I'm new here and have come hoping to gain the advise of professionals who are not trying to sell me machines and maintenance. I thank you in advance for your help. I didn't really se a forum where this post fits, so I just picked a busy one. Feel free to move this if there is a better forum for it.

We have some aging machines that are becoming increasingly expensive to support. And lately we've been having to farm out some printing to meet deadlines because of downed machines. We do about 1.5 to 2 million clicks a year with about 90% of those are comb bound booklets we publish from late December thru mid February. (more than a half a million clicks a month during that time) About 30 percent of those are color. We sometimes find ourselves with only 48 hours to put out 200K pages and sometimes that 48 hours falls over a holiday.

The machines we currently own are:
Konica Bizhub C7000 with 2.5 million clicks
Several Canon color business-sized MFP's that are all somewhat aged


We would like to purchase 3 or more new machines to replace all of these.
We do not really have a brand preference.
We would like to have them all be the same brand and model.
We would like to have the option of servicing and supporting these machines in-house, so we would like to be able to send one or more staff to comprehensive service training. The sales people that I have spoken to tell me this is not possible for "end users".
We would like them to last at least 4 years.


Other things that would influence our decision (in no particular order) are:
Total cost of operation (purchase price+maintenance+training)
Ease of operation/service/maintenance
Availability of support and parts
Availability of training
Your opinion. If there are other things that should influence my decision that I have left out, please let me know.

What is a brand and model that would best meet our needs? How Can I get the best pricing? Would partnering with the manufacturer be a good option?

Thanks again.