WhatTheyThink.com recently offered an "Inside Analysis of the Kodak and KPG Deal". This essay that follows, is an "OutsideAnalysis" of that transaction and its meaning. It seeks to place the short life of "KPG" and the long-term role of Kodak in the graphic arts business into a larger context with special emphasis on its relations with other vendors and distributors. The outside look has special value in shedding light on Kodak's latest move to acquire Creo.

An outside analysis is based on close observation over many years. It relies as much on what people on the "outside" believe, interpret and say about Kodak's operations as on what the company states officially.

The central fact of an "outside analysis" is one that Kodak has never officially acknowledged and may in fact deny. It is that Kodak is fully "back" in graphic arts. This fact has validity because an outside analysis begins with recognizing that Kodak had left. Whether Kodak ever acknowledges its past departure or records it in the official history it is a fact nonetheless because Kodak's past actions were widely interpreted as a departure. Much of the graphic arts community functioned on the basis of this as reality. And upon that perceived reality, the announcement in 2005 that Kodak is buying out all of Sun's assets in KPG has been as seen as Kodak's "coming back."