Xerox Corp used its new marketing facility in Manhattan to make noise about dominating the knowledge management market. The company said it is making good on the promise to make the transition to deliver networked, web-enabled digital products. In addition to adding new machines to its portfolio, Xerox boasted of an agreement with IBM Corp’s Lotus Development unit that will see its hardware integrated with Lotus Domino web server software and Lotus Notes. The two said the tie-up will give customers a unified system for scanning, electronic document management, email, messaging, fax and distributed printing. An initial version of the combined system is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of this year. While the deal may be described as strategic, it is not exclusive, as both Xerox and IBM freely admitted. In fact, IBM seemed put out that Xerox made a much bigger deal out of the announcement than it would have liked, as Big Blue went to great lengths to stress the non-exclusivity of the arrangement and the fact that there is no reseller agreement between the two companies. IBM’s attitude is well illustrated by the news that Lotus will announce a similar agreement with someone else next week. The fact that Xerox and IBM were getting together at all adds fuel to speculation that Xerox may turn out to be the buyer for IBM’s printing systems business – a sale which we hear is all but done. When asked about that, Xerox chief executive Paul Allaire broke into a wry grin and said only, I cannot comment on that…and I will not comment on that.
