CHICAGO, IL, Shira Computers Ltd., the leading provider of Web-based prepress and native PDF workflow solutions, and printChannel.com, the leader in business-to-business, enterprise-wide print procurement, today announced a strategic partnership that will allow users of the printChannel service to take advantage of Shira's eP2 online TM native PDF and prepress services to process complex print jobs over the Internet. eP2 online is a new Web-enabled virtual print environment for managing the production of print projects. This technology includes online project management capabilities, prepress functions and native PDF workflow tools that streamline the print production process by providing automated, customized prepress services. "This partnership provides the printing industry with a complete Internet-enabled print processing service," states Oliver Pflug, CEO of printChannel.com. "The agreement with Shira will enable us to significantly expand our value proposition to commercial print suppliers by allowing them to offer to their commercial customers a wide range of print management services over the Web. Through Shira's eP2 online technology, printChannelî and myprintChannelî, our customers will be able to automate a broad range of prepress and production processes for standard, as well as first time print jobs including booklets, brochures, posters, personalized documents, corporate forms, and reports." printChannel.com currently provides branded solutions for print providers to expedite creating, ordering, proofing, and outputting print orders online. Corporate users order products through a Web browser interface and can modify the content online by editing text and substituting images within the parameters of a given product layout. Online and desktop proofing are made simple by the automatic generation of a GIF file that can be viewed through a browser without the need for plug-ins. After orders have been proofed and approved online, printers can configure the system to determine the optimal impositions for any group of orders, and then generate PDF files, ready for high quality printing. "printChannel chose Shira because it provides a complete solution whereas other online solutions provide only partial or single point services," adds Pflug. "Shira is also a proven supplier of prepress components to leading vendors of the industry and has the most advanced native PDF technology on the market." "This new service for online prepress workflows with native PDF technology will give printChannel users a unique solution to offer customers," says Yossi Givati, Corporate Vice President of Business Development at Shira. "eP2 online has been well received by the Web-based print community since its introduction at Drupa last May. The partnership between Shira and printChannel.com creates a best-of-breed technological solution that can lead the market," adds Givati. About Shira Shira is a developer of workflow products that are used in the print and publishing industry for digital prepress that were adopted also by leading vendors of the industry like Heidelberg, Creo, Agfa, and Kodak. Recently Shira has collaborated with innovative technology partners to produce efficient Web-based workflow solutions. The new eP2 online TM services introduced at Drupa to automate web based print production workflows that provides a virtual environment for managing print production and Web-based prepress services such as RIPing, proofing, conferencing, imposition and file conversion. Shira has also introduced a new line of native PDF workflow products that were developed by ACCHSH Group, which includes the PDF Merge-It OPI server, PDF Organizer for multi- document imposition, PDF Personalizer and PDF Pairer imposition for newspaper, The products are also integrated as part of eP2 online 's services. Shira is a privately held company. Shira Computers Ltd. is headquartered in Kfar Saba, Israel and maintains subsidiary sales offices in the United States and Europe. For additional information, please contact Shira at 781-376-4175 or visit their web site at www.shira.com. About printChannel .com: printChannel.com, is headquartered in San Francisco, California and is the leader in business-to-business enterprise-wide print purchasing solutions. It has over 220 live production Implementations throughout North America, Europe, Latin America and New Zealand, with over 150,000 billable production orders processed as of August 2000. For more information see: www.printchannel.com.