Print is undergoing change. As WEB-based communications enable universal soft and cross-media imaging, print of all kinds--traditionally an independent industry--could become, over time, a component technology which will serve this new cross-media world. Print will only be one of a number of forms of final communication or output from the digital cross-media communications process. In fact, for many years it will probably remain what it is today - easily the most important and widespread form of final communication attracting huge expenditures from business. Nevertheless, the parts of the print services industry that will continue to attract expenditures will do so only where they are able to maximize the seamless integration of print into the digital information flow. This is the long-term logic of direct digital printing and the long-term handicap of many areas of the analog traditional print industry.

None of the processes described above will happen with extreme rapidity due to the market resilience of the low cost of traditional printing and the lack of adaptation today of direct digital printing systems to the requirements of existing traditional print markets. This raises issues of basic cultural re-orientation and high investment. It is almost certainly true, as many press manufacturers have said, that many traditional print markets will foreseeably stay traditional for twenty years or more - high volume markets, in particular.

Digital print services and technologies offer traditional press manufacturers new markets and users, growth opportunities and specialization opportunities. Traditional print services will remain dominated by a cost-reducing ethic driven by the constraints of mature analog technologies. Traditional press manufacturers do have time to position themselves for the new cross-media communications paradigm that will set new basic needs for print in important growth areas.

Many traditional press manufacturers are well positioned to develop the new hybrid print markets, if only because they understand better than most digital print vendors the base specifications and format of the print product business finds valuable on a large scale today. In addition, many of the names among traditional press manufacturers carry a credibility which will have enormous value in developing new markets for hybrid analog/digital print products and value offerings.