IT Mergers & Acquisitions

Xerox Corporation has completed the previously announced acquisition of XMPie for $54 million, a move that further strengthens the growing trend of personalized communications and cross-media marketing campaigns involving digital printing, e-mail and customized Web sites. XMPie will keep the company’s headquarters in New York and its research and development facility in Netanya, Israel. Its more than 60 employees now join Xerox. The all-cash purchase of XMPie by Xerox Corporation was completed on Nov. 9.

As a standalone software unit within Xerox, XMPie helps graphic designers, marketing companies and print providers develop creative, customized marketing programs that significantly increase standard response rates and open up new ways for marketing professionals to communicate with their customers.

“Personalization is one of the ‘killer apps’ for digital printing,” said Jacob Aizikowitz, president, XMPie. “More and more customers recognize that integrating variable data services with digital printing results in a higher return on investment than traditional marketing programs. That’s why the combination of XMPie and Xerox is such a perfect fit – for our businesses and for our customers.

The market for variable data jobs that capture individual information such as name, address, account information and photographs is projected to grow from 49 billion pages in 2004 to 138 billion pages in 2009, an annual compounded rate of 23 percent, according to InfoTrends, a leading independent industry research firm. Variable data color, as part of this market opportunity, is growing at a compounded rate of 37 percent.