Xerox: The New Color of Money

You’ve saved a company from near bankruptcy. You’ve eliminated billions of dollars in debt. So what do you do for an encore? In Xerox’s case, you bang on R&D’s door and demand a product that can disrupt the traditional printer market–and you talk about real revenue and profit growth. It all sounds so simple. And the strategy just may work — if a new color printing technology from Xerox lives up to its billing.

For about a month or two now, The VAR Guy has been hearing about Xerox’s plans to introduce a new solid ink printer that delivers vibrant colors for the same — or nearly the same — cost as traditional black-and-white print systems. Sure, the acquisition costs for this new color technology would involve a slight price premium. But the ongoing costs of this color technology, Xerox insiders told The VAR Guy, would be about the same as black-and-white alternatives.

Sound too good to be true? Perhaps not. BusinessWeek has a rather interesting take on Xerox’s “color at the price of black-and-white” strategy. And earlier this week, The VAR Guy saw Xerox officials at the MSP Alliance conference in San Jose. Combining cost-effective color printers with managed services could generate a win-win for solutions providers.

Still, linking printers to managed services isn’t a unique strategy. Just about every printer company is pursuing that type of initiative. The big differentiator for Xerox could be the company’s solid ink technology, which the company acquired in 1999. Fast forward eight years, and Xerox appears ready to roll out a disruptive technology that could shake up the printer market.