AT&T and Xerox Announce Market Trial Aimed at Making Distributed Printing As Easy as Making a Phone Call Crestec Los Angeles, Inc., Moore Corporation, Sir Speedy, Stream International, Inc., Unisys and Xerographic Reproduction Centers (XRC) Plan to Participate in Market Trial.NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 21, 1995--AT&T and Xerox Corporation (company) XEROX Corporation - http://xerox.com/. See also XEROX PARC, XEROX Network Services. today announced a market trial of a new network-based printing service that lets businesses deliver documents in multiple sites electronically and have them professionally printed, bound and finished on demand. At the time of the announcement, Crestec Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. , Inc., Sir Speedy, Unisys Corporation (company) Unisys Corporation - The company formed in 1984-5 when Burroughs Corporation merged with Sperry Corporation. This was when the phrase "dinosaurs mating" was coined. and Xerographic xe·rog·ra·phy n. A dry photographic or photocopying process in which a negative image formed by a resinous powder on an electrically charged plate is electrically transferred to and thermally fixed as positive on a paper or other copying surface. Reproduction Centers (XRC XRC Exeter Resource Corporation (stock symbol) XRC XML-Based Resource System XRC Xport Robot Controller XRC X-Ray Crystallography XRC Exact Reals in C XRC Extended Remote Copying (IBM) ) have signed contracts to become the first market trial customers. Moore Corporation and Stream International, Inc. also have indicated that they will participate in the market trial. Agreements are pending with those two companies. The market trial service is a combination of AT&T Network Demand Printing (NDP NDP New Democratic Party (Canada) NDP National Development Plan (Republic of Ireland) NDP National Development Plan NDP National Democratic Party (Barbados) ) Service and Xerox Distributed Print on Demand (XDPOD) technologies. The market trial is the latest step in a cooperative effort announced last year by AT&T and Xerox to create a cost effective distributed print-on-demand service that is easy to access and use. Printers, publishers, and corporate reproduction centers facing cost and short time-to-market pressures are expected to be the first customers for the service. During the market trial, AT&T and XEROX will evaluate the most appropriate pricing structures and service functions and features, such as security, storage and archival requirements, and status-checking to best meet a variety of customer needs. Upon successful completion of the market trial, the service is expected to be generally available in the first quarter of 1996. Customer Benefits Companies that use the service will benefit from reduced warehousing and shipping costs, faster delivery of documentation when and where it's needed, and fewer documents becoming obsolete or outdated. "Instead of a 'one-to-one' scenario, we provide an easy solution for distributing documents in a 'one-to-many' scenario," said Jim Cosgrove, vice president and general manager of AT&T's Business Multimedia Services. For smaller companies and commercial printers, this new service provides access to a state-of-the-art image network without requiring an investment in private network infrastructure. "In essence customers 'rent' the technology and expertise without investing the time, money and people usually required to reap the benefits of an end-to-end solution (jargon) end-to-end solution - (E2ES) A term that suggests that the supplier of an application program or system will provide all the hardware and/or software components and resouces to meet the customer's requirement and no other supplier need be involved. Compare: turn-key solution. ," said John Lopiano, president, Xerox Production Systems division. To use the service, businesses use Xerox-developed software to send print-ready files to the AT&T network, select destination sites, and specify printing and finishing parameters such as tabs, covers or saddle stitching saddle stitch n. 1. A simple overcasting stitch, usually of a thread contrasting in color with the fabric, used primarily as ornament on clothing. 2. . At the press of a button, documents are printed on Xerox print on demand devices where and when the documents are needed and in the quantities required. The service is specially designed for intermittent (bursty Refers to data that is transferred or transmitted in short, uneven spurts. LAN traffic is typically bursty. Contrast with streaming data. ) image traffic. AT&T's data network will store files waiting to be sent, route them to the requested destinations, verify that the sender has permission to access these destinations, and notify the sender of the status of the print job at each destination point. Because of the pay-as-you-use cost and network structure of this new service, quick printers and commercial printers will benefit because it allows them to offer additional services to existing customers and reach customers located outside their geographical area. For example, once a number of quick-printer locations are linked, customers can walk into their nearest location with a disk or hard copy in hand and quickly, easily and at an affordable cost send the document in minutes to be professionally printed, bound and finished on state-of-the-art Xerox DocuTech Network Publishers and eventually other print-on-demand devices located across the U.S. In addition, publishers can move jobs electronically among editorial, graphics, pre-press and their printers to reduce production time. Market Potential According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. State Street Consultants, a Boston-based consulting firm Noun 1. consulting firm - a firm of experts providing professional advice to an organization for a fee consulting company business firm, firm, house - the members of a business organization that owns or operates one or more establishments; "he worked for a specializing in printing, publishing and communications industries communications industry, broadly defined, the business of conveying information. Although communication by means of symbols and gestures dates to the beginning of human history, the term generally refers to mass communications. , 130 billion of the pages currently printed on offset presses in the U.S. are eligible for distributed print-on-demand in 1995. This figure is projected to grow to 205 billion pages by the year 2000. Market Trial Customers Crestec Los Angeles, Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of a global document engineering