CHICAGO, September 28, 2003 – Owners of the NexPress 2100 digital production color press are now able to offer expanded variable data printing services, with enhanced offerings from the industry-leading family of NexTreme software solutions. The new software and services offerings, available worldwide here at Graph Expo/Converting Expo 2003, enable print providers to personalize, customize and automate high-volume, highly variable jobs in an open environment based on the ANSI PPML/VDX standard. - NexTreme DL-100, v.1.2, an Adobe Acrobat plug-in designed for fast composition of low-to-moderate volumes of VDP jobs, provides both PC- and Mac-based functionality. - NexTreme DL-1000, v.1.2, a server solution, is ideal for high-volume VDP jobs and is designed to work seamlessly with the DL-100 offering. It is now offered in two versions –– VDP Production Server package and Web-Integration Solution. “Heidelberg has always been one of the strongest advocates of variable data printing and open standards, because of the value they provide to our customers,” said Bill Blair, senior vice president, Digital, Heidelberg USA. “These enhanced software offerings are based on customer feedback and demonstrate that the industry is embracing PPML/VDX as the open standard for VDP jobs.” NexTreme DL-100, v.1.2 The NexTreme DL-100, v.1.2 offering is a high-speed, easy-to-use solution designed for versioned, personalized and customized applications. It gives operators: - Expanded flexibility by providing PC and Mac OSX functionality - Easy-to-use workflow with the Acrobat 6.0 plug-in - Improved color management through the support of ICC color profiles - Enhanced international hyphenation and operating system capabilities that include English, French, German, Italian and Spanish languages - Faster composition speeds and more streamlined workflow through an enhanced plug-in that supports QuarkXPress 5.0 NexTreme DL-1000, v.1.2 In addition to providing the benefits of NexTreme DL-100, the NexTreme DL-1000, v.1.2 solution enables automated, high-volume production of VDP or Web-driven applications. It is offered in two solutions: - The NexTreme DL-1000 VDP Production Server package is designed to automate, high-volume variable data print projects. This package offers faster composition speeds through automated batch processing and several VDP workflow enhancement tools, along with four days of on-site professional services for installation, training and workflow integration. - The NexTreme DL-1000 Web Integration Solution enables the automated composition and production of a wide range of Internet-driven print applications. It is a custom solution that requires an onsite assessment to determine the customer requirements and cost associated with the specific application. The NexTreme DL-1000 VDP Production Server package and the NexTreme DL-1000 Web Integration are available through Heidelberg Market Centers worldwide. In addition, all of the NexTreme software offerings support optimized Digimaster print system output and come with a new Adobe Acrobat PPML/VDX-viewer plug-in for faster viewing and soft proofing of VDP documents. “Adopting new technologies, though important to growing your business, can be quite daunting,” Blair said. “But what Heidelberg’s software programs, including the new DL-1000, prove is that you don’t need to be a programmer to do run high-end software applications. And in the Heidelberg booth, our experts will be on hand throughout the show to demonstrate just how easy it is.” The Customer Experience NexPress 2100 customers are already experiencing success expanding their digital color businesses using the new NexTreme VDP software offerings. A full-service printing business in Minnesota, Maximum Graphics installed the NexPress 2100 press to provide personalized and customized printing for its customers, according to Douglas Haefele, director of Digital Solutions. “Using NexTreme VDP solutions, we save valuable production time and now offer additional marketing capabilities,” Haefele said. ”We recently produced a series of postcard mailings with personalized text combinations. With previous software, we had to produce pre-printed shells for the postcards, then insert the variable content on a second run. With NexTreme solutions, we printed all of the postcards in one run, and saved 24 hours in our production cycle.” The Lowe-Martin Group, a full-service communications business in Canada, purchased the NexPress 2100 press to extend its VDP capabilities, using NexTreme DL-100, said Joe Goski, vice-president of E-business. Based on customer demand and the strong performance of the NexTreme DL-100 package, the company soon upgraded to the NexTreme DL-1000 Web-Integration Solution to extend its color capabilities with Web-based fulfillment services. “With the NexTreme DL-1000 solution’s client-server platform and extremely high composition speed, we are able link to our customers’ ordering systems and automatically create and produce complex jobs with short turnarounds,” Goski said. “We recently produced personalized and customized invitations for a series of events for a pharmaceutical company’s sales force, targeted to physicians. We were able to upload the mailing list and automatically produce a complex series of high-quality pieces in a short amount of time.”