New Contenders in the Editorial Systems Market - Impressed

above, and as a standalone system for customers who
don’t need the full functionality of Concerto, such as
advertising agencies that need the interactive remote
client functionality.
Modulo didn’t exhibit the Quasar system at
Nexpo, saying it would take six months to get it ready
for the market.
One of Quasar’s two customers, PSA Peugeot Citroën,
is planning to use it to create and produce 15 corporate
magazines. Editors and reporters at locations
inside and outside France will connect to a server to
access a page template database, graphics and photos,
as well as an automated production system running
InDesign. Initially, the system will be used for internal
communication among 15 industrial sites in France.
Later, it will be adapted for producing the magazines of
technical departments, third parties and industries
based in France and elsewhere.
Quasar will continue to sell GetReady through its
own channels and retains the rights to deal with other
integrators. Modulo said it has no plans for Quasar to
sell the Concerto products that result from the integration
of the two technologies.
Tools from Ixiasoft, Siftology. Modulo also has signed
two deals relating to text storage and searching. First,
Modulo has obtained the rights to resell and distribute
Ixiasoft’s TextML XML Server and search engine.
TextML Server, which Modulo is integrating with
Concerto and Symphony, as well as selling separately,
indexes XML documents and XMP-tagged photos and
manages content without altering the native files. Most
notable is its fast retrieval, based on its advanced
indexing and query language. It also controls backup
versions of files, complementing Concerto’s own capabilities.
Modulo is working to make the user interface
more like Concerto’s.
The second deal is with Siftology, the developer of
search technology that locates stories that resemble a
target story. The product from Modulo, called
Amadeus, starts by analyzing and indexing all articles
as they enter the database. Siftology won’t disclose
how it works, but said the engine has been “pretrained”
with 10 years’ worth of newspaper stories to
aid in establishing relationships based on the meaning
of the content. In operation, a reporter or editor typically
performs a keyword search to find a story that is
representative of the type of content that is sought.
Amadeus then finds all the articles that are similar to
the reference article, taking into account both the analytical
data and additional search parameters, such as
dates of publication, bylines, etc.
Modulo and the market. It might seem that the arrival of
Concerto would spell the end of the Modulo-QPS relationship.
After all, Concerto was designed to cater to
the needs of QPS users wanting to upgrade their systems,
and Quark has a reputation for making it diffi-
cult for companies both to work with Quark and compete
with it. But there might be more to the situation
than meets the eye.
Modulo wants to offer QPS upgrades to companies
currently using QPS that aren’t ready to add a
complete new system like Concerto, so offering QPS
upgrades as an alternative to Concerto makes business
sense for Modulo.
And Quark, to the surprise of many, has made
changes in top management that appear to open the
way to partnerships that might have been unthinkable
not long ago. One new development is the formation
of an OEM group that has HP as its first customer, creating
a potentially significant new market. If Quark is
serious about broadening its approach, a similar
arrangement with Modulo, once the nurturer of 863
QPS customers, could make sense. It might help Quark
retain more QPS customers than would remain without
Modulo’s involvement.
In any event, we haven’t been told of any impending
changes in the Quark-Modulo relationship. (In
fact, for this article, Modulo didn’t state anything
about its past, current or future business relationship
with Quark, suggesting that the two companies might
be discussing a new agreement.)
Such a scenario would give Modulo a product line
that includes the following:
• QPS Classic 3, primarily for customers that want
to upgrade from Version 2 but are not ready to
purchase a completely new system.
• Concerto, which is expected to cost somewhat
more than QPS and offer substantially greater
functionality. By supporting CopyDesk and
Xpress, as well as InCopy and InDesign, Modulo
smoothes the transition between QPS and Concerto
by allowing customers to buy Concerto, use it
with CopyDesk and Xpress initially, and later
Editorial Systems
Query results.
Remote users of the
Concerto system can
use the Harmony
browser client to
query the database
and get this view of
the results. Below
the photos are
color-coded statuses,
e.g., New, Used,
Edit, Final to layout
and Archive to XML.
Volume 4, Number 13 • The Seybold Report • Analyzing Publishing Technologies 9