A trip to Paris can be a wonderful experience, but hosting a business event in France can also be a gamble these days due to the strikes that have affected transport services. Luckily, this gamble paid off for Canon as the company held its 2010 Canon Expo Europe in Paris. Despite the strikes, this event attracted nearly 14,000 attendees in 3 days. Once every five years, Canon holds its expo for customers, prospects, dealers, and press members in the major geographies. A U.S. event was held in New York City in the beginning of September, and this was followed up with the Paris event in mid-October.

　　Some of the products and technology demonstrations (including the imagePRESS concept printer with a clear coating station) were shown during the New York event. These were covered in an InfoTrends analysis published in September.

　　During the Paris event, the expanded presence of Océ products was quite noticeable. Canon showcased the VarioPrint 6230 Ultra and also announced plans to begin selling this product line in Europe (servicing responsibilities will remain with Océ). Another highlight included the JetStream 1000, but Océ will remain the sole channel for the ultra high-volume segment of continuous feed printers. The Canon Expo Europe event was designed to encourage and improve sales cooperation between Canon and Océ, highlight Canon’s distribution of Océ’s portfolio, and create additional leads for these products. Canon also showcased its imageRUNNER ADVANCE C9075 PRO and imageRUNNER 8105 PRO (which Océ recently added to its light production portfolio) during the Paris event. In addition to the imageRUNNER 8105 PRO, Océ is also selling Canon’s range of colour and black & white MFPs in office markets and reselling the company’s large format printers.

　　That said, the most interesting announcement that came out during the Paris event was not related to hardware. Canon announced a new Consultancy Services business, which will see Canon collaborate with Accenture to enter the European enterprise information and media management market. This new organisation will draw on Canon’s expertise and heritage in information and imaging solutions and Accenture’s expertise in business management consulting services to target large enterprise companies. For legal reasons, the deal with Accenture is set up as a collaboration rather than a joint venture. Canon is Accenture’s exclusive partner and the deal is limited to 4 years. This service will initially be offered in the U.K., Switzerland, Finland, and Austria. A further six countries will go live in 2011 and more countries will be added further in the future. At the same time, however, these offerings will be limited to Europe for the time being. At a later stage, Canon will evaluate the success of the program and consider extending it to other geographies.

　　The launch of the Consulting Service underscores Canon’s commitment to broadening customer service rather than maintaining a more hardware-centric focus. The consulting team will be small in the beginning, but it will eventually be expanded to a 500-person business consisting of resources from Canon and Accenture. The service will be maintained at Canon Europe’s headquarters near London, England. Additional resources will be placed within the individual country organisations to cover the sales, consulting, and system design phases. To deploy the solutions, Canon will draw on its own resources as well as those of its partners (e.g., Océ, IRIS). Additional resources will also be leveraged as needed. Canon hinted at additional acquisitions to help round out its solutions portfolio. InfoTrends will provide more information on Canon’s new Consulting Service in a separate analysis document.

　　Canon Expo in Tokyo, Japan is scheduled to take place in November. This event will certainly generate more exciting announcements, and InfoTrends will be sure to cover them.

[时间：2010-10-29  作者： Ralf Schlozer   来源：必胜网]