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News AnnouncementsAstoria and SDL Partner to Help Manufacturers Accelerate Global Content Delivery and Improve Customer SatisfactionSiemens Medical Solutions Standardizes on Astoria/SDL, Saves $1 million SAN MATEO, CA and MAIDENHEAD, UK - September 22, 2005 - Astoria Software, Inc. and SDL International today announced a partnership to provide joint solutions to multinational manufacturers. Global information management solutions from Astoria and SDL help manufacturers rapidly publish and deliver content to international markets. To date, customer feedback on Astoria-SDL manufacturing solutions reports improved quality of global information, faster time-to-market, higher customer satisfaction, and dramatic cost savings. Multinational manufacturers produce a large amount of content about their products and processes, from materials lists and specifications to SOP documentation and marketing collateral All this information must retain accuracy and clarity as it is reworked in multiple languages to meet the needs of global markets. Too often, however, problems arise: incongruent product information, inconsistent terms and phrases, and the inability to track and manage changes globally-which, in turn, delays products and diminishes customer satisfaction. Siemens Medical Solutions faced these issues, as well as challenges specific to healthcare, including changing market forces, increasing compliance requirements, the growing global market for medical products and along with it, the demand for local language information. Given these requirements, Siemens sought assistance to improve its overall product documentation and customer service operations. Astoria, the leading provider of XML content management solutions for dynamically publishing business-critical information, and SDL International, the world's leading provider of global information management solutions, successfully addressed these issues for Siemens. Built on the industry standards XML and DITA, the Astoria-SDL solution manages information for complex products with long lifecycles, frequent technology changes, and global usage. Key features of the joint solution include support for mulitiple document schemas or DTD's; element-level management of content components; unlimited reuse of content elements, chunks, segments and terms across all languages; advanced search on content and annotations; advanced versioning; automated repurposing of content for multi-channel delivery; and management of internal and external localization resources. The Astoria-SDL partnership continues to build on the Siemens' success as well as other successful manufacturing deployments with both parties committed to providing integrated solutions for manufacturers, as well as teaming to deliver common professional services. "With Astoria and SDL, we transformed our business," said Uwe Danner, content management systems project manager at Siemens Medical Solutions. "We improved the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of our global product information, and reinforced our worldwide standing for quality and performance." By standardizing on Astoria and SDL to publish its more than 190,000 product manuals annually in 18 languages, Siemens can now update technical content for 4,000 customer service engineers on a weekly basis instead of only twice a year. Consistency and accuracy have improved while the number of manuals printed has been reduced by 90%. The result is improved customer service and satisfaction, with significant reductions in Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) and First Time Fix Rate (FTFR). Localization costs have been reduced by more than 30%, generating projected annual savings of over $1 million. "Content management becomes more difficult when dealing with multilingual information, and SDL's leadership and proven success in structuring, organizing, and managing localized content is truly impressive," said Joe Eschbach, vice president and chief marketing officer for Astoria. "By combining SDL solutions with Astoria's XML Content Management Platform, multinational organizations gain consistency of voice, richness of local nuance, and improved document production." "Our partnership with Astoria Software enables manufacturers to enforce consistency for global product and service documentation," said Terry Lawlor, VP of worldwide marketing at SDL. "This is particularly important for ensuring compliance and improving service levels in regulated industries such as medical device manufacturing." About Siemens Medical SolutionsSiemens Medical Solutions is one of the world's largest suppliers to the healthcare industry. The company is known for bringing together innovative medical technologies, healthcare information systems, management consulting, and support services, to help customers achieve tangible, sustainable, clinical and financial outcomes. From imaging systems for diagnosis, to therapy equipment for treatment, to patient monitors to hearing instruments and beyond, Siemens' innovations contribute to the health and well-being of people across the globe, while improving operational efficiencies and optimizing workflow in hospitals, clinics, home health agencies, and doctors' offices. Employing approximately 31,000 people worldwide and operating in more than 120 countries, Siemens Medical Solutions reported sales of 7.07 billion EUR, orders of 8.12 billion EUR and group profit of 1.05 billion EUR for fiscal 2004. Further information can be found under: http://www.siemens.com/medical. About SDL InternationalSDL International (London Stock Exchange: 'SDL') is the world's leading provider of global information management (GIM) solutions that empower organizations to improve the quality and accelerate the delivery of multilingual content to global markets. Its enterprise software and services integrate with existing business systems to manage global information from authoring to publication and throughout the distributed localization supply chain. Global industry leaders such as Audi, Bayer, Best Western, Bosch, Canon, Deutsche Bank, Kodak, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Reuters, and SAP rely on SDL to provide enterprise software or full outsourcing for their GIM processes. SDL has implemented more than 100 enterprise GIM solutions, has over 100,000 software licenses deployed across the GIM ecosystem and its global services infrastructure spans more than 50 offices in 30 countries. About Astoria SoftwareAstoria Software, Inc., is a leading provider of XML content management solutions for the dynamic publishing of business critical information and documents. It provides the only author-centric packaged software system that enables component-based content management from the document to the element level. This flexible approach to managing content enables Astoria customers to share, re-use and re-purpose information across thousands of complex documents ensuring easy assembly and delivery. The company's more than 100 customers are progressive organizations who publish complex, complicated business critical information and documents that change constantly. Among them are Cisco Systems, Texas Instruments, Lockheed Martin, General Electrical Medical and Cessna. Astoria is based in San Mateo, Calif. (www.astoriasoftware.com)
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