Burns is currently chairman and chief executive of the $18bn (£12.4bn) turnover group.
The news was announced to Xerox shareholders at its AGM on Friday.
Xerox outlined plans to split into two businesses, Document Technology (including production printing and print management) and Business Process Outsourcing, at the beginning of the year.
The Document Technology business will have sales of around $11bn.
Xerox said it had made “substantial progress” in building strong operational and financial foundations for both new companies in the intervening months, and the goal remained to complete the separation by the end of the year.
Burns said: “I am looking forward to my role as chairman of the Document Technology company and to continuing my deep personal and professional commitment to its success.
“I remain focused, however, on ensuring Xerox and the post-separation companies are positioned to build on our strong heritage and capture new opportunities we have identified to create value for employees, customers and shareholders.”
Xerox is yet to announce the two CEOs for the businesses. “We have an extremely strong pool of talent across our organisation as well as external candidates to build our management teams,” Burns added.
In 2009 Burns became the first black American woman to head up a Fortune 500 company when she was appointed chief executive.
Xerox chief financial officer Leslie Varon said Xerox’s production printing equipment had performed well in Q1, despite sales at Document Technology falling 10% to $1.6bn, and the firm had high hopes for Drupa.
“High-end was the strongest performing product area with colour installs up 56% including strong growth in the entry production colour products and iGen. And we're looking forward to the upcoming Drupa printing trade show in early June where we will be highlighting a number of exciting new production printing products, especially in production inkjet,” she said.
Xerox will show the Brenva, its new B3 sheetfed inkjet press, and Trivor inkjet web for the first time at Drupa.
