Ektron, Inc. Establishes New Solutions Center -- Full Offering Of Professional Services Complements Proven Web Content Management Solutions

Market Wire, 20050229

Ektron, Inc., innovators in e-business Web authoring and content management solutions, today announced the official launch of its new Solutions Center, offering a full range of Web design, development, and content authoring and management application integration services to enhance and simplify e-business processes. In a continuing effort to deliver next-generation dynamic Web technology, Ektron now offers small- and medium-sized businesses a full range of turnkey options for optimizing and extending an organization's Web presence.

Prior to today's formal launch of Ektron's Solutions Center, Ektron has been delivering professional web services to several organizations, including Boston-area dental e-business solutions provider, Transcend, Inc. Ektron played an integral role in assisting with the development of Transcend's first-of-a-kind Web applications including "do-it-yourself" Web publishing for dental practices, a sophisticated tele-dental laboratory prescription solution, and a dental Web storefront featuring a smart catalog for simplifying dentistry's often-complex product purchases. Founded in 1998, Transcend is among the first in the dental industry to provide Internet-based solutions that optimize the quality, timeliness and cost-effectiveness of dental service delivery.

"Ektron has been instrumental in helping us get to market quickly by assisting with the development of the sophisticated e-business solutions we offer to our customers," says Arnold Rosen, DDS, founder and CEO of Wellesley, Massachusetts-based Transcend, Inc. "Ektron's ability to accelerate our Web development work has been enormously valuable to Transcend. They've played a major role in helping us bring first-of-a-kind, highly innovative e-commerce and e-business technologies to the dental industry. This, in turn, has allowed us to seize first-to-market positioning and assists in securing a prominent place in the competitive landscape."

Over the past 18 months, Ektron has provided consulting services to Transcend to help create two major e-dental solutions - TransLab(TM), the first online tele-dental laboratory prescription solution; and TransBiz(TM), a first-of-its-kind Smart Catalog(TM) that uses a rules-based expert system to guide dental professionals through the complicated steps of selecting dental products. In addition to providing radically new business opportunities for Transcend's customers, these solutions offer value-add functionality. By incorporating Ektron-developed Web authoring and content management functionality, Transcend's customers can easily and cost-effectively manage the applications within their environments and can also deliver easy-to-use solutions for line-of-business professionals within their end-customer sites.

In one of its initial projects with Transcend, Ektron assisted with the development of a Web site for a solo-practice dental office. Soon after the site was launched, the dentist became frustrated with the complexity of making updates to the site. Transcend again turned to Ektron, seeking a solution that would allow the dentist to update his site himself -- without having to learn HTML and without having to funnel content through a Web developer to publish it to the site. Ektron provided its flagship product, eWebEditPro, the industry's leading browser-based, WYSIWYG Web content creation and publishing tool designed specifically for non-technical professionals who contribute content to dynamic Web sites.

"The Ektron Solutions Center is a logical evolution of our e-business philosophy -- to bring complete, affordable, and scaleable dynamic Web and e-business solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses, regardless of the company's level of IT infrastructure or Web support staff," says Bill Rogers, Ektron founder and CEO. "Like Transcend, all of our Solutions Center customers will benefit from Ektron's extensive e-business experience, including the valuable insight we've gained in developing and implementing our own commercially available content management solutions."

Ektron projects significant near-term growth in assisting customers with transforming from an existing static site to a sophisticated, dynamic, e-business-oriented Web presence. According to Rogers, this can be achieved quickly and at a low-cost by incorporating Ektron-created solutions, including eWebEditPro and the just-released eMPower, a full-featured content management application.

Ektron's Solutions Center empowers customers to meet their business objectives. The center offers services based upon an initial project plan developed collaboratively with each client. Services include complete turnkey Web development for new sites, conversion from a static to a dynamic Web site, Web design/graphics consulting, hosting and training. Specifically, Ektron's area of expertise includes:

integration of "do-it-yourself" non-technical Web editing/publishing and content/document management functionality into existing Web environmentscustom Web application development integration of easily-updateable, pre-defined templates for frequently modified Web pages (i.e. Employment, News, FAQs)