Media service kress honored exceptional people, strategies, and innovations in media and marketing with awards for the first time in Hamburg, with vjoon garnering the distinction of "Software Vendor of the Year" from among more than 300 entries. The kress Awards will be bestowed annually to acknowledge the best strategies, products, innovations, service providers, and minds in media, marketing, and advertising companies. Eminent sponsors in the media and communication industry support the kress Awards. The major advances made with vjoon K4 version 6 figured prominently in the jury's decision. Incorporating the principles of vjoon's Unified Publishing Process, it offers optimized process control and automation across all media channels. The integration of vjoon K4 and the Adobe® Digital Publishing Suite provides the perfect tablet publishing platform for customized digital editions destined for the most diverse devices such as Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy, and RIM Playbook. And precisely this capability, developed and tailored to suit the needs of publishing houses and corporate publishers, won the jury over.

Explaining its decision, the 23-member jury of experts headed by kress editor-in-chief Eckhard Müller noted: "With the Cross-Media Publishing Platform K4, vjoon has developed a solution that serves to prepare contents for all channels, and is intuitive to use at that. The system offers an enduring solution to publishing houses because it is not limited to today‘s output formats. Rather, its underlying concept and technical standards enable future output platforms to be integrated. It ensures that contents are not simply transferred ‘one for one' from output format to output format. Publishing houses and corporate publishers may adapt their contents to best meet the requirements of the respective output channel." The jury praised "the future-proof publishing system, which affords users utmost creative leeway while maximizing productivity and reliability, all of which has convinced many customers at home and abroad."

One of 19 categories, the "Software Vendor of the Year" award acknowledges IT providers that support media and communication companies' business activities. Products are not the only criterion for this category. The panel of experts also evaluated factors such as customer service, distribution, and corporate development when they made their selection among the dozen entries. "We are well-positioned in each of these areas. vjoon has done business in this market for 20 years, and we have steadily developed our company and product vjoon K4," notes Andreas Schrader, CEO of vjoon GmbH. "We are delighted with this award because it recognizes our powers of innovation. K4 version 6 contains many features that afford our customers considerable time and cost savings, and they won over the jury as well."

Featuring a revamped architecture and a novel concept based on task-driven workflows, K4 version 6 is easier to handle yet provides more efficient means of managing and steering processes. The latest version 6.3's key innovations include an extended feature set for publishing digital editions in any tablet format, and the K4 Distributed Enterprise System (K4 DES), which saves users with remote production sites a tremendous amount of time.

Staffed with top-notch media and communication industry professionals, the jury evaluated all entries over the course of two days in a selection process involving several stages. The panel nominated the finalists and then voted by secret ballot to select the winners in each category. The awards were presented at festive gala event held in Hamburg's Grand Elysée Hotel.