InfoPrint Solutions Drives Color Printing Adoption to Mid-Market

BOULDER, CO—January 27, 2009—InfoPrint Solutions Co., a joint venture between IBM and Ricoh, today announced it is launching its high-speed digital color cutsheet solution for the mid-market, the InfoPrint Pro C900. This adds to its portfolio of digital color printers driving the continual growth of color across enterprises of all sizes.

The InfoPrint Pro C900 is ideal for commercial printers, data centers and in-plant customers with monthly volumes of 50,000 to 240,000 pages. This new color printer fills a gap between larger continuous forms production machines and smaller volume cutsheet solutions, opening up high quality color capability to a new customer segment. The InfoPrint Pro C900 will produce a wide variety of output, including Print on Demand (POD) manuals and books. It will also enable marketing initiatives like direct mail and TransPromo; which involve printing personalized communications, such as statements and bills.

The InfoPrint Pro C900 is currently in beta testing across several sites, including the French commercial printer d'Haussy, a direct mail specialist.

“We are looking to help our clients drive value from every communication with their customers, and the InfoPrint Pro C900 is the next step in enabling us to do just that,” said M. Roquette, CEO of d'Haussy. “Not only can we now bring extra value to our own customers, we have a future proof solution that will allow us to be more flexible.”

Initial shipments of the printer-only version are available in North America and EMEA* on February 13, 2009 with additional countries to follow. The multifunctional printer (MFP) version of the InfoPrint Pro C900 will be available in the second quarter 2009 with additional finishing options. Pricing is available upon request. Customers will also benefit from the support of InfoPrint’s global maintenance and services teams, designed to enable consistently maintained and available print operations. InfoPrint has more than 1,000 service and maintenance specialists in 36 territories around the world.

“The InfoPrint Pro C900 is poised for growth in a product category where InfoTrends expects to see significant activity. This category will experience a combined compound annual growth rate of over 40 percent according to InfoTrends’ U.S. and Western European unit forecasts,” according to Jim Hamilton Group Director of InfoTrends' On Demand Printing & Publishing Consulting Service.

“Adding color has traditionally been out of reach for many businesses, due to higher associated costs and larger runs needed to use color production machines. Yet it is proven to capture audience attention and increase response rate of marketing materials,” said Paul Preo, Director, Workgroup/Cutsheet Solutions at InfoPrint. “The InfoPrint Pro C900 underlines our core focus, which is to enable the creation of dynamic digital output to bring our customers business advantage. We do this by combining the latest technology innovations with high-end professional services support, with a keen eye on the overall cost of operations, vital in today’s economic climate.”

The InfoPrint Pro C900 has a variety of finishing and software options for complex project management including:

• Flexible functionality to optimize operations including scanner and copying options on the MFP model, the InfoPrint Pro C900s

• Ease of use for imposition, make ready, and composition tools

• Expanded input and output capacity with volumes up to 11,000 pages input and 13,000 pages output – allowing for long unattended production runs of larger jobs, aimed at increasing overall profitability and productivity

• Variable output settings permitting users to handle jobs on media of different weights. Rated speed via air assist maintains print speeds, even with heavy stock

• Printing speeds up to 90 impressions per minute (ipm)** in both full color and monochrome

• Increased productivity settings to maximize continuous runs such as on-the-fly toner and paper change, and Customer Replaceable Units, a new program offering skilled operator replaceable parts which minimizes downtime

• An extensive array of feed and finishing options for highly flexible operations and output formats

• State-of-the-art color management features for end-to-end color reproduction accuracy via a truly specified powerful 1200 DPI engine. This produces an outstanding range of colors, spot color, soft proofing and laser-sharp printing

• Technical support from InfoPrint’s team of integration specialists, offering the benefits of InfoPrint’s color heritage to mid-range customers

For more information on the InfoPrint Pro C900, please visit www.infoprint.com.

*The EMEA countries include Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK.

**Exact speed varies depending on document complexity, system configuration, software application, driver and printer state.

About InfoPrint Solutions Co.
InfoPrint Solutions Company, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, is a joint venture between IBM and Ricoh built on IBM’s nearly 50 years in the production print space and Ricoh’s excellence in technology innovation. Together, the two companies are bringing to market a portfolio that includes solutions for production printing for enterprises and commercial printers, as well as office workgroup environments and industrial segments.

Operating in 36 countries worldwide, InfoPrint holds more than 200 technology patents in the printing and output related industry including the invention of the Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) Architecture, which is a de-facto industry standard for production printing environments. In 2010, InfoPrint will become a fully owned subsidiary of The Ricoh Company, joining an extensive portfolio of innovative technology brands in the Ricoh family. Ricoh Company Ltd., is 72-year-old leading supplier of office automation equipment and electronics, with fiscal year 2007 sales in excess of $22 billion, a 7.3 percent increase over the previous year.

Visit www.infoprint.com for more information.