Kodak rises from the ashes as rebadged $1.2 billion company

16.01.2015
Kodak has reinvented itself as a 125-year-old, $1.2 billion startup, sharpening its focus on the channel in a bid to return its former glory.

Kodak's film, camera and imaging business was once one of the world most iconic brands and was synonymous with fond memories after the "Kodak moment" advertising campaign.

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However, the advent of digital cameras brought the company to its knees.

The company's demise culminated in its filing for bankruptcy in 2012.

A year later, the trustees of the Kodak UK pension fund (who were owed $2.8 billion from the bankrupt Kodak) acquired the film and document imaging businesses for $650 million.

Thus creating Kodak Alaris, an organisation with 3400 staff in 30 countries and projected annual revenues of $1.2 billion.

In addition to their imaging scanners, one of the core areas of focus for Kodak Alaris' Australian operations is around its capture and information management software.

This enables customers to capture and consolidate data from digital and paper sources, while extracting valuable insight from the data.

With IDC predicting that big data will be worth US$16.1 billion globally by the end of the year, Kodak Alaris recognises that mega trends such as big data, together with the digitisation of information, are posing challenges to businesses.

Kodak Alaris general manager software and solutions, worldwide, Rod Hughes, told ARN the company was a 125 year old startup with a powerful brand.

"That sounds like an odd combination," he said. "But we are now in a different space, the IT space, and we have always had a reputation for innovation. This is now a key moment for the company."

He said the brand still struck a chord with a lot of people.

"It still resonates with people in that emotional sense of keeping your memories," he said.

"The brand is quite powerful in that respect, particularly in the consumer space."

Hughes said while Koday Alaris was still a leader in the scanning space, with customers such as Fujitsu, Xerox and Computershare, it was looking to take big strides in enabling companies to exploit big data.

"We are seeing explosive growth in unstructured data," he said.

"The problem is how to turn that into a usable form. Through the use of CPU power we can take any kind of data and assemble it to meet your business needs.

"We will continue to enable big data and make big data usable."

Kodak Alaris Australia channel manager, Francis Yanga, said the company's go-to-market in Australia was entirely through the channel.

"we only sell our scanning solutions to a network of resellers and service providers," he said.

"We are probably the only vendor who market our product purely through the channel."

He said the company was now looking to expand its channel to take in new partners around its capture and information management software.

"We are looking to recruit new partners in that space," he said.

"We continue to be focused and committed to our channel partners and that's not going to change.

"We really value our resellers and in the IT industry that does happen often."

(www.arnnet.com.au)

Brian Karlovsky

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