Less noise in New Zealand. Easier to get the signal.

The thing that's cool about New Zealand is that they are much closer to another engine of global economic growth - Asia. Unfortunately, I can't read either Japanese or Chinese and Google translate is not quite there yet. But in New Zealand and Australia they write in English!

From The Enterprise Ground to the Cloud to . . . Print . . . to the Ground.

In short, HP is moving from being a printer company to being a printing company, he says.

Computerworld > New technologies reengineer printing: "Richard Bailey, South Pacific vice president of Hewlett-Packard’s imaging and printing group (IPG), says the market is now defined by pages rather than units and HP is on a journey to find out how big the market for pages is. In short, HP is moving from being a printer company to being a printing company, he says.

Using the term Print 2.0, Bailey outlines a vision of “print on demand” that embraces the web as a channel to make printing more accessible, customisable and less expensive. The vision includes workflows and storage, and embraces small enterprises as well as corporates. As such, printing now becomes an IT discussion as much as a printing one, he says."

Meanwhile, Ricoh says,

For Ricoh, software is becoming key to its customer discussions as well. Managing director Michael Pollok says information is moved in a range of formats and people want quick and easy access to that information at all times, and on a wide range of devices.

“Our role is to provide the tools to create, distribute, store and retrieve information anytime,” he says. “At some point that might be sent to print. If we provide the tools that enable management, there’s a good chance that will be to a Ricoh device.”

And Fuji Xerox weighs in with

While Fuji Xerox’s Murray Miskelly (see below ‘Staying up with the play’) says few New Zealand businesses can afford to run their own in-house print shops, Ricoh’s Pollok says that is changing. Lower cost devices are allowing some to consider insourcing their billing runs, while some are overcoming such costs by sharing facilities.

For Fuji Xerox, redefining workflows and enabling analysis of printing use and costs is also a key driver of business. Rod Vickers, solutions product marketing manager, Fuji Xerox New Zealand, says the effort is designed to help businesses “fine-tune” what is printed within the business.