Tech giants seize initiative in new media

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 1992 by Liz Horton

The two major competitors in the computer publishing industry -- International Data Group and Ziff Communications -- are finding CD-ROM to be the perfect technology for packaging voluminous amounts of data and spinning them off to new business markets. But each is roping off a different section of the computer market for its database product lines.

Ziff, by licensing information from outside sources, is creating compendiums of information for computer buyers and support staffs, while IDG culls data from its own far-flung resources to leverage into database products for computer-related marketers.

The push to publish on CD-ROM, which can hold vast amounts of easily searchable data, is driven by improved search capability, faster access and the fact that there are growing numbers of CD-ROM drives in use, say the two companies. "We used to offer CD-ROM drives bundled with the CD-ROM disk," says Nancy Van Natta, director of marketing at Ziff's Computer Library. "The number we sell that way has decreased dramatically."

Spearheading the operation for Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDG is Emerging Technology Applications (ETA), an operating unit formed last summer to gather information from across IDG's 178-magazine empire and repackage it in electronic media for new markets targeted by the firm.

ETA's first products, targeted to technology marketers (people selling computers or software who need information about purchasing patterns) are a series of 12 prepackaged CD-ROM-based databases such as the IDG Research Database, which includes 1,200 market reports, 1,500 competitive company profiles and over 7,000 data tables and forecast charts from IDG's market research arm. ETA is also providing custom CD publishing by offering research tailored for specific marketers, deliverable on CD-ROM or floppy disk. Since all its CD databases have the same interface and format, says ETA president Paul Earl, they can be placed in a CD "jukebox" that makes them all searchable at once. ETA can then access the information to customize it for marketers. Earl says contracts have been signed with several companies to provide customized data sets.

Rather than leverage its own resources, New York City-based Ziff has chosen to create data banks of information by reaching out across the industry and licensing information from multiple sources. Its $995 ComputerSelect CD-ROM, offering text from 160 computer magazines and newsletters and specifications on 72,000 products, has been available for more than three years. But there were no other products until this spring, when it launched two specialized new CD-ROM products, one for the business market and one for consumers.