Partnership immediately will begin to bring market leading Pageflex web-to-print solutions to Heidelberg customers worldwide

Marlborough, MA - Pageflex, a division of Bitstream Inc. (www.bitstream.com), announced today that Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) (FWB: HDD) has signed a worldwide OEM software agreement under which Heidelberg will license the Pageflex Storefront web-to-print product, associated technologies from Bitstream, and custom development.

Heidelberg will market the turnkey OEM product worldwide under the name Prinect Web-to-Print Manager. The OEM agreement grants Heidelberg exclusive rights to sell the OEM product under both licensed and software-as-a-service (SaaS) business models, as well as to sell related products from the Pageflex product line. Primarily sold in North America in the past, Pageflex Storefront is being internationalized to enable distribution worldwide.

Heidelberg is previewing Prinect Web-to-Print Manager this week in booth #1200 at the Graph Expo Conference being held at the McCormick Place South in Chicago, Illinois, USA through 14, 2011, and then in booth E6-1 at the International Graphic Arts Show 2011 (IGAS), being held September 16 – September 21 in Tokyo, Japan. Pageflex is exhibiting at Graph Expo as well in booth #3861.

A Robust and Flexible Offering

Prinect Web-to-Print Manager will bring Heidelberg customers a fully functional electronic storefront that provides better brand control, business growth opportunities, and the ability to streamline internal processes. The product joins the Prinect line of workflow automation solutions, and will be targeted mainly at commercial sheet-fed offset printers.

"The Prinect Web-to-Print Manager expands our Prinect print shop workflow in what is one of the most important growth segments for the print media industry and it caters to the growing demands from our customers to use the internet for improved customer interaction and retention," said Marcel Kiessling, member of the Heidelberg Management Board responsible for Heidelberg Services. "In Pageflex we have found a partner that already has a high-quality portfolio of web-to-print solutions with a proven track record worldwide. By integrating this portfolio into the Prinect system, our customers will benefit two-fold – from the W2P expertise of our partner Pageflex on one hand and the comprehensive automation and process transparency of the Prinect production workflow on the other."

Collaborative Development Effort

The two companies are collaborating on a highly-integrated, bi-directional connection to give the Prinect Web-to-Print Manager module direct access to the central database of the Heidelberg Prinect workflow system. This will include utilizing the Prinect preflight engine, ganging, and soft proofing capabilities for orders placed from the storefront online catalog.

Heidelberg is the world-wide leading provider of solutions and services for the print media industry. The name Heidelberg is internationally associated with leading technology, top quality, and customer focus. Headquartered in the city of Heidelberg, Germany, with production and development sites in seven countries and around 250 sales and service units in 170 countries, the company serves about 200,000 customers.

"We are honored that Heidelberg selected Pageflex Storefront for the basis of Prinect Web-to-Print Manager. We are excited by this opportunity to extend our market reach into new global markets and into offset and hybrid print shops," comments Pinhas Romik, Pageflex General Manager. "Heidelberg is a trusted partner of hundreds of thousands of printing companies worldwide. And we look forward to supporting Heidelberg as they help their customers evolve to offering Internet-based ordering."

The Pageflex division of Bitstream is a leading developer of enterprise variable data publishing and web-to-print solutions. This is the first OEM deal for the award-winning Pageflex Storefront product, which has been sold directly by Bitstream primarily to digital printers and marketing service companies in North America for the past seven years. In 2010 Pageflex expanded its business model to include OEM relationships, primarily with Xerox and HP Indigo, when it acquired the iWay product line. The company will continue to sell Pageflex Storefront directly.