Press Association and Agence France Presse chose Nuxeo

• PA has selected Nuxeo to enhance news production process and enable journalists to manage and distribute content for digital markets more efficiently
• PA will launch the new technology in Q1 of 2008 to digital journalists in the UK, and is then expected to roll out the technology to its offshore centres.

Nuxeo has been chosen by The Press Association (PA), the national news agency of the UK and Ireland, to improve its digital news production process and enable journalists to distribute content online more efficiently.

Rapidly changing requirements and demands for digital multimedia news distribution drove the need for PA to develop a much more robust and efficient ECM platform. Nuxeo has developed an ECM prototype for PA, which PA has approved. Both parties are currently working together on the final release.

PA needed a rich desktop and workflow functionality that it could implement to reflect the needs of the business. Following an extensive evaluation of the market, looking for a solution that could offer the framework, support and expertise to help achieve PA's goal, PA chose Nuxeo as it could deliver on all these levels and had previous experience in delivering ECM solutions to large scale editorial environments.

PA's UK digital journalists and editorial team will be the first users of Nuxeo's solution, with the system being rolled out to offshore centres over a period of time.

Because of Nuxeo's Open Source business model, instead of paying for expensive licence fees, PA is using their budget to develop, implement and support a bespoke application to improve their business. PA expects it will dramatically reduce the number of keystrokes needed by its digital editorial teams, which complements PA's main aims of being a fast, fair and accurate news source. PA will launch the new technology in Q1 of 2008.

Paul Berman, IT Development Director at PA, said:

"In our very competitive and fast moving market, we need to be able to deliver news efficiently and accurately, and be able to adapt quickly. By leveraging Nuxeo platform, we can accelerate the system build, and keep full control over system features, functions and costs. I'm not just plugging in their latest product - I'm taking their offering, shaping it and adding bits to it - leaving PA with a solution which will fit our ever changing needs."

Steve Raby, UK MD of Nuxeo, said:

"This is a highly significant win for us. PA demonstrates a forward thinking organisation that recognises the need for an adaptable and intelligent ECM model in order to strive ahead in a fiercely competitive market. We hope this win will encourage UK businesses to notice the very clear business benefits this ECM technology delivered through an Open Source business model presents."

Press Association is the national news agency for the UK and Ireland, providing a continuous feed of text, pictures, video and data into newsrooms around the country.
At the heart of the media industry, The Press Association supplies services to every national and regional daily newspaper, broadcasters, online publishers and a wide range of commercial organisations.
Founded in 1868, The Press Association has an unrivalled reputation for providing fast, fair and accurate information.
The Press Association is part of PA Group Limited, a private company with 27 shareholders, most of whom are national and regional newspaper publishers. The biggest shareholders are Associated Newspaper Holdings Limited, News International plc, Trinity Mirror plc and United Business Media plc.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) has successfully deployed the Nuxeo ECM platform as part of its wider multimedia strategy. A key component of this strategy was to overhaul its multi-language Internet journal production system into an Open Source system that is very user friendly in terms of being able to manage text and images. This powerful new system also supports the international NewsML standard. Since the “new generation console” first went live in Berlin in August 2006, it has been rolled out in Paris and is delivering significant boosts to journalists’ productivity.

“Nuxeo’s entrepreneurial spirit and positive attitude really won our trust along with their excellent track record implementing their zero-cost licence ECM software platform,” says Daniel Oudet, AFP’s Engineering Director. “With their Open Source platform, we have been able to develop our own completely secure applications and easily integrate any additional proprietary components.”

AFP chose to initially pilot the new console in their Berlin office, which has resulted in a 40 percent productivity increase to date. Following the success of the pilot, AFP was able to quickly migrate the implementation to the multi-media desk in its Parisian headquarters. Paris-based journalists have benefitted from the same productivity gains as their Berlin colleagues after only ten days of use and continue to this day on the production-ready system.

“After one of our project leaders trained the Berlin staff, AFP was confident enough to use the platform independently. However, we continue to develop and improve the system to support specific requests relating to metadata and special formats for cell phones, for example,” says Eric Barroca, VP of operations at Nuxeo.

In early 2008, AFP plans to roll out the multimedia production system in English to support AFP sites in Hong Kong, New Delhi, London and Washington. Consequently, around fifty journalists responsible for the Internet AFP news online production will use the new system to provide content to approximately 100 clients in Germany, 200 in France and 180 in English-speaking countries. AFP also plans to migrate its multimedia services in Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic.

AFP, worldwide news agency, maintains a network of journalists in 165 countries around the world covering events 24/7 in 6 languages. The AFP brand guarantees editorial quality and reliability built since the agency was founded in 1835. The agency also offers multimedia products online: text, pictures, graphics, animated graphics and video. AFP covers all the news worldwide, from politics and diplomacy to economy and finance, sports and culture to science, technology, health and people. Its clients include the world’s major media organizations as well as corporations, governments and international agencies. Its services are edited at regional centers in Paris, Nicosia, Washington Montevideo and Hong Kong. For more information about AFP, please go to www.afp.com.