Rochester, NY — April 11, 2006 — PODi, the Digital Printing Initiative, today announced the release of the first PPML Interoperability Report and Test Suite. Developed by PODi, the Personalized Print Markup Language (PPML) facilitates personalized high-volume print applications to enable meaningful one-to-one “conversations” with customers. The new report provides detailed results of interoperability testing across the products of nine leading vendors using the PODi PPML Test Suite. The test suite gives the marketplace a valuable guide for developing and implementing PPML-based applications. The test results demonstrate the high level of interest and cooperation among vendors in pursuit of proven standards. The report documents PPML interoperability across leading print devices from Xerox and Xeikon, Creo-powered HP Indigo, Konica- Minolta and Xerox devices and EFI Fiery-powered Canon, Kodak, Konica-Minolta, Océ, Ricoh and Xerox systems. Interoperability is the ability of printing systems from a number of manufacturers to consume and print a properly configured PPML/GA data stream without device-dependent customization. By making it easier for vendors and developers to successfully integrate PPML compatibility into their products, their customers are assured of the integrity and openness of their PPML-driven workflow. In addition to commercial products that currently produce PPML for variable data printing, there are a significant number of printing companies that develop their own custom PPML-based solutions. Users find that when printing variable data, PPML's caching of re-usable elements delivers up to 10X improvement in print speed versus simply printing a stream of static PDF or Postscript pages. PPML Interoperability Report and Test Suite 2 “Release of the report and test suite is a major milestone in the evolution and adoption of PPML as the open standard of interoperability in the rapidly growing variable data printing market,” said Rab Govil, President of PODi. “Though the PPML standard has been available for some time, the Test Suite provides the first objective means of validating interoperability for the many digital printing devices that consume PPML. The Interoperability Report provides experienced guidance along with a validation tool, so developers who are currently building PPML solutions can enhance interoperability across devices.” “The report specifically defines how to achieve interoperability, and the test suite validates results,” explained James Mekis, PODi Director of Technology. “For the growing number of developers and vendors incorporating PPML into their products, this gives them valuable tools to move forward with increased confidence in their results.” The PPML Consumer Interoperability Report is available at www.podi.org, under “Information for PPML Developers.” The PPML Test Suite is available for download atthe same location, and is free for purposes of research, development and testing.