New to NEXPO: Microsoft
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Having decided to formally enter the publishing-solutions market earlier this year, software giant Microsoft arrived at its first NEXPO with only a handful of products to show.
But that was all part of the plan. Saying it came to New Orleans to highlight the work of newspaper developers using the Windows platform, the Redmond, Wash., company filled its large booth with those partners' products.
"We have the foundation pieces"--namely, the Windows NT operating system, SQL-server software and family of BackOffice products, explained Donna Conner, Microsoft's Internet and information-publishing marketing manager. "Our intention is to support the application developers."
Microsoft offers vendors marketing tools, technical information and consulting services. When Pantheon Inc., for instance, wanted to move its Web-automation products from Access to an SQL database, Microsoft's consulting-services division offered assistance, as they will when CText Inc. migrates products from OS/2 to NT, according to Conner.
Clearly, the publishing-system drummer has been following the Windows beat for several years. And Microsoft is moving, too. In recent months, the company entered agreements with Linotype and Adobe that will result in color- and font-management improvements to its operating systems.
"We realized that for publishers to embrace Windows, [those] two things needed to be improved," Conner explained.
To date, Microsoft has signed up some 50 publishing-solution partners, a dozen of which were highlighted in its booth. All told, nearly 100 NEXPO pre-press and business vendors exhibited products of some sort on the Windows platform, according to Conner.
Microsoft has taken similar approaches with other vertical-industry segments, including health care and financial services. That publishing suppliers have been moving to Windows NT for several years made the industry all the more appealing, according to Conner.
"We are willing to meet them more than halfway."
Mark Toner, Presstime staff writer. E-mail, tonem@naa.org; phone, (703) 902-1684; fax, (703) 902-1690.