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David Tyler: Can we start by summarising what has happened within Kodak's imaging division since the decision was announced that the UK Kodak Pension Plan (KPP) was to take on the business - presumably the Alaris announcement feels like a 'weight off the shoulders' of everyone involved?

Martin Birch: Absolutely - in essence Kodak's Document and Personal Imaging businesses are now part of this new company, Kodak Alaris, which in turn is owned by the Kodak Pension Plan here in the UK. Those businesses have a turnover right now of around 1.3 billion dollars worldwide, and almost 5,000 employees - so this is a substantial organisation. Today's announcement is great news for us, for our customers, and for our channel.

What this new structure brings us is stability as well as opportunity. Stability in that we now have an owner who is looking at a long-term time horizon; the pension scheme means that they have a long term perspective on things. This ensures stability for us and more importantly for our customers. As far as customers are concerned it is 'business as usual' now: the new company has assumed all the rights and responsibilities of our old agreements. And it's business as usual for the channel as well of course.

As you and your readers know, Kodak Document Imaging has been a profitable company, very successful in the industry. We have a solid track record in sectors such as healthcare, legal, government, finance, BPO and so on. Our end users range from financial giants - all the big banks - through hospitals and healthcare trusts to SMEs like estate agents and the like. So the opportunity now is for us to re-invest even more strongly in our next generation of product offerings.

DT: Will the future see a shift away from the 'traditional' Kodak scanner business in favour of a software/solutions approach?

MB: I'd call it an addition to our solutions as opposed to a change. Obviously we've been very strong on the hardware side for a long time now, having been particularly strong at the high end, the production space, and in recent years we've expanded very successfully down onto the workgroup sector. We've always claimed - and I think rightly so! - that Kodak has the widest portfolio in the industry. So from the hardware perspective, whatever the customer question might be, the answer can be Kodak.

If we look at business expectations, users accept the need to digitise paper, and while we don't see paper documents going away completely any time soon, we do see an ever increasing number of documents being created in electronic formats. So our software approach is more about managing that information, whether it originates in digital format or starts as paper and is digitised at some point in the business process. Our aim is to provide the tools, software, and solutions to manage that complete set of data, and provide valuable information back to the enterprise. If you look at it historically, scanners have been a gateway into the business processes, and now we're getting more directly involved in the business processes themselves.

We're doing everything we've always done, and at the same time we're moving toward providing more added value to the end user and the channel. That will mean moving more into software, solutions and services. This doesn't mean the hardware side of the business should be seen as the 'poor relation' - it remains absolutely key. For all firms, from a one-man accountancy business to an NHS Trust, it's the hardware that turns the paper into digital images and therefore value.

Our software platforms, such as Info Activate and Info Insight, are available right now and customers are using them and deriving value from our approach - this is not just an aspirational direction for the business, it is a very real change.

DT: Kodak Alaris includes the Personal Imaging part of Kodak (consumer devices such as kiosks and photo booths) as well as Document Imaging. How will the two businesses co-exist, or will they remain broadly independent of each other?

MB: At the highest level, the customer sets of the two businesses are of course very different: in DI we're obviously very much in the business-to-business space, while PI is entirely in the consumer space, so the customers are two very different animals. What we're building right now is the support structures - finance, back office, administration - all the areas that we can effectively share between the two businesses, to achieve economies of scale. Then the customer facing part of each business - sales, marketing, customer service - we will keep entirely separate as two distinct organisations. That's how the structure will fit together.

As far as the senior management team is concerned, Dennis Olbrich, president of Personalised Imaging, and Dolores Kruchten, president of Document Imaging, will provide leadership for Kodak Alaris and report to Steven Ross, independent chairman of the KPP.

From the Document Imaging viewpoint, our customers are looking for 'guides' that they can trust to manage more of the business process, so they want the peace of mind of working with manufacturers and channel partners that have the ability to 'knit' all these different component parts together. From our channel partners' perspective, the fact that they can come to us for everything from their 'entry points' - hardware - to the management of the software layers and indeed the management of the information, all from one partner, is very powerful indeed.

Our systems connect to and interact with all the industry standard DM providers and outsourcing providers, of course. All this adds up to a very appealing message both for the channel and the end user.

DT:The Kodak brand itself is of course a very strong and established one - how important was it for the new business to retain the Kodak name?

MB: The Kodak Pension Plan has the rights to use the Kodak name forever, so from a customer perspective Kodak is still here, albeit as Kodak Alaris. If somebody buys a scanner or a piece of software, they will still see the name Kodak on the box. Ours is a very respected brand across the industry, as your readers know of course. The ownership has changed, the uncertainty is gone, the business continues to move forward.

At the same time, it was important that we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the Eastman Kodak business that is emerging from Chapter 11 in the USA. That business is turning into a B-to-B printing organisation, and will retain the historic Kodak brand, while we need to be recognised as a 'spin-off': the Kodak Alaris name is all about willingness, about agility and response. As a company we want our customers to see those values in us.

We recognise of course that the news stories around Eastman Kodak in the US being in Chapter 11 protection has caused a sense of concern and raised question marks for everybody - employees, partners, customers - about the business. The really good news in the announcement of the Kodak Alaris business is that those questions marks are now removed. There is a clear vision for the firm in the long term, and the businesses are in effect freed up now to continue to drive themselves forward.

More info: http://1000words.kodak.com/