Picdar celebrates 20 years at the forefront of mass image and digital asset storage software this year. Universally recognized as the leading provider of digital asset management solutions to the vast majority of the UK's national newspapers, Picdar continues to innovate ahead of the market.

This year at Ifra, Picdar is announcing new solutions strategies designed for the future of publishing, and is showing new products built to make life even easier for its customers.

New products, available now, include a range of workflow tools including Quark XTensions and InDesign plugins, essential to make integration with page make-up technologies fast and furious. PicUp, a new tool that lets customers manage and upload their own images direct onto publisher s web sites is invaluable for speeding up work flow for environments such as on-line classified advertising. And, the company s latest Syndication Solution, is now available either as a hosted system, or for customers to run in-house.

New editions of Media Mogul, Magazine and Regional Newspapers respectively, have been designed with the needs of those sectors in mind. Media Mogul Magazine Edition includes sophisticated workflow allowing for check-in, check-out and approvals, and Media Mogul Regional Newspaper Edition (RNE) includes the facility to capture and route wire feeds from any source, image and text, and provides a complete archive of images, stories and pages.

Picdar's future strategy is built on the J2EE standard. New for Ifra is Media Mogul 4ej enterprise solution, the award winning Media Mogul solution re-engineered for J2EE. This offers easy integration with other J2EE applications, and runs on just about any server platform, as well as offering great performance and flexibility. This means that Picdar s know-how is now available to all publishers, large and small, without the need for costly hardware or systems infrastructure changes.

Said Lesley Steinitz, CEO, Picdar, "2004 is an exciting year for us. We have seen a strong recovery in the sector, with new publishers from both newspaper and magazine sectors coming to us to help them bring greater flexibility and speed into their publishing systems. Our ability to stay ahead, and continue to innovate, is due to our commitment to R&D. I am confident that Picdar will continue to provide the best solutions for its customers, maintaining our position as the number one choice."