Discussion

By Bob Raus on Feb 01, 2018

Good to see a series of balanced articles here. There is good potential and also many cultural, technical, and marketing challenges ahead. Not an easy road. Jeff has the skills and talent to lead it. The question for me is if he can rebuild a culture of innovation, excitement, and vision to energize a deflated organization while attracting new talent across marketing, sales, service and engineering.

By Henry Freedman on Feb 01, 2018

FujiXerox did not have much of a choice if it wanted to continue sales and service in the vast areas of the original Xerox's responsibility. Significant challanges face them for a retool and strengthening in these areas. Many knowledgeable people have left Xerox for their adversaries. The great science and engineering teams of Xerox are gone and at best significantly diminished now.
The speed to get Xerox's smaller format production inkjet systems to market will be very telling now.

By Peter Crean on Feb 03, 2018

As a retired 40+ year Xeroid, I am relieved to see Jacobson and Fujifilm rescue the company from the two raiders - Icahn and Deason. I left right after the ACS purchase when the hollowing-out of old Xerox had begun as management moved from print to services and the exodus, which had been going on for five years, really ramped up.

I worked closely with Fuji Xerox for 20 years and developed many friendships and great respect for their people. I also did a few joint projects with Fujifilm. But the constraints on open sharing between companies grew greater as time went on, making joint work harder and less efficient than it may have appeared from the outside. And many folks considered members of the other companies to be enemies more than partners, compounding the obvious cultural differences. These issues grew as more FX products displaced Xerox-developed products and when Fujifilm took a stronger hand in FX after they increased their ownership from 50 to 75%.

I believe that forming this partnership NOW is the best and probably only hope for Xerox and should be a very good deal for Fujifilm and Fuji Xerox in the current marketplace. I buy the "Better Together" slogan used by Xerox to sell the merger to employees and customers. There is a considerable commerce between the three companies today which will help in what will be a gigantic organizational and integration challenge for the management and workforces of all three companies. But recent hard times at Xerox and FX should have lowered some of the barriers.

I hope it will be a great adventure for my friends at the new Fuji Xerox (Xerox + Fuji Xerox).