Toronto, 8 April 2008 - Crawford Technologies Inc., the leading provider of transactional document re-engineering solutions, today announced the release of PRO WorkFlow Connector as part of their PRO WorkFlow family of products. The PRO WorkFlow software suite brings increased flexibility and functionality to mainframe production printing environments, and PRO WorkFlow Connector provides critical functionality as a reliable connector from distributed processing systems into the legacy mainframe world of high-volume print and mail.

"Many organizations rely on mainframe processing environments for production printing and most face the challenge of integrating this legacy environment with Windows and Unix-based systems," says Ernie Crawford, President of Crawford Technologies. "PRO WorkFlow Connector not only provides the vital link between a distributed processing platform and high-volume printing, but also the crucial logic and formatting that makes sense for that mainframe production environment."

Industry-standard mainframe print protocols, such as AFP or Metacode, drive the majority of high-volume enterprise production print operations. At the same time, however, many business applications and distributed processing sub-systems run outside the legacy mainframe environment – on Windows or Unix – and output to a different set of print protocols; either PDF or PostScript. This functional gap between the two processing platforms has traditionally been a production trouble spot, especially for those organizations undertaking document re-engineering and content management strategies. PRO WorkFlow Connector eliminates the barrier by providing a reliable and flexible bridge between the two environments. 

"We all know that legacy mainframe environments are the workhorse of high-volume document processing," says Stephen D. Poe, VP of Product Management for CrawfordTech. "Difficulties come, however, because most environments are heterogeneous: a great many user applications run outside the mainframe production environment. The PRO WorkFlow suite is an elegant solution that gives you the ability to work with all of your systems and tools seamlessly, without the need to patchwork everything together. We bring flexibility, control and reliability to the entire process – both inside and outside the mainframe environment – and leverage the strengths of each." 

The bottom line: PRO WorkFlow Connector by CrawfordTech is an adaptable and reliable "connector" into mainframe print environments for distributed platform and application processing. Windows and Unix applications can now send print files directly to the production pipeline with the ability to utilize all of the legacy metadata typically associated with the high-volume production environment. When coupled with the corresponding PRO WorkFlow and PRO Document Re-engineering solutions from CrawfordTech, companies employ a robust set of tools that allows them to achieve substantial savings, exceed customer expectations and optimize the operation of their shop.