ROCHESTER, N.Y., September 9, 2005 – Kodak's Graphic Communications Group (GCG) today announced the latest release of its KODAK NEXTREME web-to-print exchange solution, with enhanced capabilities that will enable digital print service providers to participate in one of the fastest growing segments of digital color printing today. By integrating digital printing workflows with web-driven content, print providers can offer a range of new, higher value printing applications: on-demand marketing and sales collateral, customized brochures, and personalized catalogs. The new KODAK NEXTREME web-to-print exchange solution 2.5 includes many new features, such as product-based ordering, VDP templates for catalog production, PDF-generating drivers, powerful production management tools, and much more. "Web-to-print workflows truly capitalize on the efficiency and speed of digital printing, and are one of the highest growth areas in this market," said Diane McCue, vice president of marketing, Digital Printing Solutions, GCG. "This new release of KODAK NEXTREME web-to-print exchange solution includes added functionality that can drive new revenue for our users by extending the convenience and power of today's advanced digital printing capabilities right to their customers' desktops." The NEXTREME web-to-print exchange solution offers a complete solution for users of NEXPRESS digital production color presses and DIGIMASTER digital production systems for black-and-white printing who want to offer the convenience and efficiency of web-driven, on-demand printed materials. It is an easy-to-use ordering, composition and production management tool for automated fulfillment of static, short run, personalized and versioned print jobs. The NEXTREME web-to-print exchange solution combines the key benefits of increased productivity and operational efficiency with fast and accurate job submission and online ordering using standard web browser technology and print driver–supported applications such as QUARKXPRESS and MICROSOFT Office. Print providers can benefit from reduced production and administration costs through smooth integration into a seamless workflow system—from initial order to delivery. Print customers can bring products to market faster, order needed items around the clock, and enjoy the savings of printing exact quantities on demand. Job submission, user-friendly account management, and an easy-to-customize web experience for print buyer and print service provider are built into the solution. NEXTREME web-to-print exchange solution 2.5 builds off the popular web-to-print solution delivered with version 2.3, and includes new capabilities such as: - New Product-based Ordering – A new JDF-based, visual job ticketing approach allows customers to easily specify simple to very complex job intent by walking them through the process in a user-friendly way. Pre-defined tickets now can be deployed as product choices, with graphics that help the user decide which ticket is most appropriate for the job they wish to produce. Submitting jobs directly to NEXPRESS color and DIGIMASTER black-and-white production presses is now easier than ever with added connectivity for catalog jobs, driving increased efficiency within the production environment. - New Catalog and VDP Capabilities – Catalog support has been added for non-print items, such as advertising specialties or corporate logo merchandise, in addition to the PDF documents for print-on-demand applications. The enhanced VDP template functionality provides a complete batch merge capability for more sophisticated one-to-one marketing products like direct mail pieces and newsletters with the customer uploading database files to produce personalized documents. Also, new VDP template features include the ability to choose images, as well as to upload images on-the-fly at time of ordering, pre-fill templates from user profiles, and pre-fill templates from database files and preview results in a standard browser. - Enhanced PDF-generating driver –The unlimited license, PDF-generating driver, included standard, can now send multiple files from multiple desktop applications to the NEXTREME exchange server in one easy workflow. There is no need to have the full ADOBE ACROBAT software installed on each user workstation, and there are none of the additional license fees that are typical of other PDF generation solutions. - Efficient Production Management – The order and operator management capability provides all the flexibility required by the print provider to handle manual quotes, accept orders, order detail, adjustments for shipping, discounts and taxes. Approvals to manual quotes are automatically received and updated in the order view for release to production. Orders and production jobs may be viewed in a user configurable manner, filtering, sorting and reporting on the data important to each print provider, driving efficiency in their production operations. NEXTREME web-to-print exchange solution version 2.5 is available in the English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, UK English, Norwegian and Dutch languages. The complete NEXTREME web-to-print solution will be demonstrated in the Kodak booth #6707 at the Print 05 exhibition, September 9-15 at Chicago's McCormick Place.