CHICAGO, Oct. 11 -- GRAPH EXPO 2004 -- Following XMPie's announcement of its uDirect(TM) solution for designing and producing variable data print (VDP) jobs in Adobe InDesign(R) CS, XMPie, Adobe and Xerox are working to accelerate the adoption of VDP by leveraging the installed bases of Adobe InDesign CS and Xerox printers. Adobe and Xerox are supporting uDirect as a simple to use, professional-grade solution that breaks down the long-standing barriers of complexity and technical expertise traditionally associated with producing highly-personalized and creative VDP projects. "Direct marketing professionals have been anxious for visually-rich VDP to become a mainstream practice because it dramatically increases response rates," said Jacob Aizikowitz, Founder and CEO of XMPie. "uDirect's powerful capabilities for personalization combined with its ease-of-use, attractive price point and integration into Adobe InDesign Creative Suite make it a natural selection for many creative professionals who have been frustrated with the difficulty, lack of flexibility and limited creative control inherent in previous VDP solutions." "In addition, uDirect is compatible with our award winning PersonalEffect(TM), so moving jobs from the self-contained uDirect workflow to the PersonalEffect system, with its capabilities for advanced cross-media or multi-disciplinary campaign development, is inherently streamlined," Aizokowitz continued. "The support of uDirect by Adobe and Xerox underscores the accomplishments of this solution." With the introduction of uDirect, XMPie has expanded the reach of its solution, extending deeply into the creative professional market while providing the connection to a network of print service providers. "Truly effective printed communication is personalized, with content and visuals meaningful to the individual it is delivered to," said Jim Heeger senior vice president of Creative Professional Products at Adobe. "Using Adobe Creative Suite and XMPie's uDirect solution together, creative professionals have an easy-to-use, fluid VDP solution to develop campaigns that deliver results, using tools that are already part of their daily workflow." For Xerox print providers who own XMPie PersonalEffect and DocuColor or iGen 3 presses, there are now hundreds of thousands of creative professionals at agencies and enterprises with the ability to design 1:1 marketing projects locally with uDirect. "Our customers are very successful in using personalized communications to increase marketing response rates and enhance the value they offer to their own customers," said Mike Kucharski, vice president, Xerox Workflow Business Team. "An important enabler to this has been the combination of our production digital print engines powered by Xerox FreeFlow(TM), Adobe, and XMPie software." The uDirect product brings the power of XMPie's award-winning PersonalEffect software to the creative professional's desktop in a self-contained, easy-to-use package. Similar to the way that desktop publishing moved the workflow upstream of the printers, uDirect and Adobe InDesign CS put creative control in the hands of content originators, enabling them to drive high volume VDP applications that take full advantage of color digital print capabilities. This promises to fuel the growth of digital print. Adobe InDesign CS, XMPie's designer-oriented VDP solutions, and Xerox's large network of print providers with high-quality, short-run, on-demand print engines are positioned to satisfy the pent-up demand for personalized direct marketing communications. XMPie uDirect is available directly from Xerox and XMPie today, and will be available through the Adobe Store later this month. A 60-day free trial can be downloaded from the just-launched Adobe VDP Resource Center at http://www.adobe.com/vdp.