Slashdot Mirror
We Print 50 Trillion Pages a Year, and Xerox Is Betting That Continues (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: For most of its 111-year history, Xerox has been known as one of the tech industry's most innovative companies. Now the legendary copier company is reinventing itself. In January, Xerox made the bold decision to split itself into two, spinning off its business services operations into a separate company called Conduent. And Jeffrey Jacobson, a Xerox tech executive, was tapped as Xerox's new CEO. Speaking with Fortune's Susie Gharib, Jacobson says Xerox is still "one of the top patent producing companies in the world" and he's counting on that scientific expertise to pivot the company to be a leader in digital print technology. "If I look at the things we're looking at with the Internet of things, artificial intelligence and bridging the digital and physical," he says, "that's what I think we'll be known for."
I work for a local xerox core company and can say it's probably a bit low. Every small office in Iowa has at least one if not three or four printers. Over half of what gets printed ends up in the trash within a week I would bet though.
I've spent 20+ years in the transactional / EDPP print industry helping to support an operation that produces 300+M pages of output annually with equipment handling over 1400 unique pages / minute. I've debugged PostScript jobs in excess of 2GB in size and over 1M pages, and PDFs of similar scope and scale. Worked, advised, and consulted with the key leaders in the industry including Adobe, Xerox, Oce, Konika-Minolta, Kodak, HP, Xeikon. My point to the street cred is that here's what I'm seeing...
Statement print is not dead, but is slowly and steady declining. E-delivery of statements, especially through secure trusted third-party systems such as Dropbox, is enabling this transformation. The area that will continue to see print is in durable copy requirements. Right now physical media (paper, plastic, etc.) is the only one that can meet the specific needs of this industry segment. Physical print is also the only proven medium for ultra-long-term archiveability. Yes, there is millennium disc, and similar technology. However, the printed page only requires two things to interpret it - the ability to view the document in some manner (e.g. light), and knowledge on how to decode the symbology. Everything else requires more steps, and a higher level up the technology curve.
That isn't to say that we should abandon e-delivery for physical print. There are a large number of transient items that e-print is more than perfectly acceptable for - including most monthly/annual bills and statements, receipts for most items, etc. And having an electronic version for searchability just makes a lot of sense in the modern age - books, congressional bills, executive orders, etc. But, the final, unmuteable, version should be on acid-free paper or parchment.
As for packaging print - it will never die. Not until someone can deliver my Honeynut Cheerios electronically - there will still be a need for this technology.
Regarding the OP - Xerox has had two major problems... converting their lab work into sell-able items. Xerox PARC invented PostScript (which beget PDF through project Carousel at Adobe), GUI, Ethernet, and many of the other inventions that made modern technology use able. 2) They have a really, really hard time keeping their equipment up to current technology, outsourced all their engineering. Not just shipped it overseas, OUTSOURCED IT!, and refuse to let new technology cannibalize market-share from their existing installed base. For example, PostScript (initially called Interpress) was found to possibly "compete" with their LCDS and Metacode languages. Rather than add a third, they deep-sixed it. John and Chuck took it, started Adobe (name of the creek behind John's house) and it became Adobe's first product. Xerox attempted to play catch-up, but never could. Eventually LCDS, Metacode (and IBM's AFP) started to become more and more relegated to narrower and narrower workflows as PostScript and PDF have taken over the marketspace.
Good luck to Xerox in getting their cranium extricated from their arse. But, I expect them to end up much like Kodak (which invented digital photography)
Fred in IT
I remember in the mid 80's, the paperwork reduction act came along...printing went UP. Computers, have been the biggest asset to printing/copying more, as more and more data in detail is available. When the HIPPA health law came along, my volumes went UP. As long as you have lawyers & government, there WILL be paperwork. Our FM audit tracking program counts "the clicks" on all of our clients, and quarter after quarter, the volumes continue to increase. Just about every photocopier manufacturer, at one point or another has introduced "erasable" copiers. Most bomb because the cost of the toner is way out of line. What it does is melts the toner at a LOWER heat rate. The "ink" on the paper, is a blue color. To "erase" it, you run it through a separate box, about the size of a paper shredder. The "eraser" passes the paper through a special set of fuser rollers (heat & pressure), at a HIGHER temperature. It changes the dye in the ink on the page, from a blue color, to a transparent color. If you look at the paper under the correct lighting, you can see where the print was, you just cant read it. It's good for about 3-4 passes before so many layers have been deposited on the paper, that it can't add anymore through the normal copy process. It's good for "throwaway" stuff, meetings and what not, but still too expensive to make it mainstream. We have A LOT of people now, scanning and archiving store documents, but they continue to PRINT hard copies of new stuff. I really don't see "the copier" going away anytime soon, since now, most are what is known as multi function printers (MFP). Print, copy, scan, fax, email, web all from one box. And with cloud printing, you can print to the machine from your smartphone, or store it on a private box to print later, or you can pull documents remotely. Most have contactless touch to print using your phone also. On the tech side of it, we really like these new machines. We can remote into them, check error logs, remotely change settings if needed, update the software and do all sorts of things, that before, you would have to respond to the location, see what it needs, either bring a bunch of stuff with you, or make a return trip. Now you can do a lot of it right from your phone. I tell people that sometimes, I don't even get my tools out, I just plug my laptop into the machines, or, whip out my phone.