MALVERN, Pa.--May 9, 2005-- IKON Office Solutions, the world's largest independent channel for document management systems and services, today announced a collaboration with Creo Inc. to deliver the IKON PowerPro 500 print controller for the IKON CPP 500. This IKON-exclusive color system is designed to deliver high-speed, high-quality color capabilities for commercial and corporate print customers at a competitive price. "Color is not the future--color is now," said Cathy L. Lewis, senior vice president of marketing for IKON. "The demand for color solutions is growing steadily, and by aligning with Creo to develop the IKON PowerPro 500 print controller for the IKON CPP 500 color system, IKON is adding another affordable, high-quality color production solution to our robust color portfolio. This system is powered by two industry leaders--Creo and Konica Minolta--and supported by IKON's team of 7,000 service professionals worldwide, making it a great solution for production print customers." The IKON PowerPro 500 print controller is fully configured, and offers a highly intuitive interface that is designed to allow customers to easily manage complex workflows, including graphics-intensive, imposition and variable information applications. Print jobs can be run with default or custom settings, and customers can make "on-the-fly" color corrections without having to re-RIP the entire file. IKON PowerPro 500 features a 3.2 GHz Intel Pentium IV processor with hyper-threading and 1.28 GB DDR total system memory, as well as three hard disk drives. The IKON PowerPro 500 integrates with the IKON CPP 500--IKON's recently launched production color engine that builds on the success of the IKON CPP 8050 and recently received Better Buys for Business' 2005 Editor's Choice Award. Powered by Konica Minolta, the IKON CPP 500 delivers up to 50 pages per minute in both color and black-and-white, allowing corporate and commercial printers, print-for-pay shops and advertising agencies to efficiently generate short runs of full-color brochures and catalogs, professionally finished booklets, custom marketing materials, and other full-color print jobs including presentations and proposals. The IKON CPP 500 coupled with the IKON PowerPro 500 provides a best-in-class professional color solution for customers seeking the quality and versatility of the Creo and Konica Minolta technology, backed by the industry-leading sales, service and support of IKON. "Creo is pleased to bring our innovative technology to the IKON PowerPro 500," said Ronen Cohen, corporate vice president, Print-on-Demand, Creo. "This development will help enable IKON users to maximize their production with the IKON CPP 500 color system. We also look forward to expanding the market reach of our products through IKON, the world's largest independent channel for document management systems and services." "This collaboration between IKON and Creo is a great move for these two well-respected companies," said Charles A. Pesko, managing director, InfoTrends/CAP Ventures. "By teaming a Creo front-end system with IKON's CPP 500 color system, IKON customers now have access to extremely powerful digital color printing capabilities. This is another example of IKON's best-of-breed strategy, and it shows how IKON's product strategy helps open doors for its customers in growing markets such as production digital print." Professional Duplicating, a suburban Philadelphia quick-printer and IKON customer, participated in a beta test of the IKON PowerPro 500. As noted by Charlie Mikalic, art director for Professional Duplicating, "Our business is all about quick turnaround and high quality printed output. The reliability, superior print quality and superlative color of the IKON PowerPro 500 and IKON CPP 500 has met and exceeded even the most demanding requirements of our customers, enabling us to expand into applications we haven't been able to offer in the past. It's a big win for our customers as well as our business, and is setting us apart from our competitors." The IKON CPP 500 with the IKON PowerPro 500 server is scheduled to be available beginning in May 2005, and will retail for $56,000. More information on the IKON CPP 500 and the IKON PowerPro 500 can be found at http://www.ikon.com/cpp500 and www.ikon.com/powerpro500.