Quark today launched Quark Brand Manager^TM, a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution designed to allow distributed sales and marketing teams to create, customize, and deliver brand-compliant marketing material on-demand. Quark Brand Manager runs natively on the Microsoft Windows Azure platform, providing the most sophisticated design capabilities and secure Cloud-based availability and scalability offered by a brand management solution today.

“Microsoft Windows Azure offers customers unparalleled performance, scalability, and time to market for delivering a wide range of cloud solutions,” said Mark Hindsbo, vice-president of US Developer & Platform Evangelism at Microsoft Corp. “Through the Windows Azure platform, Quark Brand Manager connects corporate marketing departments to the cloud, giving marketers and field staff the ability to access and collaborate on brand controlled material anytime, anywhere, and at a lower cost.”

As a Cloud-based solution, Quark Brand Manager can be deployed within minutes, automates system updates without requiring IT resources, and streamlines production workflows significantly. Designers convert QuarkXPress® and InDesign documents into Quark Brand Manager templates that can then be approved by marketing and customized by field teams through a simple Web interface. With Quark Brand Manager, marketing teams are able to:

• Reduce by up to 50 percent the time it takes to create templates for brand-compliant collateral
• Reduce by up to 90 percent the time it takes field teams to deliver customized collateral to consumers
• Significantly decrease costs by eliminating the need for on-premise infrastructure

“Quark entered the brand management solutions market early with our QuarkXPress Server technology. Now, with Microsoft, we’re taking an early lead to leverage the Cloud so that dispersed marketing and sales teams can maintain their most valuable differentiator – their brand,” said Ray Schiavone, Quark President and CEO. “As marketing departments take control of budget that was once allocated to IT teams, effective and affordable global Cloud-based solutions like Quark Brand Manager will become required resources.”

To learn more please visit http://www.quarkbrandmanager.com/ and download a complimentary copy of the InfoTrends whitepaper “Making the Case for Brand Management” http://www.quarkbrandmanager.com/making-the-case.html.

If interested in a 30-day trial of Quark Brand Manager, please complete the online registration form to be contacted by a member of the Quark sales team: http://www.quarkbrandmanager.com/trial.html.

Pricing
Quark Brand Manager pricing starts at $62.50 a month per user with a minimum deployment of 40 users. For more information about pricing, including agency and printer pricing models, please contact [email protected].

QuarkAlliance^TM
Quark Brand Manager is the only solution that offers marketing departments and field sales teams optional access to Quark’s nationwide network of print providers. All QuarkAlliance members are eligible to be a part of the Quark network of printers. For more information about QuarkAlliance, please visit http://alliance.quark.com/index.php.