Heidelberg

Tucked away in Upstate New York, 40-year-old Brodock Press has gone from a reclamation project to one of the leading commercial printers in the Northeast. BY ERIK CAGLE Lost in all the hype surrounding Broadway, the Statue of Liberty and even Jerry Seinfeld, lies a New York that is largely unheralded, dwarfed by the image of the Big Apple. Upstate New York, with its rolling hills, mountains and more than a few lakes, is as majestic and breathtaking as any site in the city of concrete and steel. Perhaps Utica, NY-based printer Brodock Press was also a victim of its environment—tucked far, far away

The sea of e-commerce companies is expanding; Seybold Boston was wired, so to speak, to the Internet. printCafe, a new Internet endeavor, captured the most attention at the Boston show last month, but so did new digital workflows, color management tools and Adobe's latest—a bridge for PDF. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Walking into Seybold Boston last month it seemed almost unbelievable that the words Internet and startup are still synonymous. Everywhere you looked, it was dotcom this, dotcom that—if you stood still too long, you were at serious risk of finding a dotcom appearing after your last name on your Seybold badge. Then

You gotta love America. Only here could Bill Gates be watching almost idly as the Justice Department prepares to dismantle his empire just as changes in information technology were about to do it for him. Ironically, while Microsoft is about to be broken up into two or three pieces, just about every other industry seems to be moving toward larger and larger conglomerates in search of so-called synergies. That the payoffs are few and far between doesn't seem to dampen anyone's enthusiasm—and certainly not that of the investment bankers and corporate lawyers that put these deals together. Of course, this has been going on for some

Dozens of strategic meetings, several industry-wide rumors and (give or take) $537 million later, Vancouver-based Creo buys the worldwide digital prepress business of Scitex. How will this change the computer-to-plate market? What does this mean for Scitex digital prepress devices? Creo Vice President David Brown is the answer man. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO There are times in the commercial printing industry, specifically in the area of digital prepress, when breaking news tends to be slow. Manufacturers are quiet; there is nothing notable to report...business as usual. Then, Creo buys Scitex. Not completely out of left field but, still, in its own right, a

Welcome to the fifth annual Printing Impressions ranking of the 50 print vendors at the top of the color on-demand printing market. The rankings were determined by 1999 annual sales figures, as reported by the companies themselves. 1. XYAN.COMKing of Prussia, PA(610) 992-7100Total Annual Sales: $62,500,000% of Sales From On-demand: 60Principal Officer: Alan BelyeaPlants: 47Employees: 735 Year Founded: 1994Digital Printing Devices: Canon CLC 1000 (2); Xerox DocuColor 12 (34); Xerox DocuColor 40 (8); Xerox DocuColor 70 (1); Xerox DocuColor 100 (1); Xerox DocuTech 135 (5); Xerox DocuTech 6180 (16)Capabilities/Servicess: Digital file transfer; Distribute and print; Distribution and fulfillment; Internet server; Large-format output 2. BPS

The flood gates are open—digital presses for commercial printers are no longer one size fits all. There are enough devices to tempt the commercial printing community. From the zealous prepress provider to the comprehensive of one-stop printing operations: Specialization is the new mandate for the digital press in on-demand printing, variable or not. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Quick. What is a prime directive of the best of the best commercial printers when it comes to exploring new digital technologies for print? Be receptive to embrace emerging digital printing technologies? Be proactive with contemporary and unique marketing initiatives to promote new digital

Digital prepress houses are recognizing the need to diversify and invest in additional value-added services. Topping the list, for some, is on-demand digital printing. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO In February 1994, William Staar found himself on the cover of Printing Impressions magazine. At that time, Staar was a strategic influence in his family's $7.3 million digital prepress firm. The company, Noral Color, which has since been purchased by a larger graphic arts service provider, was co-founded by Staar's father, Norman Staar. In 1994, William Staar represented a new breed of commercial printing executive. He was powered by the intrinsic desire to modernize. He was

BY ERIK CAGLE Selling paper for the on-demand digital printing environment is even more lucrative than hawking millennium wares. But long after the last can of Spam has been devoured from Y2K survival kits, the market for digital printing grades will be bustling. The growth of digital printing, a process that envelopes entire workflows, has been well-documented, and paper mills and their distributors are continuously jockeying to reap the benefits of this constantly growing niche. Choices abound, calling for a sophisticated and calculated approach to choosing the bread for your digital printing butter. So many choices, so seemingly little difference among them. Robert Hieronymus, market manager

Sandy Alexander has forged a reputation as an upscale, high-end printer, which continues to grow through present investments and future acquisitions. BY ERIK CAGLE Let's face it, Sandy Alexander may not be for everyone when it comes time to choose a commercial printer. Roy Grossman, president of the company, admits as much. The primary reason is as simple as asking this question: Would you go to a five-star restaurant for a burger, fries and cola? "We operate within the 20 percent of the commercial market that's considered high-end color," notes Grossman of the Clifton, NJ-based company, which has a sister plant in St. Petersburg,

Most of us in printing use relational database technology for accounting and production files. Job-cost and general-ledger files we keep in relational tables; transaction processing is what we do. That's cool, but industry is zipping by us, leveraging data to make critical decisions. Printers are living in the days of OLTP: Online Transaction Processing. But the world around us is moving into variants of OLAP: Online Analytical Processing technology. Let me use a personal example to illustrate. I've maintained a database of web printers for nine years. It's a "relational" database consisting of four tables or files. Table One is for companies. Each company