denial, we think the following remarks made by Heidelberg CEO Hartmut Mehdorn in a meeting in London, England last fall (as reported in British Printer magazine) may be worth recalling: "In short run and digital printing the competition is Canon or Xerox. I smile if Xerox says 'we will beat Heidelberg out of printing,' we would like to beat Xerox in copying, but we are not sitting still and waiting." We have mentioned in previous issues of TMN that Xerox now sells more digital machines than light lens analog machines. The same applies to Konica Business Technologies. Yesterday, in a news release from Windsor, Connecticut, Harry Hecht, Konica's VP of Dealer Development commented: "In 1998, digital product sales represented over 50 per cent of total equipment sales achieved by Konica's nationwide network of 400 plus authorized dealers." It's worth noting that at Seybold last week, Xerox introduced a lower cost DocuColor laser printer, the DocuColor 4 LP which : "...brings graphic arts quality color printing including tabloid-size output, to the office and provides an affordable option for the graphic arts customer," according to Mary Quin, a Xerox VP speaking in Boston on 2 March. The 4 LP copies 4 full color pages a minute at 600 x 600 dpi, and carries a retail price of $6,995. And by the way, on 5 March, Koenig and Bauer (KBA Planeta) which bills itself as the world oldest press manufacturer announced that it had a fabulous year in 1998, booking its highest level of orders in firm history, and with full capacity manufacturing set for well into 2001. As we have mentioned in several past issues of TMN, The KBA-Scitex joint venture into digital press manufacture, the 74 Karat press is still being highly touted. As we covered in a long ago TMN, industry consultant William Lamparter said of the 74 Karat press when he saw the prototype at Print 97 -- it's essentially a dumb press, which allows for little or no press operator intervention. The 74 Karat is likely to begin shipping later this year. A key feature is the keyless, self calibrating ink system called an anilox-offset inking unit. Millennium Mantra So here's three rules for living in the printing business today: 1) don't ignore digital or they'll beat you with bandwidth baby 2) your clients no longer distinguish between copying and printing, nor should you 3) conventional methods still make most of the dollars Speaking of Digital (DAM DAM DAM) One of our regular readers called after reading last week's issue and asked for a definition of digital asset management or DAM. The coy answer might be, Everybody's doing it! There were two announcements at Seybold and another just yesterday, to underscore our mantra's message, don't ignore digital 'cause everybody's doing it. On 2 March Scitex announced the results of its work with Informix Corporation, when the two firms unveiled Scitex Timna, an automated production data management system aimed at the graphic arts industry. Timna was granted Hot Pick status at Seybold. Timna automates workflow, during input, output, archiving and fast retrieval for remaking plates. (Sounds like DAM to us.) One of the beta sites for Timna is at Imtech Graphics, a New Jersey prepress and printing firm. "For prepress and preprint shops, the ability to track all digital assets in real-time with minimal human intervention is very important," said Eli Shalev of the Scitex Output division. Also at Seybold, Impresse Corporation unveiled PresseWare version 2.0 which is a suite of software modules called PresseBuyer, PresseManager and PresseFactory. According to Impresse: "Using the latest Internet standards, PresseWare applies supply chain automation principles to the digital printing industry, transforming a traditional, linear, labor and asset intensive process into a streamlined, automated process that makes mass customization and distributed production a reality. ... PresseBuyer is the eCommerce gateway designed for customers to quickly and easily place and manage print orders online, replacing the paperwork intensive process of ordering and tracking by phone or in person." Recently we had an opportunity to tour a large midwest printing plant. A quick walk through the file storage room underscored the cumbersome challenge faced by printers of virtually any size to keep track of film and plates and hard copy originals for their customers. Digital asset management is an opportunity to react to the marketplace as it evolves and to also try to become a more valued partner with key clients. In an ever more filmless printing industry, it becomes critical to maintain track of all the elements of a customers job, and to store the final digital file for