A Look at Printing in 2010

This time the first investments I'm seeing are not replacements, but rather new capabilities to improve productivity or to create new opportunities. In-plants are investing in digital color to bring work back in-house and save money. Commercial printers are also investing in digital color, as well as in automated workflows, to efficiently capture new jobs that weren't winnable or profitable before. Everyone has either invested in Web-to-print and online storefronts or is seriously figuring out how to do so in order to fend off their competition and to reach more customers. And much of the current interest is in personalization, PURLs and variable data printing—although investment decisions in this area are lagging.