The Death of "Kaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhnnnn...!"

Khan Noonien Singh and Corinthian leather...

Ricardo Montalban, TV Star and Chrysler Pitchman, Dies at 88-

Detroit - 30 below, 10 inches of snow, mayor in jail, Lions the biggest losers in NFL history, auto plants shuttering everywhere, GM "Generous Motors" begging the likes of Barney Frank for money, and now, Cordoba's biggest fan passes.

Forever aboard the Reliant surfing the Genesis Effect...

Konica Minolta Diving Head First Into MPS - Make that OPS

Press Release

ORLANDO, Fla. - (Business Wire) 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 its Optimized Print Services (OPS) program, an innovative new managed print services offering that saves customers time and money by revolutionizing how they manage their printers assets.

The fully customized one-stop print services solution – part of the Konica Minolta Business Intelligence Services initiative – is an effective strategy designed to help customers better monitor, measure and manage printers and Multifunctional Products (MFPs). The OPS program enables organizations to be far more efficient by:

* Fully controlling their entire printing environment
* Conserving resources and ongoing maintenance costs
* Streamlining unknown costs associated with all MFPs, All-in-Ones (AIOs), and printers throughout an organization

Historically printers have been viewed as an IT-sourced product while MFPs have been sourced through procurement or administrative functions within the company. This often results in higher costs and unnecessary strain on IT helpdesk.

Konica Minolta uses a range of assessment tools to fully understand volume, typical and peak usage patterns and sources of print within an organization, then develops a strategy to maximize the efficiency of print devices being used.

“At a time when organizations around the globe are tightening their belts and are faced with deep economic challenges, Konica Minolta’s Optimized Print Services program not only reduces total cost of ownership, but allows customers to get the most mileage out of each of their printing assets,” said Rick Taylor, Senior Executive Vice President and COO, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. Inc. “With the introduction of OPS, we are making printing as seamless as possible so that our customers can focus on their core business goals.”

The OPS program, driven largely by customer demand, leverages the opt-WORKFLOW model to provide all necessary services required to control output costs based on business needs. The four modules that comprise opt-WORKFLOW are as follows:

* opt-MONITOR assesses your current printing environment, provides timely proactive maintenance and ongoing assessment and optimization.

* opt-ANALYZE creates a cost-per-print plan covering consumables and service;

* opt-VISUALIZE develops a road map to replace outdated or inefficient hardware;

* opt-MANAGE gives better control of print routing.

The OPS offering is geared toward organizations that use several printers and MFPs on their network. Managed completely by Konica Minolta, customers can choose to leverage part or all of the new program modules as Konica Minolta will service and manage printers both from Konica Minolta and other vendors. Konica Minolta’s OPS program leverages web-based management tools, automated supply replacement, customer support and service in one unified program. Proactive maintenance is delivered and supported by Konica Minolta’s team of certified technicians.

The OPS offering, a key initiative under Konica Minolta Business Intelligence Services (BIS) provides customers with a predictable cost structure for printing that assists organizations in making better business decisions. The BIS initiative, which consists of a broad range of professional services, hardware and software solutions, identifies and creates cost-effective solutions using both Konica Minolta’s own products and products from a range of solutions partners. Konica Minolta has a dedicated BIS team in place that offers innovative thinking to transform advanced technology into a simple plan of action.

Additionally, OPS makes conservation a top priority as it enables companies to use entire toner cartridges until empty, thus reducing the amount of waste. As part of its commitment to the environment, Konica Minolta’s recycling program prevents cartridge materials from ending up in landfills, recycling all of the returned cartridge.

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Welcome to the party.

Zogby Poll Shows People Think Printing Color is a Luxury

Duh...

In a very well crafted "Social Network Release"(here) from Xerox some of the results, in actuality four points, from a Zogby poll are embedded among marketing puffery.

Xerox doesn't come out and say that the Zogby poll reflects the Phaser as a cost effective alternative, but to the untrained or unaware eye, the post "feels" like Zugby respondents prefer the Phaser.

There is even a quote at the end of the post, praising the ease of use, excellent quality and crediting the color printer with "winning quite a few more bids" - I guess the Death of The Sales Person hit the catering business first.

Regardless, here are the stats from the Zogby poll, as filtered by Xerox:

-More than half of the 2,100 respondents (53%) said they think printing in color is a luxury.

-More than one third of respondents said the expense (35%) is the main reason they did not print more in color, and four out of five (82%) said they would be somewhat or very likely to print in color if it cost the same as black and white.

-Two in five respondents (39%) did not recognize the ROI value of printing in color – they strongly or somewhat disagreed that they spend time thinking about the places in their documents where color would give them more of a ROI.

-About one-quarter of respondents said they most frequently print presentations/PowerPoint documents (28%) or those with graphs (25%) in color.