Initial Components Include New Standardized Workflow Management and Web-Enabled Custom Publishing Tools BIRMINGHAM, England---April 10, 2002-- Hewlett-Packard announced plans to promote new business opportunities for commercial printers through a collaborative digital printing infrastructure. This open standards-based initiative is designed to drive pages to HP Indigo presses by integrating the publishing expertise of commercial printers with the needs of enterprise customers and their marketing and advertising agencies to generate demand. To facilitate widespread transition to this integrated environment, HP is introducing HP Production Flow, a centralized workflow management tool. It also is demonstrating HP Custom Publishing, a Web-based, integrated publishing tool, together with 11 partner solutions. For commercial printers, the initiative is designed to increase print volume and the value of printed pages, to expand service offerings and to increase differentiation in an increasingly commodity-oriented industry. Marketing and advertising agencies can increase response rates for their clients' campaigns through one-to-one marketing and help develop new areas of revenue. Enterprise customers can benefit from increased customer loyalty, more effective and timely customized marketing campaigns and a dramatic reduction in print collateral inventory. "HP's IPEX 2002 exhibition represents the first glimpse of our vision of the future for commercial digital printing," said Bill McGlynn, vice president and general manager, HP Digital Publishing Solutions. "Our primary goal is to create business opportunities across the value chain for the digital print and publishing industry." New HP Tools Facilitate Web-based, Streamlined, On-demand Printing The first enterprise customer to benefit from HP's streamlined workflow approach is a leading U.S. financial organization. Together with its print fulfillment company, On Demand Technologies, the financial organization has adopted a Web-based, on-demand print fulfillment service for producing customized event-oriented marketing collateral. The service enables account managers to electronically select from a catalog of document templates and types, input specific information regarding the event and submit the print job online for fulfillment using HP Custom Publishing. The jobs are then processed and fed to an HP Indigo press via HP Production Flow resulting in true Internet-to-press automation. "These tools enable us to drop work directly onto our HP Indigo Press 3000 with no hands-on manipulation," said Tom Van Goethem, president, On Demand Technologies. "They automatically drop-in high-res photos, impose pages, insert cut marks and group jobs together to optimize press time. We have eliminated error and dramatically improved productivity." Under its old system, the company's job origination and printing collateral went through 23 steps and took 37 days from start to finish. Using HP's templates, Internet delivery and digital printing, the process now takes just six days and requires only five process steps. On a typical day at the company, during which nine orders were placed via HP Custom Publishing, this translated into savings of more than $15,000 (with time calculated at $30 per hour). Further pre-press savings at On Demand Technologies using HP Production Flow amounted to 18 days turnaround time and more than $3,000 in costs. HP Production Flow streamlines and automates digital print workflow while allowing users to expand their offerings through standardized interfaces, creating an open environment for a wide variety of solutions from HP and its partners. It combines scalable RIPs, PPML support, JLYT personalization, imposition, JDF job ticketing, business management tools and Post-RIP editing. This broadens the services that commercial printers can offer their customers while reducing operational costs. To demonstrate its robustness and flexibility, HP Production Flow will feed jobs to HP Indigo presses from several different solution partners on the HP Indigo stand at IPEX 2002. New Look and Feel for HP Indigo Presses As part of the launch of the HP Indigo Division, Indigo's extensive line of field-proven digital presses for commercial, specialty and photofinishing applications have been given a new look and feel. Featured products at IPEX 2002 include the HP Indigo Press 3000 (formerly the Indigo UltraStream 2000), the HP Indigo Press 1000 (formerly the Indigo Platinum), the HP Indigo Press w3200 (formerly the Indigo Publisher 4000) and the HP Indigo Press ws4000 (formerly the Indigo Omnius WebStream 100). These and other presses will be showcased in a special "solutions-based" product arcade in the 1,390-square-meter HP Indigo booth where visitors can view the digital printing of tangible on-demand products including brochures, personalized direct mail, labels, plastic cards and graphic overlays. The demonstrations illustrate the unlimited possibilities offered by HP's digital offset color technology, which combines ink on paper quality with five, six and seven color printing on a wide range of paper, foil and plastic substrates. "For 25 years now, Indigo has been investing in the digital future of print. Since initiating a digital printing revolution at IPEX '93, Indigo's customers have benefited from a stable technology that has enjoyed continuous enhancement, providing opportunities for upgrading and up-trading when new presses were introduced," said Indigo Founder Benny Landa. "In HP we have a company whose existing customer-base comprises the buyers of virtually all commercial print. This provides a powerful channel for delivering the message of HP Indigo digital printing to the corporate world."