Atex CMS at Big U.K. Group, Big Munich Daily

By: E&P Staff A large British publisher and a large German daily are among the latest Atex content management system customers.

Johnston Press, the United Kingdom's the third largest publisher, signed for a groupwide, 2,500-seat Atex CMS to further develop its converged newsroom strategy. With seven divisions, each operating separate systems for digital and print publications, the Atex CMS helps the publisher create a unified central system for use with all its products. The converged newsroom also accelerates an online strategy to offer hyper-localized content created through reader participation.

The Atex CMS also provides efficient deployment of micro-sites. "Quickly producing micro-sites was another crucial functionality," Johnston Press Group IT Director Roger Davies said in a statement. "We realize that local and national events, such as the Olympic Games, which are coming to London in 2012, may require new Web sites dedicated to local athletes."

Implementation began with Johnston Press' Midlands Division, to be followed by the South Division. All seven divisions are expected to be operating by the end of next year. The completed project will among the largest publishing CMS implementations.

Munich-based S?ddeutsche Zeitung, with a paid circulation exceeding 440,000 copies, chose the Atex CMS to integrate print and Web content management functions as a technical foundation for a media-convergent editorial work environment.

The system enables editors of print and online products to work within a common user interface to research and produce content for all products regardless of channel, allowing elements such as text, photos, audio, videos and graphics to be available for any channel at any time. Planning and production for the different channels will be made as transparent as possible, and the level of collaboration will be effectively increased, according to Atex.

"A simple update of our existing print editorial system gives us cross-media workflows and a close gearing with Web content management," Managing Editor Christian Kr?gel said in a statement. "Now the editorial department can use the advantages of media convergent workflows to concentrate on quality journalism and not be burdened by increased technical work."

The fully integrated cross-media platform will include modules to publish in print, Atex Polopoly Web CMS, and a new delivery platform for the online portal sueddeutsche.de. Web 2.0 features, including content ratings, voting, Web alerts, RSS feeds, blogs, forums, photo galleries, user management and taxonomy-driven navigation, will be delivered with the project, which will be implemented as a set of standard modules in order to speed implementation.