eventual reprints. As Steven Franzino, VP Technology for Courier Corporation wrote in the 1999 GATF Technology Forecast: "The idea of print production as a manufacturing process met with initial resistance. Today's competitive atmosphere, however, is quickly reducing the number of those who contend that print production is only and art and a craft and cannot be operated as a manufacturing process -- and a digital one at that." On 8 March came another announcement emphasizing how important the control of digital files has become. Yesterday, Silicon Graphics announced that it was making a $75 million dollar equity investment in WAM!NET. WAM!NET is a digital networking service which has targeted industries with large digital files which need to be moved rapidly and securely including the graphic arts, entertainment, advertising and medical industries. WAM!NET's Industry Smart high speed transportation network, on line archiving service and production workflow application software allow WAM!NET subscribers to digitally collaborate with their global trading partners in real time with a single connection. Today's Minneapolis StarTribune reports that WAM!NET's revenues for 1998 rose by 1,034 percent. Penguins and Apples and Quarks, Oh My! Lots of news from the world of hardware and software last week. LinuxWorld was taking place in San Jose, celebrating the acceptance of the counter culture Linux operating system into mainstream computing. Intel made an investment in VA Research that will reportedly enable Linux to run on the next generation of Intel's chip. IBM also said it would develop versions of its PowerPC chip to run Linux. Last Tuesday, Corel Corporation introduced a user friendly interface for Linux, to make it easier to use on a computer desktop. And yesterday, Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computer told the Los Angeles Times: "We're going to start selling Linux to single party users very soon, there is a growing demand there." Dell also said of Apple Computer's iMac: "IMac is a good wake-up call for us and the rest of the industry, in ease of use and also in ergonomics." Meanwhile, at Seybold, Steve Jobs of Apple Computer was touting a study done by Pfeiffer Consulting, which claims that Apple's Power Macintosh G3 systems allow publishers to achieve over 30 percent greater productivity than those using Windows. Jobs was quoted: "Apple has a long and deep commitment to design and publishing professionals, we are building our best tools ever to help them achieve their creative best -- in print and on the Internet." Apple also pointed to the Winter 99 issue of TrendWatch Creative, Jim Whittington a partner in TrendWatch said: "... the Mac is clearly the system of choice for graphic production in the creative markets." Yesterday, Apple cut the price of the Powerbook G3 to a suggested $1,999 retail. Also at Seybold, Apple released version 2.6 of ColorSync, its system-level color management package. We thought the press release had an interesting allusion (see Millennium Mantra # 2 above regarding no distinction between copying and printing): "Three of the world's leading publishing companies -- Corbis, KINKO'S and People -- are using Color Sync to deliver outstanding color consistency to their customers." Finally, the Denver Post ran an interview in its 3 March edition with Quark, Inc's Chairman Tim Gill who seems pretty unfazed by the news from Seybold that Adobe Systems has taken aim at Quark XPress with Adobe's new Indesign product slated for introduction in June. Gill said Quark would be fighting back with its own new technologies. Industry Tidbits - Consolidated Graphics completed its acquisition of Automated Graphic Systems (of Washington DC and Cleveland) on March 2, bringing the total number of Consolidated Graphics companies to 53. - From Singapore on 5 March comes an interesting Y2K twist, Nippecraft, Ltd., says that it expects its diary business to be enhanced by the coming millennium. Managing Director William Habergham said: "The sheer novelty of getting a 2000 dateline on the diaries has led us to start selling in April-May instead of June-July." Hmmnmn. - And from the Mannheim, Germany today comes news that Kodak Document Imaging teamed up with Post Direkt, a direct mailer, to earn a place in the Guinness Book of Records -- the two firms combined to digitize 1,686,000 documents in 24 hours using a Kodak Digital Science Scanner. We'd like to thank members like Len Petitti from Rochester, and John Kohnke from San Francisco for sending us items for this week's issue of TMN and remind all our readers that we are always on the lookout for news.
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