26 April, 2006 -- Atex and 5 fifteen today announced a technology partnership agreement giving Atex exclusive rights to resell and integrate 5 fifteen’s Maxim Circulation system and Ad Depot component solutions to the North American magazine market. The agreement covers solutions for circulation fulfillment, customer de-duplication/data cleansing, and ad management. 5 fifteen Ltd. has been supplying software systems and consultancy services to the magazine market for over 15 years. Atex is the market-leading provider of solutions and services to newspapers, magazines, and the worldwide media industry. Both companies have long recognized the need to embrace open technologies and standards and deliver the flexibility that clients increasingly require through Service-Oriented Architectures and web-services based toolsets. “There is tremendous synergy between our two organizations already,” states John Hawkins, Atex CEO. “We have several common customers, similar business philosophies, and Atex is looking to leverage technologies from companies like 5 fifteen to deliver valuable solutions based on open standards and web-services architectures.” Hawkins continues, “The agreement immediately enables Atex to provide magazine publishers with an even richer set of circulation products that complement Atex’s editorial content management and advertising solutions.” Rod Fenwick, Managing Director of 5 fifteen, states “This agreement goes way beyond the usual partnership announcements or integration exercises people typically read about because we are already working closely together at several sites around the world.” Fenwick continues, “What’s more important here is that we are aligning our existing technology strategies to SOA to enable us to provide a compelling roadmap and strategy for magazine publishers today and well into the future.” Peter Marsh, Atex Chief Integration Officer, concludes: “Atex is now able to deliver magazine advertising and circulation solutions that give media companies the choice of implementing the system in-house or running it under a hosted ASP model. The hosted option is often more cost-effective, and is proving especially attractive to publishers with multiple titles in different locations, which can be deployed and managed from a centralized location.” Collaboration with strategic alliance partners is the most effective route to rapidly developing a go-to-market strategy. To this end, Atex has entered into a strategic partnership with IBM to create a media hub providing “best of breed” services for multi-channel revenue models. The 5 fifteen agreement enables Atex to enrich its suite of component technologies designed to meet the current and emerging needs of the magazine publishing market.