Unscripted

There is discontent in the land of content management, at least in the realm of file transfer services. Last week, WAM!NET cut 130 jobs and Printable bought out Collabria. Mergers and acquisitions within the sector have raised a few eyebrows and suspicions that management services may not be delivering what they had once touted. Whether its a question of inconsistent pricing structures or even mismanaged infrastructure, the graphics arts community is speaking out. This week, Scott Seebass sat down with PrintMedia InBox to set the record straight about ASPs, file transfer and the future of online business models.

Seebass is CEO and chief engineer of Xinet. He's been a frequent speaker at such noteworthy industry events as Seybold, MagazineTech and the Gutenberg Festival. Seebass also co-authored the "UNIX System Administration Book," now a standard university textbook in its third edition.

InBox: This week's industry news reported serious shifts in the ASP market with one major buy-out and another massive layoff. How do you account for these mergers and acquisitions within the market?

Seebass: The WAM!NET and Collabria situations are quite different. WAM!NET is the most well-funded and the most established of the ASPs, and they're pushing really hard to get to profitability, which means lowering their staff and increasing the costs of their services.

Collabria is a totally different story. They don't really have any market share, so when you're talking about Printable/Collabria, you're not talking about very many users or much market share, you're just talking about some venture-funded companies on their way out.

InBox: So six months from now, what will we see with Printable/Collabria?

Seebass: If WAM!NET, with $500 million in venture capital, can't make money in the ASP model, I don't see how these smaller, less well-funded companies are going to do it.