Insights

The RICOH/Heidelberg alliance is a great channel expansion move for both companies. Having been a “digital print evangelist” for over 20 years, I continue to be surprised at just how many commercial print shops have little or no digital printing equipment. Even less have a cohesive digital print workflow infrastructure relying on people to manually select and submit print jobs to the right digital printer or CTP, so the potential for digital expansion is great. 
From RICOH’s perspective, this alliance would seem to give them direct access to the legions of commercial offset printers that either (still) have not embraced digital, or are currently only invested in digital to a very minor extent. From Heidelberg’s perspective, it provides a robust “on-ramp” to sell digital printers, workflow, web-to-print and digital supplies into their base – plus potential to sell offset supplies and service into RICOH commercial accounts. 
As with any partnership, the announcement is easy and longer term execution is the key to success. The potential market impact is huge and I am interested to see the actual results.

The partnerships/alliances/acquisitions announced in just the past few weeks make me wonder who will be the next combination and will all this be good or bad for our industry?

In Australia we have recently seen the unlikely but seemingly successful partnership between Kodak, Heidelberg, and Konica Minolta. 
 
I may be looking through rose coloured glasses, but I believe that it's actually about providing the best skill sets and technology to create the best solution to meet the customer's needs. 
 
Respectfully recognising knowledge and experience amongst traditional competitors should see a truly synergistic approach, allowing technology to evolve more quickly.