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Bitstream Announces New Pageflex Product Offerings Utilizing Adobe InDesign CS4

Tuesday 31. March 2009 - Pageflex Studio ID and Pageflex Storefront 7.0 Will Give Adobe InDesign Users the Power of Pageflex Variable Data Publishing Technology

Pageflex, a division of Bitstream Inc. (NASDAQ: BITS) and a leading developer of enterprise variable data publishing and web-to-print solutions, announced today an expansion of the company’s collaboration with Adobe Systems Incorporated resulting in two new product offerings to support customers that have sophisticated graphic design needs and large volumes of Adobe InDesign documents. Pageflex Studio ID is a desktop variable data publishing (VDP) plug-in for Adobe InDesign CS4, while the company’s award-winning Pageflex Storefront web-to-print solution adds support for document customization using Adobe InDesign CS4 Server. A preview of these new offerings can be seen this week at the On Demand Conference and Exhibition in the Pageflex booth, number 2417.

“Bitstream has worked with Adobe for many years on a variety of endeavors, and I am particularly excited about this latest evolution of our relationship,” says Anna Chagnon, Bitstream President and CEO. “As Adobe InDesign has become the standard graphic design application in the marketplace, our customer base has increasingly asked us to bring our expertise in variable composition and web-to-print to the InDesign environment. I am delighted to meet our customers’ needs with both desktop and web-to-print solutions.”

Pageflex Studio ID
Pageflex Studio ID combines the full visual power and graphic creativity of InDesign with the industry-leading variable data capabilities that Pageflex has pioneered over the past twelve years. Pageflex Studio ID enables users to design, setup, and run variable data projects directly in InDesign. No conversion to a Pageflex format is necessary. The plug-in will be available for both Macintosh and Windows platforms.

“I am pleased that by coming to market simultaneously with Windows and Macintosh versions of Pageflex Studio ID, we can continue to support our Windows customer base while giving Mac users access to the power of Pageflex for one-to-one communications,” comments Costas Kitsos, Bitstream Vice President of Engineering. “We are excited to support the strong community of Macintosh users in the graphic arts industry.”

Included in Pageflex Studio ID are additional capabilities that turn Adobe InDesign into a powerful resource for variable data publishing. With Pageflex Studio ID, the InDesign application becomes project central for VDP campaigns, giving users access in one project file to multiple related templates and assets. Users can simply create one set of variables and variable business rules and then apply them to any template in the project. This centralization of a project is a hallmark of Pageflex variable data applications and saves time and cost by eliminating the need to re-create components for each template.

Pageflex Studio ID includes an intuitive point-n-click business rule editor for creating if-then-else rules, and support for Adobe ExtendScript when a project requires more complex rules. In addition, Pageflex Studio ID offers advanced users a robust scripting tool, called Pageflex Actions, to dynamically manipulate every aspect of an InDesign document on-the-fly.

Pageflex Studio ID also provides a migration path for those customers who want to make their VDP projects available in a Web-to-print storefront now or in the future. Using Pageflex Studio ID, users can prepare variable data templates for use in Pageflex Storefront.

Pageflex Storefront 7.0 with Adobe InDesign CS4 Server Integration
Pageflex Storefront, the industry-leading and award-winning web-to-print solution, includes integration with Adobe InDesign CS4 Server so that native InDesign documents can be selected, customized, and ordered through a web browser. Pageflex Storefront has always offered document customization using the Pageflex composition engine, and the addition of support for Adobe InDesign templates expands the choices for users involved in the creation of variable documents.

Adobe InDesign templates are designed and configured in Pageflex Studio ID on a Windows or Macintosh computer, packaged, and uploaded to Pageflex Storefront. There is no conversion to a Pageflex format. The templates retain all of the design and variable richness as when they are used directly in Pageflex Studio ID.

“It is always important to us to provide our customers with a simple migration path from desktop VDP to providing online document customization in a storefront. Our new InDesign-based product offerings continue that commitment,” explains Chagnon. “Pageflex Storefront customers will be able to choose to fill their online catalog with documents created using Pageflex Server, InDesign Server, or a combination of both. This freedom opens up a lot of opportunity for our Pageflex Storefront customers to support every document imaginable from the most creative design to the most complex data-driven dynamic composition.”

Both Pageflex Storefront 7.0 and Pageflex Studio ID will be available in June 2009.