Xerox Sees Few Conflicts With Integrator Purchase

Xerox's president for North America said he sees little potential for conflict between its solution providers and Global Imaging Systems, the integrator it expects to take over next month in a $1.5 billion acquisition.

In an interview at the AIIM/On Demand conference in Boston, Jim Firestone also said he believes Xerox solution providers could wind up serving some of the existing 200,000 accounts from the Global Imaging Systems part of the business once the deal closes. The Stamford, Conn.-based document company recently launched a new initiative with the channel to open up its entire office product line in a major push toward growing sales into small and midsize business customers.

Firestone noted that Global Imaging has 21 "core companies," and many of them have served the traditional copier/office products segment -- a largely different segment than Xerox's traditional agents and the newer IT solution provider channel it has been working to build.

Global Imaging has also not carried Xerox products before, focusing on reselling products from Konica Minolta, Ricoh and other competitors. Firestone said that once Xerox brings Global Imaging Systems into its fold as a wholly owned subsidiary, conflicts would be minimal because its focus market has been different than Xerox's existing channel.

"The issue of channel conflict, in my mind, is when you have the same value proposition being offered by too many," Firestone said.

In addition, Firestone said, Xerox solution providers would be free to compete for accounts now maintained by Global Imaging. "If they've got a better value proposition for a customer [than Global], a customer could move," Firestone said.

At the AIIM/On Demand conference, Xerox announced the rollout of a series of new, high-end production printers and other products, including the Xerox Nuvera EA Digital Production System and the Xerox Nuvera 288 Digital Perfecting System for high-volume, black-and-white printing, new digital copier/printers and new DocuColor and WorkCentre MFPs.

In addition, the company began touting its new Extensible Interface Platform, which allows developers to add customized applications into Xerox's hardware interface for functions like printing on a system directly from Mapquest, or for custom solutions for vertical markets like insurance or law.