Unisys Corporation and Publishing Partners International (PPI) today announced the signing of an agreement in which Unisys will acquire PPI, a privately held leading provider of advertising management software and services for the publishing industry. By integrating PPI`s advertising component, Unisys will significantly expand the functionality of its rapidly growing publishing program. The current Unisys publishing solution provides a complete editorial, electronic pagination and archiving system.
The PPI acquisition is part of Unisys strategy to extend its leadership and growth in repeatable solutions for customers in target industries. Unisys repeatable solutions combine consulting and integration services with software components that can be assembled and modified quickly and cost-effectively to meet the customer`s specific business requirements. Unisys offers a portfolio of more than 30 repeatable solutions for publishing and other key market sectors.
"The acquisition of PPI adds an important new dimension to our publishing program," said Terry Hisey, vice president and general manager, Unisys Commercial Market Sector Group. "In addition to our enhanced capability of providing an integrated publishing solution that now includes advertising, our holistic approach to meeting the business needs of our publishing clients is a key differentiator for Unisys in the publishing industry. Unisys can uniquely provide a broad, full lifecycle set of offerings to the newspaper industry including consulting, solution definition, solution integration -- through deployment and even ongoing management."
Headquartered in Bedford, New Hampshire, PPI employs a staff of 40. Its AD2000 advertising management system integrates order entry for classified and retail advertising with billing and account receivables. AD2000 provides a complete and flexible solution for advertising, regardless of the final destination -- print, Web or other media. PPI has a client base of 75 newspaper customers including USA Today, The Birmingham (AL) News, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), The News-Sentinel (Knoxville) and the Boston (MA) Herald.
"The acquisition of Publishing Partners International is a key element of our publishing strategic plan," said Kevin Delaney, director of advertising solutions, Unisys. "We wanted an up-to-date core solution upon which we could build a strong advertising solution. With PPI, we have a recognized application and an experienced, skilled staff who will be the foundation of our new Advertising Center of Excellence. It is our intention to grow this organization and add software modules that will form the basis of our new advertising application portfolio. Because PPI`s products are based on the Microsoft Windows NT operating system, they are a perfect fit with Unisys strategy to deliver solutions based on open architectures."
"PPI is excited by the opportunities that joining Unisys provides us," said Sam List, president of PPI. "By pairing our advertising solutions with Unisys editorial solutions, we are able to offer customers the strongest integrated solution in the publishing business today."
In the publishing arena, more than 100 newspapers in 13 countries around the world use Unisys Publishing Solutions. Unisys clients include the News International Group, which includes the UK`s The Sun, The Times of London, The Sunday Times, News of the World and other titles; Germany`s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Italy`s La Stampa; Spain`s La Vanguardia and El Mundo Deportivo; France`s La Provence. Clients in the United States include Stars and Stripes, Newsday, New York Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, San Francisco Examiner and The Colorado Springs Gazette.
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