At the turn of the millennium, the future of the company whose very name is synonymous with photocopying appeared uncertain.
Xerox, based in Stamford, Conn., was grappling with staggering debt, consecutive quarterly losses and an SEC scandal.
That was at a time when some prognosticators had pronounced that paper was dead. You remember those predictions, right? With so much of our lives taking the electronic route, including shopping, banking and news, who would need paper?
Of course some folks —probably the same people—also had predicted that books would go the way of the typewriter with the advent of the World Wide Web. But then Amazon.com took off, and everyone seemed to rediscover the love of books. A historical note for the younger readers: Amazon started out as an online bookstore, no kidding!
Today, people arent exactly using their laptops to read books, though they increasingly use them for things like checking the weather and watching DVDs. Paper is very much alive, and not just the book kind, as attested by brimming paper baskets all over the corporate world.
Oh, and Xerox has made a comeback.
Now the vendor wants to increase its footprint in the SMB (small and midsize business) market and is calling on the channel to accomplish this goal.
