And that is what Kodak is banking on, that customers won't care as long as it works. The reason it works as well as it does is that there is a core group of developers and service people, born from the crucible of Creo, who have been with the project from its inception. The Kodak move is to literally SHUT DOWN the development shop that cares most about the product they built.
You should expect to see Prinergy lose installs to competitors, which will start an inevitable downward cycle of poor service -> customer abandonment -> negative revenue -> resource allocation going elsewhere (digital print) -> death of Prinergy.
It may take five years for this to happen, but Kodak will gloss over it and use the death of Prinergy to sell other products. They killed Brisque, what is stopping them from just pulling the plug on further development of Prinergy? They killed Kodachrome for god's sake.
This move by Kodak is just the first step on a short plank for an excellent product. The year you spent learning this platform so you can give YOUR customers the highest quality print at the lowest price? Gone. Kodak is clearly looking toward a "Unified Workflow" where some kind of software controller operates everything from customer input file to digital press.
Several years ago Kodak was heavily criticized for not moving quickly enough to get into digital photgraphy and took some huge financial hits when they started moving that battleship in a different direction. Their stock price went from $70/share to $7 and they fell off the Dow 30. Right now, every division at Kodak is losing millions of dollars each quarter. This Prinergy thing is not about Prinergy, it's about Kodak constantly trying to redefine themselves, starting late, and having a CEO from HP.
I hope the hard working people in North America who got laid off find jobs at Kodak's competition. If you are looking for good digital printing and CtP rips, Kodak is not the answer, they know it and you know it. IMHO, I don't think Kodak really understands the high-end graphic arts market. Otherwise, they wouldn't be killing Prinergy. It's not like the product is a loss leader.
