Press - Hosted Digital Asset Management

Savings Lead First 9 Major Newspapers to Merlin Hosted Digital Asset Management

Quincy, MA, December 4, 2009 - Previously newspapers would not consider outsourcing the storage and production functions of their picture desk and digital archive, but this year nine trend-setting newspapers have started a migration from IT and capital burdens to fault-tolerant, no muss, no fuss, totally hosted systems from MerlinOne that also happen to save them money.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, the Arizona Daily Star, the Lincoln Journal Star, the Dallas Morning News, the Providence Journal and the Riverside Press-Enterprise are on Merlin Hosted systems, taking advantage of Merlin's ability to provide hosted digital asset management services at a lower price point than any individual newspaper can achieve internally. MerlinOne anticipates at least another 6 major daily newspapers to switch to hosted in the first quarter of 2010.

"The response to our hosted offering has been great. This really is a game-changing situation: for the first time, news organizations will be able to have a world-class hosted picture desk and multimedia-capable digital asset management available to their users without the capital burden of continuous server and storage upgrades, without IT department workload, and with totally predictable, low costs," commented MerlinOne President and CEO, David Tenenbaum. "We expect virtually all of our newspaper customers to switch to Merlin Hosted over the next 3 years: the savings are that compelling. And clearly the savings are also compelling switching from competitive systems, since 3 newspapers have already done so!"

By switching to hosted digital asset management, all of the newspaper's data is moved to the MerlinOne data center, and put on fully fault-tolerant systems. Merlin's unique storage technology cuts the storage required for a newspaper's digital objects by up to 70%, and those savings are passed along to the customer. Merlin Hosted systems are physically housed in a top-notch co-location U.S. hosting facility with high security, generator backups and connections to 4 Internet backbones. MerlinOne will provide performance guarantees, fault-tolerance and an interface to pre-press production systems. Merlin customer service staff will directly support end-users. These newspapers join 14 corporations and law firms that trust Merlin Hosted systems with their most important digital assets, including National Public Radio, Harvard Business School, Pfizer, The Employment Law Group (Washington, D.C.) and The Humane Society of the United States.

Merlin serves as a production picture desk, and as an archive for all forms of digital content. A complete digital asset management system, Merlin allows users to organize millions of photos, video and audio files, graphics, stories, PDF files and Microsoft Office documents using fast, precise searching with easy and flexible drag-and-drop workflows.

MerlinOne will also host its Trax assignment management and workflow system, which supports photo, video, story, audio, graphics, scanning and research assignments. Trax integrates tightly with Merlin, adding rights management, scheduling, contact information and more.

MerlinOne has been a vendor to the news industry for more than 20 years and has been hosting systems since 1999. Merlin hosted customers include Pfizer Drugs, Harvard University, Tufts University, The Humane Society of the United States, National Public Radio, the Landov picture agency and the largest Merlin system in existence, E-Sheets® electronic tearsheets service. E-Sheets has currently 160 million records and adds a million new records about every 8 days. The service is used daily by every major advertiser and agency in North America.

About MerlinOne - MerlinOne, Inc. is a leading provider of digital asset management systems and electronic document discovery platforms. E-Sheets® is the foremost electronic tearsheets service. The Merlin picture desk management solution has over 140 major installations at corporations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Harvard University, Pfizer, Habitat for Humanity and The White House. MerlinOne technology helps companies manage photos, text, graphics, PDFs, multimedia and e-discovery material.

Press Contact
David Farrell
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