Where the Growth Is

Times are tough, but there is growth to be found for the print industry. One bright spot is print on demand.

According to CAP Ventures, the print-on-demand (POD) market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14% between now and 2006, amounting to a $50.5 billion market. This fast growing market includes corporate and commercial printers, publishers, quick printers and service bureaus.

IBM is leveraging its understanding of document management, production and presentation to enhance its solutions for each of these business sectors.

As printing operations move out of the back office, IBM's products and services enable content-driven applications, including sales and marketing, product literature and documentation, human resources and training, books, corporate communications and advertising, to be customized and produced on-demand.

Digital technology is enabling us to print anything at any time. It is also allowing us to digitize nearly every form of content imaginable, and create new forms of content never seen before.

Companies now have the ability to optimize business output, whether print, fax, e-mail, Web or the Internet. No matter what form the output takes, the content side will be managed as electronic files.

It's all about choices. Whether readers sample a book electronically and then order a single hard copy, or customize a book to their exact needs, it is new content management technology that's opening up these possibilities.

At IBM, we're building on the success of these new technologies, and addressing the marriage of information and printing. We're looking beyond hardware, and providing companies with tools to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs.

For example, IBM Printing Systems' Infoprint Workflow and Infoprint Manager provides a single print management solution to automate and control the total output management process.