Eric Armour is president of Xerox's global business group and heads up its $5bn production and $8bn office businesses. Unsurprisingly, as an ex-US Navy fighter pilot, he's direct, he thinks on his feet and has some impressive evasive manoeuvres.

What's the feedback from the printers you've spoken to about the market?

Cautiously optimistic. I know it's not specifically relevant to the print service provider market, but we started to see the lower end of our business really start to come back in Q4 of 2009. Now we've also started to see production volumes come back in the graphic arts segment and then you have a show like this and the quality of the discussions, then my sales team is beside themselves: happy, but tired. Our production inkjet technology demonstration is getting a lot of interest and so are the workflow products and business development tools, because at times like this, printers are sitting there, their traditional businesses are challenged, but their digital businesses are solid or growing and they want to capitalise on that.

You touched on the production inkjet web press. I know it's only a technology demonstration at the show, but do you know when it might become a commercial reality?

I do, but I'm not going to tell you.

Can you give us a rough idea?

Look, we're trying to be very disciplined. Without putting too fine a point on it, in the high-speed web space, our competitors have been a bit undisciplined about showing technology before its ready, leading customers on. This show has been a great opportunity to talk and learn from the customers, because we want to refine and ensure it really hits the sweet spot. We think it's a value proposition that will really resonate. They're telling us that they want high speeds and good image quality. The fact that aqueous bleeds through is an issue for a lot of people, when you hear people talk about ‘good enough' quality, you can almost hear them wince too - because you know that that they're making a trade off and they're not really happy about it. The highspeed web will put out tremenous image quality on low-cost paper, the kind of paper that they're already using. The same finishing devices. But we can do it in a way that gives you better image quality and a very competitive cost.

You're still not going to tell me are you?

Okay. We're looking to put in some beta machines this year. We've done a lot of tests already, but this will be when we get to learn the real lessons, when real users can beat the crap out of them, and we'll learn some really valuable lessons and be able to refine the machines. And then we'll make some decisions on when to go live.

Sorry to keep pushing, but will you begin shipping this year?

We're going to do some onsite testing and then make some decisions.

Okay, I know when I'm beaten. Obviously the ColorCube technology on the web press is from the business printer environment. But I'm sure rivals will say that it's not going to be robust enough for production environments. Is that fair?

First of all it's not the same technology. Conceptually it's the same, it's coming from the same family, but it uses different ink, it's a different printing process. In fact, one of our engineers made a very interesting point; he said ‘that technology should have originally been designed for the high-end production space'. So we've refined the technology, the inks, the whole printing process. It's completely different, it's been designed for the high-speed print production environment and it's in a different league in terms of quality print and robustness. It's a major step forward.

So is ColorCube going to be your core focus now in terms of technology?

We had a range of technologies we were looking at. We've got patents in aqueous, in thermal inkjet etc, and we looked at all the various technologies and after doing that and talking to our customers and analysing their needs we're confident that we've backed the right horse. It's about customer needs, it's also about sustainability - it's easier to de-ink, you can use low cost recycled or lightweight papers. These are all-important things, because clients are focused on sustainability and in direct mail, if you can use lighter stocks and reduce mailing costs, then that's a really good story to tell.

Is DM your target market for it then?

One of them, it's a great technology for the transpromo space, DM, these are segments that we think are the most appropriate. I know the HP T300 is going more in the publishing and book space, I think Kodak's Prosper is targeted at marketing collateral.

Pricing wise, will you be in the same area as Prosper and the T300? We think it will be very competitive with the devices it will go head to head with. We don't think it will go head to head with the T300, the T300 is about very, very high volumes - I think that is more about moving offset to digital. We are more in what I would call the current continuous-feed market; lower volumes, for people that are making the transition. To invest in the T300, you'll need a lot of pages and I don't think there are that many players that are in that league. We're looking at a more comfortable purchase decision. The others are looking at competing with offset, we're looking at complementing offset.

Interesting point. I'm sure you know that Heidelberg is looking for a digital partner. In fact it's chief executive said he had meetings at the show with potential partners, are you meeting with him?

We've already announced that we're collaborating with Heidelberg on its Prinect workflow, to integrate our FreeFlow workflow. Because, again, it's all about being complementary to offset. So much of the market operates in the digital and offset spaces, and they don't want two different workflows - they want to make it seamless.

But getting back to Heidelberg, in our office sweepstake, you guys are one of the favourites. Is it an appealing deal?

We've always been very friendly to Heidelberg and we've got a great respect for it as a company. We think it's a great company. I'm sure Mr Schreier would say something similar...