The company says it will announce its latest version of the Hermes solution at the Newspaper Association of America's Newspapers '05 conference.Unisys said it will announce the availability of the latest release of its editorial solution, Hermes 10.2, at the Newspaper Association of America's Newspapers '05 conference, which will be in Dallas from March 19 to 22.
Hermes 10.2 is part of the Unisys Media Ensemble suite of publishing solutions.
With this release of Hermes 10.2, the Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys Corp. continues to build on the power of its integrated platform by expanding upon the Unisys integration of Adobe Creative Suite tools and introducing a PDF Workflow component to the editorial solution.
Sue Stevens, director of media solutions management for Unisys, spoke to Publish.com about this latest release and its focus on PDF.
"End-to-end PDF workflow is becoming a key publishing component, especially in magazines, as publishers require a consistent reproduction format. It saves time and money for the publisher," Stevens said.
"In both the advertising and graphics content area, the market has rapidly accepted PDF as the de facto standard file format. PDF will help the industry to make it easier for customers, ad agencies, content providers, etc., to do business with publishers."
Noting the uniqueness of the Media API application tool enabling better navigation in publishing content repositories, Stevens said, "It allows external systems to access the Hermes database, query the database and extract content via a public API (public in the sense that a publisher has the spec and can use it internally to let two systems talk with other).
"It works through industry-standard Web services [SOAP, J2EE, XML]. Media API has been designed around industry standards, like J2EE and SOAP. Thus, it allows simple interoperability among the diverse information systems of a media company."
Unisys continues its focus on increasing the efficiency and speed with which publishers handle their workflow.
"As can be seen from PDF end-to-end workflow and Media API as examples, the point is to increase automation and decrease the number of times the publisher has to touch an object," Stevens said.
"For example, with PDF workflow, the PDF ad or image can be placed directly on the page in InDesign or NewsRoom. It does not have to be converted. With Media API, the extraction format in XML can be tailored to accommodate the receiving system automatically.
"The enhancements in the area of PDF support and Adobe InDesign integration allow a cross media, trouble-free production cycle," Stevens said. "The biggest challenge for our customers is to reach convergence in content production, and we're assisting them in this complex process."
User feedback is a driving force in building successful applications, Stevens said.
"PDF workflow is the direct result of research and customer feedback, especially in the magazine arena. Likewise, Media API is the result of customer feedback regarding moving to a content centric approach to publishing," Stevens said.
The company's announcement said Unisys is implementing the Hermes solution suite for newspapers such as the Scranton Times, Hollinger Chicago Group and Editora Abril (Brazil).
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