The Cole Papers, NEXPO, July 2000

July 2000

Mergers, acquisitions & splits (not products) highlight NEXPO

SAN FRANCISCO -- NEXPO, the trade show and conference of the Newspaper Association of America, runs in cycles. Some years there are a bunch of new products; some years there are a bunch of sales and installation announcements; some years it's all business and alliances.

NEXPO 2000, held here June 17-20, will go down in the annals as the year of business, not products.

In addition to the acquisition and merger of CText and System Integrators by Net-Linx AG (see following story), there were major business announcements by Atex, Edgil, Infinet, MultiAd, Open Pages, Quark, SaxoTech and Unisys.

And we will concede there was a new product or two.

So, taking it from the top:

Atex splits into two. The venerable editorial and advertising system supplier, Atex Media Solutions Inc. of Bedford, Mass., said that it would split into two, with one division that will develop the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) content management product Omnex and the other division to support the publishing business.

Max Coebergh, currently the head of the publishing business, will take over Atex; he replaces Karen Weltchek, who will become head of the Omnex business division.

Omnex, introduced at NEXPO '99, has yet to have been successfully installed at any newspaper, though it is being evaluated by both the Financial Times of London as well as Hong Kong's South China Morning Post.

Presumably, this is the first step in spinning Omnex off as a stand-alone business, which will help beleaguered Atex investors get some return on their money.

In addition, Atex said that it would launch an application service provider division (see story Page 6).

Quark and SAXoTECH "forge alliance." The maker of the ubiquitous XPress page layout application has finally decided to give integrators a bit more cooperation. Quark Inc. of Denver, said on June 17 that it would license its CopyDesk writing and editing application to developers; SaxoTech, the Danish company with U.S. offices in Rockville, Md., was the first company to "take advantage of this opportunity" with an agreement announced June 20.

Quark, which has always held integrators at arm's-length, last year made a similar deal with System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento, and that company's Insiight was demonstrated at NEXPO 2000 with a certain amount of XPress interactivity.

SaxoTech, which recently signed the Washington Times as well as the Chronicle of Higher Education as its first U.S. customers, uses XPress extensively in its environment.

IBM agrees to take over AP Preserver. Though there wasn't an official announcement at NEXPO, it was clear at the IBM booth that the company's Networked Interactive Content Access (Nica) asset management system would be chosen by the Associated Press as the successor to the AP Preserver, which the news cooperative said last fall it would cease to develop (see The Cole Papers, November 1999).

Nica, which is also the foundation for CCI Europe's asset management system, runs on IBM RS/6000 systems, as does the AP Preserver. And while the announcement of the AP-IBM alliance came the week after NEXPO, David Rocha, the wire service's Preserver product manager, had already left AP and joined IBM in time to work the IBM booth. Neither the AP nor IBM revealed a price for the exchange.

The news cooperative said it would assign ownership of the AP Preserver's source code to IBM to help make the transition for existing Preserver customers easier.

Multi-Ad Services Inc. purchased by Bent Pencil. The 55-year-old supplier of advertising services and materials was acquired by Bent Pencil of Houston, last spring (no purchase price was disclosed). The new owners quickly dubbed the software portion of the company -- which developed the Creator display-ad makeup application -- AdBuilder, but will continue to use the Kwikee brand name for advertising materials and image network.

AdBuilder, based in Multi-Ad's former offices in Peoria, Ill., then started AdBuilder.com, a web site that offers access to on-line versions of the company's Creator software and ReCAS co-op information software.

Bent Pencil is the parent company of AdPlex, one of the country's largest printers and pre-press suppliers, which was founded in 1981. The company says that with the addition of Multi-Ad, combined revenues will top $100 million.

MediaBridge Technologies sold to Engage. The Acton, Mass.-based supplier of asset management and e-commerce systems was acquired the week before NEXPO by Engage Inc. of Andover, Mass. Engage said that MediaBridge Technologies Inc. would be run as a wholly owned subsidiary and that Robert Angelo, MediaBridge's chief executive, would remain in charge.

MediaBridge started life in the United States as Advanced Prepress Systems Inc. in 1992; in 1994 it merged with Cascade Systems Ltd. of the United Kingdom, to become Cascade Systems International, which was renamed last year as MediaBridge. The company was privately held and counted the investment arm of Adobe Systems among its investors. MediaBridge sold for 14.5 million shares of Engage common stock, valued at about $246 million.

Unisys to integrate, market Edgil software. The Blue Bell, Pa.-based computer systems supplier's publishing division has agreed to use EdgBiz, the on-line advertising transaction program from Edgil Associates Inc. of North Chelmsford, Mass., in its advertising products.

Edgil's technology allows Unisys to offer a specialized suite of web applications, which complement and integrate with its system.

InfiNet's service bureau offerings. The Norfolk, Va.-based newspaper Web hosting provider, owned by a consortium of Gannett Co. Inc., Knight Ridder and Landmark Communications, said the week after NEXPO that it would offer GDT-Nova's Connex XMLServer technology and Open Pages' ContentWare to its newspaper customers in a service bureau -- or application service provider -- environment.

Connex XML Server is middleware software that can be positioned between legacy publishing systems and Web hosting systems or between Web hosting systems and other software, such as transaction or e-commerce. GDT-Nova is the recent partnership between Global Digital Technologies Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif., and Auburn, Calif.-based Nova Publishing Products Inc.

OpenPages Inc., based in Westford, Mass., is the former American Computer Innovators and creates systems that allow newspapers to create, manage and update Web content easily.

In addition, InfiNet said that it would end its consumer Internet access service and transfer existing subscribers to EarthLink. The company said it wanted to focus on helping newspapers build e-businesses.

Open Pages and Mactive allies. Melbourne, Fla., Mactive Inc. -- advertising specialists -- and Open Pages -- web content management specialists -- have agreed to exchange "best-of-breed" technology to achieve a "single, integrated system with a common toolset for system administrators." The companies said that a new product would be delivered in the fall.

Advanced Technical Solutions to distribute AdPlacer. The Wilmington, Mass.-based supplier of newspaper systems said two days before NEXPO that it would begin to sell AdPlacer, an ad dummying tool from Informatel of Laval, Quebec, Canada.

-- dmc

Advanced Technical Solutions, (978) 657-6500, e-mail: info@atsusa.com;
The Associated Press, (212) 621-1500;
Atex Media Solutions Inc., (781) 275-2323, e-mail: info@atex.com;
Edgil Associates Inc., (978) 251-9932, e-mail: jkosiorek@edgil.com;
GDT-Nova, (530) 887-1795, e-mail: kirk@novapub.com;
InfiNet Co., (800) 391-8760, e-mail: solutions@infi.net;
Mactive Inc., (407) 254-5559, e-mail: info@mactiveinc.com;
MediaBridge, (978) 795-7000, e-mail: info@mediabridge.net;
Multi-Ad Services Inc., (309) 692-1530, e-mail: corporate@multi-ad.com;
OpenPages Inc., (978) 392-0640, e-mail: sales@aci-openpages.com;
Quark Inc., (303) 894-8888, e-mail: aselvia@ quark.com;
SAXoTECH Inc., (301) 294-0805, e-mail: info@saxotech.com;
Unisys Corp., (215) 986-4080, e-mail: williamhstroud@unn.unisys.com.

Mergers, acquisitions & splits (not products) highlight NEXPO

From THE COLE PAPERS, July 2000, Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved.