The new Atex opens up

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb 1, 1995 by Steve Wilson

The future of Atex Publishing Systems as a company seems secure since its purchase (along with its long-time advertising system supplier, SyPress Oy of Finland) in January by Oslo, Norway-based Sysdeco Group AS. What will happen to Atex's loyal base of users remains a question, however. Atex Publishing Systems CEO Danny Chapchal, who has stayed on since the sale, says the Bedford, Massachusetts-based company is intent on supporting magazines committed to its proprietary system. "The company's user base was its greatest asset when we bought it, and that's still the case," he says. "Our prerequisite is to make sure our users will be happy with the direction we will be taking."

But as the three-way merger comes to fruition, that direction is still unclear. Sysdeco is a software supplier that specializes in tools for "mission-critical" computer systems (those that perform tasks integral to a company's operation). Although its spokespeople say they are moving toward the same multimedia future as Atex, no one is yet ready to speculate on how the company's product line will be affected.

Desktop-bound

One aspect of Atex's development is clear: A batch of new low-end and high-end offerings, all of which are compatible with Macintosh and IBM front-ends, solidifies its transition to the age of open architecture. Atex began marketing all of these desktop-compatible products under Chapchal, who, with a group of British investors, took over the company in 1992. Since then, Atex has seen a dramatic turnaround from its previous 11 years under the ownership of Eastman Kodak, when losses were estimated at $1 million a month. Atex is once again turning a profit, albeit a modest one. (See "Atex gets a second chance to reinvent itself," FOLIO:, January 15, 1995, page 25.)

Many of these changes may have come too late, however, at least for the company's magazine clientele. While The New York Times placed a $6.6 million order with Atex in November 1994, Time Inc. and IDG Publications have almost completely converted to desktop systems. Conde Nast unplugged its last Atex this past April, says director of Macintosh systems Alex McDonald. McDonald says the company was unimpressed with Atex's early open architecture efforts a year and a half ago, and began to implement, as his title attests, a Macintosh-based QuarkXPress system. "It was a too-little-too-late kind of thing," he explains. "I think in the short term Quark has a stranglehold on the industry."

Realizing this, Atex struck a deal with the desktop publishing leader and took aim at small- to medium-size publications with the release of products such as the Press2Go Quark XTensions in October 1993. The first in the Press2Go family of pagination products offers Atex users QuarkXPress access bolstered by productivity-improving XTensions. Among the enhancements are the $399 Multi-User, which allows several people to work on different stories on the same page at once, and Jump Documents, a $399 tool for flowing a story between two or more pages on different Quark documents.

Reflex, specifically aimed at broadening the firm's customer base, was introduced in February 1994 in IBM and Macintosh versions. This is production-tracking software that acts as a monitoring system for editorial, advertising and production, coordinating and reporting on the status of stories, headlines, images and ads. It is also able to track from remote production sites, when necessary.

More may mean less

The consolidation potential resulting from Sysdeco's acquisition of Atex also suggests the possibility of centralized product development. Considering that the three firms market seven editorial systems between them, some streamlining seems inevitable. "There are a number of products each company puts out that overlap each other," admits Atex director of communications Mike Akillian. "But I don't think it would get down to [only] one editorial system."

No doubt Atex has a particular affinity for the two it has recently developed: one to cover the user wed to Atex's native WES Composition language; one to lure coveted new customers. Deadline, released in June 1994, is a PC-and Unix RS/6000-based "Next-Generation Front-End System." Designed as a "migration system" for traditional customers, it allows them to choose from off-the-shelf text-editing packages while providing typography and composition on the desktop. Prestige, slated to come to market in the second quarter of 1995, is a PC-based editorial system for users who aren't on WES. Prestige will use Microsoft Word, QuarkXPress and Sybase and be scalable for use by both large and small publications.

The Next-Generation thinking that spawned Deadline also led to the February 1994 creation of Enterprise, an open marketing and advertising management system. Enterprise is set up to integrate all areas of a publication's advertising operations, from sales planning and marketing to ad booking and production, providing reports, interfaces to business systems and monitoring of sales activity and production.