DENVER and ROCHESTER, NY -- April 1, 2004 -- PODi, the Digital Printing initiative, announced that Quark Inc. has joined PODi as an Executive Member. This elite membership is offered to organizations with broad interests in digital printing and the desire to help set strategic direction for PODi and the digital printing industry. PODi's mission is to evangelize opportunities in digital printing and promote the health of the digital ecosystem through standards, professional knowledge, and best practices. As a longtime leader in publishing software, Quark is a valuable addition to the executive membership along with EFI, HP, IBM, NexPress, Pitney Bowes, and Xerox. "Quark's commitment to make the PPML architecture a key part of their strategy will serve as an important inflection point for the digital print industry," said Rab Govil, president of PODi. "We enlist executive members of the highest caliber who share our vision of promoting the digital printing marketplace. As a technology leader, Quark's commitment to support open standards such as PPML-GA will be a critical enabler for the digital printing industry. PODi and the other executive members look forward to working with Quark in making the PODi vision a reality." Quark is a leading developer of tools and technologies for collaborative publishing with a long history of providing award-winning software for professional publishers. Quark solutions are key parts of digital printing workflow for many organizations, so the company is well positioned to become a strong contributor to PODi. "As personalized printing becomes a more powerful and widely used communications tool, many PODi members want to integrate it more strategically into marketing, customer service, and IT strategies. Quark has a long tradition of innovation and success in the digital document marketplace, and we look forward to this opportunity to help the industry move forward," said Cliff Kaplan, Quark's vice president of business development and OEM/third party solutions. "Quark customers bring deep expertise in page layout software, an area of increasing importance to organizations that want to create more effective, attractive personalized printed communications." To help facilitate rapid, high quality custom printing, Quark is aligning with major providers of digital print services, and the PODi community offers exposure to many of these leaders. "Forging partnerships with other companies who are also committed to this space is a clear goal for Quark," Kaplan said. "The PODi community puts us in contact with vendors and end users who share our vision."