company, views the AT&T and Xerox service as a major breakthrough in the development of a domestic and, eventually, global, distributed printing infrastructure. "Our customers have U.S. and global document distribution requirements and these services will enhance our ability to meet those requirements," said Les Krzyzanowski, president of Crestec. Moore Corporation, a global leader in delivering information handling products and services, plans to use the new service to complement the existing capabilities of its digital print network. "Moore's ability to distribute and print documents for our customers when and where they are needed, in the exact quantity needed will be enhanced by this offering and help us satisfy our customers' increasing need for electronic document transmission," said George Gillmore, president of the Business Systems division of Moore The Division of Moore is an Australian electoral division in the state of Western Australia. Eligible voters within the Division elect a single representative, known as the member for Moore, to the Australian House of Representatives. . Sir Speedy, a franchiser of printing, copying, and digital network centers with more than 780 locations, initially plans to provide destination sites for the market trial. "We expect to offer the service to our customers who need documents quickly printed and shipped to various locations," said Don Lowe, president of Sir Speedy, Inc. Stream International Inc., an independent subsidiary of R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, considers this new service offered by AT&T and Xerox as a pivotal element in its strategy for distributed print-on-demand. As the world's largest manufacturer, replicator See port replicator. replicator - Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this could be a living organism, an idea (see meme), a program (see quine, worm, wabbit, fork bomb, and virus), a pattern in a cellular automaton (see life), or (speculatively) a robot or and reseller An organization that sells hardware and software to the general public. Resellers purchase products from software publishers and hardware manufacturers. of software, Stream is developing a range of electronic distribution solutions for its worldwide customers, primarily software publishers and Fortune 1000 companies. "This new service will support Stream's mission to electronically deliver the latest, most accurate intellectual property to the point of need in the form that the end user requires," said Rory Cowan, chairman of Stream. Unisys, a major information management company providing information services See Information Systems. and technology in 100 countries, plans to use the service to distribute technical documentation, handbooks, and parts catalogs Noun 1. parts catalog - a list advertising parts for machinery along with prices parts catalogue catalogue, catalog - a complete list of things; usually arranged systematically; "it does not pretend to be a catalog of his achievements" from their high-tech printing facility in Plymouth, Michigan Plymouth is a city in Wayne County of the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 9,022 at the 2000 census. The city is located within Plymouth Township, but is politically independent. , to their facilities in Blue Bell, Pa., Salt Lake City and other sites yet to be determined. "We expect to reduce shipping costs and delivery times. We see the ability to easily add destination sites as a key benefit to the service," said Philip Abraham, manager of Electronic Storage and Retrieval Systems for the Software and Publications Manufacturing Division. Xerographic Reproduction Centers, a Manhattan-based printer serving many large corporate and international customers, sees the new solution as a positive alternative to the Internet for document distribution. "We're participating because of the security, reliability and additional services this solution offers as a part of the total solution," said XRC president Roger Gimbel. He expects to use the new solution to exchange print-ready files with customers and affiliated commercial printers both nationally and worldwide. How it Works Users will send a job in the form of a job ticket that will indicate the destination sites and finishing requirements to the network via an easy-to-use interface. The network stores the job, sends notification to the destination sites that a job is waiting. Destination sites access the network, download the job using the same interface and then prepare and produce the job using Xerox DocuTech Network Printers. The service includes Xerox DPOD DPOD Digital Print on Demand DPOD Disaster Personnel Operations Division (FEMA) DPOD Dynamic Ports on Demand DPOD Dual Power Output Driver , the interface software developed by Xerox using AT&T's application programming interfaces which allow Xerox customers to connect its DocuTech family of printers to the AT&T NDP Service. Trial pricing will be on a transaction and usage basis. "We anticipate that many more companies will incorporate the 'distribute then print' concept in their processes," said Lopiano. "It's an ideal method of distributing newsletters, technical documentation, sales proposals, schematics and training materials," he added. Additionally, AT&T offers a secure, reliable network and provides the technical expertise to engineer, administer, upgrade and expand the network's capacity. "We expect to change the way documents are printed and distributed by making it easy, fast, flexible and cost-effective," Cosgrove said. AT&T is the world's networking leader, providing communications services and products, as well as network equipment an computer systems, to businesses, consumers, telecommunications services In telecommunication, the term telecommunications service has the following meanings: 1. Any service provided by a telecommunication provider. 2. providers and government agencies. The Document Company, Xerox is the leader in providing world-class document processing Processing text documents, which includes indexing methods for text retrieval based on content. See document imaging. products, systems and services. Xerox copiers, duplicators, electronic printers, optical scanners See scanner. , facsimile machines, networks, digital publishing machines and related products, software and supplies are marketed in more than 130 countries. CONTACT: Janet Stone Lawrence F. Vogel AT&T Xerox Corporation 908/234-7615 office 716-383-7948 office 201/543-2922 home 716/461-0264 home janetstone@attmail.com 716/721-9311 cellular lfv.roch817@xerox.com |
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