Enterprise applications Toolkit

Adobe updates server software

David Becker CNET News

Published: 10 Sep 2002 10:43 BST

Publishing-software giant Adobe Systems announced on Monday a new version of AlterCast, the server software it developed to help companies manage image libraries and reformat files for different media.

Adobe Graphics Server 2.0 replaces AlterCast, released early this year to kick off a broad push into enterprise software.

Graphics Server is intended for businesses such as news organisations and catalogue retailers that use a large number of images in multiple media. Using rules set up in Graphics Server, one can automatically reformat an image for use on Web pages, in print publications and in electronic documents -- work that otherwise would require tedious recoding by graphics professionals.

New features in Version 2.0 include expanded support for Adobe's PDF and EPS electronic document formats, expanded use of "metadata" information detailing an image's attributes, and additional ties to PhotoShop, Adobe's market-leading image-editing application.

Graphics Server 2.0 will be available by the end of the year in versions for Microsoft's Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems and Version 7 or higher of Solaris, Sun Microsystems' version of the Unix operating system. Pricing is based on how many server processors the software runs on, starting at $7,500 per processor for new customers or $2,250 per processor for those upgrading from AlterCast.

Adobe has announced a number of alliances and acquisitions in the past year as part of an effort to position publishing programs such as Acrobat as key business applications.

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