Advent Publishing Systems Selects Progressive Information Technologies' Vasont System for Content Management.

Business Editors

EMIGSVILLE, Pa. & SWINDON, U.K.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 9, 2002

Progressive Information Technologies, a leader in the information management and publishing services industry for more than 50 years, and Advent Publishing Systems Ltd, a world supplier of publishing software tools, today announced Advent's adoption of Progressive Information Technologies' Vasont system.

Advent will use Vasont to manage many of the Company's technical documents including its international language document distribution. Vasont, a powerful cross-media content management system, will assemble and deliver to Advent's 3B2 publishing software the structured data for composition and publishing of its information in various media formats including CD-ROM, PDF, print and other electronic media.

With more than 10,000 copies of Advent's software in use around the world, 3B2 is internationally renowned as a solution for the production of high-end, high-volume complex documents in a variety of publishing markets. These include scientific, technical, medical, legal, financial, aerospace and traditional publishing.

Due to Advent's international success, the requirement for the management of multi-lingual documentation has been growing to an extent where the need for a new content management system became apparent. Vasont provided a comprehensive solution. Vasont's particular strength is its compliance with the Unicode standards which makes it compatible with 3B2's adoption of the same standard for multi-language publishing including support for German, French, Japanese and other languages using XML and Unicode.

"Advent embarked on a selection process for a flexible and powerful system that could handle both our current and future needs," stated George Punton, CEO of the Advent Group. "The fact that Vasont has full Unicode support in both their Web and client/server seats was very important in our decision because of the global reach of our product and our desire to minimize translation costs."

"Numerous vendors responded to our RFP, and Progressive Information Technologies' Vasont system was by far the best for our requirements," stated Jurgen Haas, Advent's Technical Director. "Vasont offers a range of functionality that not only benefits our immediate 3B2 documentation needs, but the internal content of our whole company."

Through Vasont's exclusive Tag Neutral Technology(TM), content is saved in its purest form because the tags and content are stored separately. By making content pure, Vasont allows for integration with today's technologies (including SGML, XML and HTML) and future technologies yet to be developed. Additionally, the Tag Neutral Technology's dynamic repurposing functionality ensures content integrity because it automatically updates content in all of its uses through the entire system once a user makes a change to the original content.

"Our relationship with Advent Publishing Systems marks a milestone for Vasont because it is our first client headquartered in the United Kingdom," Richard Schiding, Progressive Information Technologies CEO, said. "It's exciting for us that a leading global software organization such as Advent recognizes the benefits of Vasont and is using the system to solve its robust content management challenges."

George Punton stated further, "Having worked together on prior projects, we are confident that the Vasont system will increase our productivity and accuracy and enable us to provide a top quality knowledge facility for all 3B2 users for many years to come."

About Vasont

Progressive Information Technologies' Vasont(TM), formerly TARGET 2000, is a powerful cross-media publishing system that enables organizations to create, organize and manage content for publishing to print, electronic, Web, wireless and future media channels. Vasont is driven by its exclusive Tag Neutral Technology(TM) that stores content in its purest form - free of tags. Users access and control content on demand, which is then automatically customized for any tagging scheme, enabling complete integration for various publishing needs. Vasont's customer base includes Fortune 1000 companies and spans a variety of industries, including: manufacturing, automotive, publishing, pharmaceutical and education. Vasont's impressive client list includes: WB Saunders; Hewlett-Packard; Detroit Diesel; American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP); McGraw-Hill Professional; and Merck & Co., Inc. For more information, go to www.vasont.com.

About Advent Publishing Systems

Using leading edge technologies, Advent develops, delivers and supports sophisticated and customized publishing solutions harnessing the power of 3B2 software and the skills of experienced technical consultants.

3B2 is capable of handling the most complex publishing challenges through the incorporation of international standards including SGML, XML, XSLT, Xpath and Perl.

Advent has in excess of 10,000 satisfied users in more than 40 countries serving governments and blue chip corporations including The European Parliament, Boeing, SmithKline Beecham, the US Patent and Trademark Office, Bertelsmann and the Canadian House of Commons.

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