Tokyo and Palo Alto, Calif. -- Canon Inc. and HP today announced an expanded alliance to jointly market and distribute a new range of multifunction office systems that unite the best of both companies: Canon's leading multifunction devices and HP's enterprise printing and imaging assets.

The alliance builds on an established relationship between Canon and HP, and positions the companies to offer customers a new class of web-enabled solutions that combine Canon's superior multifunction device processing and imaging systems with HP's leading device manageability, IT integration and office workflow capabilities. With the broader range of software and service offerings supported by EDS, an HP company, along with Managed Print Services from HP and Canon's global Services and Support offerings, enterprise customers now have access to one of the most complete offerings in the industry, delivering improved efficiencies and greater cost savings.

This alliance includes current and future product portfolios from both companies, providing customers greater fleet compatibility across their entire office printing infrastructures. Canon and HP also will benefit from access to each other's management and third-party development software portfolios, including Canon imageWARE Enterprise Management Console and Canon MEAP as well as HP Web Jetadmin and the HP Open Extensibility Platform. The expanded portfolio of products and services is expected to be available to customers in North America and Europe, as well as global customers from these regions.

"Through this new alliance with HP, we look forward to bringing the advantages of Canon's high-versatility, high-performance multifunction products to an expanded user base," said Masaki Nakaoka, managing director and chief executive, Office Imaging Products Operations, Canon Inc. "We expect this will maximize benefits for both companies' customers while also paving the way to increased growth for both Canon and HP."

"HP has long been an industry leader with a portfolio of products, software, services and solutions that enable enterprise customers worldwide to improve their imaging and printing efficiencies without compromising the reliability, quality or professionalism of their documents," said David Murphy, senior vice president, Imaging and Printing Group, HP. "In growing our relationship with Canon to offer customers value-added and more holistic IT solutions, we are confident organizations will enhance productivity with their imaging and printing and overall business workflow needs."