"This release strengthens our position in the enterprise market by enabling enterprises to improve the way organizations and teams publish to the web," said Tom Hale, senior vice president and general manager, Macromedia, this morning as the San Francisco-based company - whose "Experience Matters" slogan is one of the most powerful anywhere in technology - announced the immediate availability of a Macromedia Web Publishing System (WPS) update.

The update includes Macromedia Contribute 3.1 and Macromedia Contribute Publishing Services 1.1.

"With Macromedia Web Publishing System, organizations can instantly eliminate bottlenecks and accelerate information sharing while lowering costs," Hale continued.

More than 360,000 users and 250 enterprise companies have implemented Macromedia Web Publishing System and Contribute, including Mayo Clinic, Visa International Latin America and Caribbean Region, and The University of Montana.

WPS provides "everything an organization needs to affordably build and manage intranets and public-facing websites," says Macromedia. The WPS update offers users additional enterprise control and oversight features as well as expanded web services connectivity and extensibility solutions.

Current users of WPS can download the free English update from http://www.macromedia.com/go/wps_update. Volume discounts and government and education licensing are also available, according to Macromedia. 

The WPS update supplies a host of new enhancements and robust capabilities, along with RSS activity feeds and deployment management. Administrators can now customize WPS to receive notifications about website changes in any RSS reader. Sub-site management gives enterprise administrators the ability to distribute administrative tasks to employees while maintaining complete, granular control over websites and users.

New features, including an enhanced LDAP/AD connectivity interface, Macromedia Breeze integration, staging-to-live deployment, and streamlined document publishing, enable users to realize greater value from their existing enterprise investments.

"Macromedia's commitment to effective experience for content creators and users, managers, and administrators is clearly evident in Macromedia Web Publishing System," said Peter O'Kelly, senior analyst, Burton Group. "WPS facilitates self-service with intuitive tools and also offers a cost-effective and simpler alternative to traditional content management systems for many organizations."

Organizations like Mayo Clinic, Visa International Latin America and Caribbean Region, and The University of Montana participated in the WPS and Contribute 3.1 beta, and are already using the updated solution with their individual intranets. Customers can now realize even greater cost efficiency and time savings for personnel with the update.

With more than 450 Macromedia Contribute authors managing over 300 sites on their corporate intranet, Mayo Clinic relies on WPS and Contribute 3.1 as an integrated web publishing solution that combines global style sheets and presentation standards. Mayo Clinic is able to use WPS with very few IT resources and only one server administrator who spends less than 5 percent of the time supporting their system.

"Macromedia provides a cost-effective and powerful solution to the problem of managing a large corporate intranet with a distributed authoring population," said Monty Flinsch, web production manager, Mayo Clinic. "With an intranet based on Web Publishing System and Contribute 3.1, our experience is extremely positive, and we can deliver real results every single day."

Visa International Latin America and Caribbean Region uses WPS for intranet sites, which are managed by a variety of different teams. The company has seen more than 20 percent in time savings with their administrators, and users are now able to spend time on more complex projects.

"Our main goal is to allow content owners to manage and update their corresponding information while providing more time for our web developers to actually focus on the development of our systems," said Andres Polo, web content manager, Visa International Latin America and Caribbean Region.

The University of Montana employs WPS in its College of Arts & Sciences. More than 40 content providers update their internal site, and the number of users continues to grow.

"We are currently restructuring our enterprise environment, and Web Publishing System will be a key component to this undertaking," said Mike Miller, IT director, The University of Montana. "I am consistently impressed with how Macromedia listens to their customers? needs, and this update of Web Publishing System and Contribute 3.1 truly delivers."

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