Printing Vendors Make Impression In SMB Market

Printing vendors are broadening their SMB product portfolios for the channel, in hopes that VARs will help them move deeper into the highly coveted and competitive market.

At its recent partner summit in Orlando, Fla., Xerox announced a new partner program for VARs looking to sell document solutions.

"With our new partner program, we're targeting a subset of the reseller community, the high-end VARs, to entice them to build out a document-solutions practice area that's broader than print management," says Jim Firestone, president of Xerox. "This subset includes both VARs that intend to build a document-solutions practice area and VARs that we've identified as candidates with the wherewithal to do so."

For resellers in the new program, Xerox will make available all of its office products, including hardware, software and services, which will double the number of products currently available to partners, Firestone says. Xerox now gives its partners access to about 25 of its printers and basic MFPs, while it sells the rest of its line either direct or through its agent channel to larger firms.

Xerox also added five new color printers to its product mix, including two multifunction models. The company now has eight color printers, priced between $350 and $1,500--products that Xerox says can find a home in either SMBs or enterprise workgroups.

"The industry tends to want to separate between the SMB and enterprise markets, but it's really separated around what you're trying to do," says David Bates, vice president of product marketing at Xerox. "SMBs that print a lot need a higher-end printer. On the other hand, many enterprise accounts that want small workgroup printers [would be better off with] one of the lower-cost products."

Among the least expensive new models is the Phaser 6180 color-laser printer, which prints 20 pages per minute in color and 26 ppm in black-and-white and costs about $500. Xerox sees this model, which sits smack in the middle of its color-printer line, as a sweet spot for SMBs because of its speed, features and low price. On the MFP side, Xerox introduced the Phaser 6115MFP, a color-laser device that prints at 5 ppm in color and 20 ppm in monochrome. It also scans, copies and faxes documents and costs about $800.

Toward the higher end of its line of office color MFPs, Xerox launched a new solid-ink model, the Phaser 8560MFP, a workgroup device that will replace the Xerox WorkCentre C424 solid-ink MFP. The 8560MFP prints at 24 ppm in monochrome and color and costs about $1,500.

Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard broadened its product line for SMBs with several new ink-based models, and fired up its marketing engines to change the perception that ink-based printers aren't suitable for small businesses.

Among the new products are three single-function printers and three multi-function models, including the HP Officejet Pro L7000 All-in-One printer, which prints at 10 ppm in color and 12 ppm in black-in-white, and also scans, faxes and copies. Pricing starts at $300.

That speed is comparable to that of low-end color-laser printers, an area in which HP is hoping to dispel negative perceptions. The vendor also says it has reduced the cost per page to 6 cents for color, which compares favorably to laser printers in the same class. The printers also use new HP ink and paper supplies that enable the ink to dry quicker.

HP is not positioning the ink printers to entirely substitute laser products for all SMBs, as laser products are more suited for heavier printing volumes. They're also more geared for usage on sophisticated networks and offer more advanced remote supplies-monitoring capabilities, resulting in less user intervention, HP says.

"HP has a distinct advantage if it can convince small businesses to use ink," says Camille Iorns, senior research analyst of printing markets at Gartner. "They own that technology."