Zurich, Switzerland (August 31, 2004) -The International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press, and Postpress (CIP4) Organization announced today the results of its recent Interoperability Event in Vancouver, Canada. Twenty-three companies participated, testing 35 products. In all, 115 pairs were tested, with 108 successful pairings. This is a significant increase over the March 2004 Interoperability Event in Zofingen, Switzerland, where 31 companies tested 42 products, resulting in 76 successful pairings among the 93 pairs tested. Prior to that event, the December 2003 Interoperability Event in Orlando, Florida, USA, witnessed 16 companies testing 24 products and resulting in 66 successful pairings among the 80 pairs tested. The interoperability workshop format provides technical engineers of CIP4 member companies the opportunity to test and work with a wide range of JDF solutions representing the graphic arts supply chain. Vendors come together as one to further develop the potential for automation implementing JDF. "We saw a 10% increase in the rate of successful pairings at the Vancouver Interoperability testing," said Doug Belkofer, senior principal scientist, at EFI. "This shows that the continued efforts of the CIP4 member companies to work cooperatively in developing JDF-enabled products are becoming more and more successful. The high level of system interoperability of these products will provide our industry with a fully connected business process." Rainer Prosi, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG and CIP4 technical officer added, "There have been 284 successfully tested product pairings over the course of five interoperability events. One hundred eight of these successful pairings were from the July 2004 Vancouver event. The trend speaks for itself." Through both its interoperability testing and educational efforts, CIP4 continues to demonstrate to both vendors and end-users that the JDF standard is the key to successfully integrating processes in prepress, press, and postpress. "We live in a connected global environment and CIP4 is providing the conduit for our industry to come together as one and create the framework for an open architecture to connect creative and production process automation," said Interop participant Janice Reese, vice president marketing at Objective Advantage. "Our industry has been working toward a standard way to describe our business process that will allow both production and creative the ability to begin to automat erepetitiveprocesses.As the continued interoperability testing shows, JDF-enabled products are providing a common language and method for implementing process automation in the graphic arts industry." Last May's JDF Parc at drupa 2004, in addition to providing an introduction to JDF to potential end users, provided participating vendors with the opportunity to explore potential pairings. "During drupa 2004, the JDF Parc served as an incubator for new ideas regarding possible pairings between companies demonstrating their JDF-enabled products and services," said CIP4 executive directory James Harvey. "We anticipate similar energy at the upcoming JDF Pavilion at GraphExpo 2004 in Chicago. The JDF Pavilion will feature interoperability demonstrations in tour format between 18 different CIP4 member companies, ongoing educational presentations, and serve as the starting point for CIP4-sponsored show floor tours highlighting JDF capability."