Lexmark expects huge spin off with Indy association

By associating with the hugely popular Indy car racing held annually for the
last 14 years in the scenic surroundings of Gold Coast in Australia, printing
major Lexmark International Inc expects to benefit tremendously in terms of
branding and mindshare.

According to Lexmark VP (Asia Pacific & Latin America) David Goodnight,
the association with Indy last year helped Lexmark increase its market share in
the Australian market. "Other regions also benefited from the same,"
he added.

Called 'Lexmark Indy 300', the event spread over four days saw some high
quality action with racing cars speeding in excess of 500 km per hour. And, it
is the 13th stop on a 15-race series. This event is today recognized one of the
biggest motorsport events of the world. Four championships hotly contested on
the streets of Gold Coast include-Champ Car, V8 Supercar, Carrera Cup and
Formula 3.

Off the track, Lexmark worked closely with Indy officials to develop a wide
range of IT solutions. All the drivers at the event read thousands of pages of
information during trialling and racing. Every morning team members lined-up in
the driver administration tent on the Gold Coast to collect a wide range of
information on track conditions, official announcements and race updates.

Going
a step further, Lexmark now plans to slash future administration costs and
improve communications at the event. As the event's leading technology
supplier and naming sponsor-other major technology sponsors included Acer and
Intel- Lexmark will be designing workflow solution for the event following an
extensive information distribution audit.

While the solution will be deployed in 2005, the first step was to record
every printout, fax, photocopy and email during this year's event. This was no
small feat considering that more than 50,000 pages were printed during the
four-day event. The hardware at the track was linked to monitoring devices for
further analysis. Infrastructure at the event included almost 30 Lexmark laser
printers and hundreds of email and Internet-enabled devices.

ASIM RAINA

GOLD COAST (The author was hosted at Gold Coast by Lexmark)