Xerox CMO Darren Cassidy talks up opportunities for channel amid company's return to Australia

Xerox is officially back in the Australian market, using its recent US$1.5 billion acquisition of global imaging and IoT solutions company Lexmark to return to the region where it was previously known as Fuji Xerox half a decade ago. 

That merging of Xerox and Lexmark creates a combined offering of printers, multifunction devices, and managed print services (MPS), with an expanded, channel-first model now firmly at the forefront as the company aims to utilise its print legacy to launch further into digital and IT services. 

Xerox CMO Darren Cassidy told techpartner.news that the legacy of the Xerox name in the local market means that the return to Australia was easier than if it was launching as a new brand. 

“This is Xerox coming into the marketplace now with the full power of the global brand and our starting point is leveraging the base that we've got with the Lexmark channels, partners and customers,” he said. 

“That's the starting point, but the products we will bring to market as we go forward will be Xerox-branded products and we will be [known as] Xerox in Australia.” 

Alongside its core offerings of printers, scanners and associated supplies, the company is also accelerating its development of cloud-connected devices, IT offerings, secure workflow technologies, modern workforce solutions and security and compliance services. 

To do this, Cassidy said that Xerox will be expanding the channel presence it already has thanks to the Lexmark acquisition – an acquisition that globally brings together 3.3 million print devices under management and serves clients in over 170 countries.

“Being able to start to think about print as part of your IT stack to serve the clients you've got is something that many MSPs have considered and are starting to consider,” he explained.  

“Typically, print providers run print and IT providers run IT, but in the future, we're going to see a little merging of that. We're going to provoke and encourage a bit of that as we have both of those business lines.  

“We certainly do see opportunities to talk about security, but not just print security, but to talk about cyber, talk about endpoints that include print, and manage that in a more integrated fashion, because actually, that's what our clients - the end clients - are going to want.” 

Those client requirements are consistent with other parts of the world the company serves, Cassidy stated, and while print is unlikely to grow as a market, the Xerox CMO does believe that the sector has “pockets within that that are every bit as important and valuable to the end clients”.  

“There's certain sectors that have a reliance on it, where print is the best medium to consume information, move processes along or share your data and information,” he said. 

“What we see is a macro decline in-market in print, but it's still a big opportunity in the entry level, where A4 devices are starting to grow, and in A3 and MPS, which is where we're focused.” 

The Lexmark acquisition helps with establishing dominance in that A4 world – one of Xerox’s priorities for the local market, alongside guiding digital transformation road maps and streamlining and automating workflows, is supporting hybrid and distributed workforces, an area where Lexmark’s A4 products are “particularly good”, according to Cassidy. 

“I think that brings a capability to Xerox that we didn't have and really strengthens our offer,” he told techpartner.news.  

“As there's less people concentrated within a single office, that means that we have to start to work in the way that the clients want, but the strategies around digitisation, moving all of our applications to the cloud so that people can print where they need, when they need - we can provide those digital services."

Another area for Xerox to tap into is the production environment, currently dominated by either in-plant print rooms or commercial print areas.

"The drive for personalised, high value, embellished communications is getting bigger; a lot of that is in the marketing space," Cassidy explained.

“A lot of digital channels are saturated and it's getting more and more difficult to make connections with people purely on digital and therefore high-value direct mail, high-value communications that are very personalised and data driven really increase ROI, so there's pockets of print where we're starting to see some actual growth in the marketplace.” 

Lexmark isn’t the only company that Xerox has had to integrate in recent years – the late-2024 acquisition of US-based ITsavvy, a provider of IT products and services, helped to “create a greater organisational focus” on its “emerging IT services capabilities to diversify revenue streams”, the company stated at the time.  

While there isn’t any more M&A activity planned for the near future, Cassidy did admit that there will be “other activity” from Xerox - “maybe not short term, but mid term”.   

“There's areas of the business that we'll look to bolster,” he stated.  

“In the technology world, things are moving so fast and we are partnering with some really interesting organisations now in the space of AI - using AI to drive and run changes within our business, but at the same time, using those partners to build offers and create opportunities for our clients. 

“There's a lot more to come on that space. Will that involve M&A? Maybe.”