Drupa--Direct Imaging Takes Center Stage

"We believe we've really become the output to e-business," noted IBM's Bill McCracken, a statement echoed by vendors everywhere.

Offset king Heidelberg—which moved into digital printing last year with the black-and-white Digimaster 9110—went a step farther at Drupa and introduced a digital color printer, the NexPress 2100. MAN Roland teamed up with Xeikon to market, sell and service Xeikon digital color printing systems under the MAN Roland name. And in a similar category-crossing vein, Xerox showed off a direct imaging offset press, which used its DigiPath software.