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Astoria Software, Inc.

Siemens Medical Solutions Standardizes On Astoria Software, Common Platform Speeds Delivery of Tech Data, Improves Ease of Use

Amsterdam, Netherlands (ots/PRNewswire)

- XML Content Management System at Heart of New User-Centric
Solution That Brings Consistency to Technical Documents Across 100s
of Medical Products
Astoria Software, the leading provider of XML content management
solutions, today announced that Siemens Medical Solutions is
standardizing on Astoria's content management software as part of a
new system designed to streamline the creation, management and
distribution of user operating manuals and technical service
documents. Siemen's overall goal is to ensure the medical equipment
provider delivers the highest quality product and technical
information to its customer service engineers (CSE) while enhancing
product ease-of-use among its 60,000 end customers around the world.
Siemens Medical Solutions is presenting the initial results of its
new technical information system at the Gilbane CMS Conference today
in Amsterdam.
http://www.gilbane.com/conferences/Amsterdam_05_program.html .
Among the results is higher customer satisfaction, reduced costs
in producing technical documents and less time in completing service
calls.
Each year Siemens Medical Solutions produces thousands of
technical documents with hundreds of thousands of pages of technical
content in multiple languages to support several hundred healthcare
products. These products range from ultrasound and magnetic resonance
equipment to angiography and nuclear medicine devices.
"With so many different medical products in the market and so many
healthcare professionals using more than one of our products at a
single location on a regular basis, we wanted to make it
significantly easier for them to learn how to use our products and
for our CSEs to service them as quickly as possible," said Uwe
Danner, Content Management Systems Project Manager of Siemens Medical
Solutions. "Now, by standardizing on Astoria and the rest of our new
system, we have a common technical information platform, so our
customers and CSEs can quickly find out what they need to do and what
they need to know to resolve a problem or get the most out of our
equipment, no matter what product they are using or working on."
Siemens Medical Solutions' goal in designing its new technical
information system was to reduce the material cost of producing and
managing its technical information and documents; reduce the time it
took CSEs to service its many products; ensure that proper technical
information is available to customers and CSEs when new Siemens
Medical Solutions products are shipped; and to increase overall
customer satisfaction.
Siemens Medical Solutions initially deployed Astoria Classic as
the heart of its new technical information system in 2003 at a single
location addressing a small range of products and involving a limited
number of technical documentation employees. Over the past year, it
has expanded its use to include multiple additional locations in
Europe, China and the US. And now, as the standard platform, it will
be rolled out worldwide to address the 2,200 documents Siemens
Medical Solutions prepares annually in numerous languages and
delivers in multiple digital and print formats.
"We share with Siemens Medical Solutions a strong belief that by
separating content from layout you can dramatically simplify and
speed the production of technical data regardless of its format,"
said Tom Steding, CEO of Astoria Software. "Siemens Medical
Solutions' implementation of XML content management to achieve
significant business results exemplifies the power of adopting a bold
content and document strategy."
Astoria Classic is an XML content management platform that
provides flexible reuse of content at the component level. It
leverages the inherent flexibility of XML to store and manage content
with specific knowledge of hierarchy and attributes, ensuring the
structural integrity and flexibility of content assets. It frees
content and structure from the rigid confines of relational tables
and provides the highest degree of flexibility for change, a major
requirement of the new solution at Siemens Medical Solutions.
Astoria also provides version and variant management, clear audit
trails, and document compare capabilities for change management. It
includes built-in workflow, making it easy to track, manage and
approve content as it is developed and, because it is based on XML,
Astoria Classic supports multiple formats and is completely output
independent, which allows the delivery of content online or offline,
on CD-ROM or printed materials.
Given the bold vision and broad affect its new information
management solution would have across the organization, Siemens
Medical Solutions turned to Lindau, Germany-based TANNER AG, a
systems integration firm specializing in print and publishing
systems, to develop the solution's overall architecture.
About Siemens Medical Solutions
Siemens Medical Solutions of Siemens AG (NYSE: SI) with
headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania and Erlangen, Germany, is one
of the largest suppliers to the healthcare industry in the world. 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. 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. More information can be obtained by visiting
http://www.usa.siemens.com/medical-pressroom .
About Astoria Software, Inc.
Astoria 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 to the smallest element level. This flexible approach to
managing content enables Astoria customers to share, re-use and
re-purpose information across thousands of complex documents for easy
assembly and delivery. The company's more than 100 customers are
progressive organizations who publish complex business critical
information and documents that change constantly. Among them are
Cisco Systems, Texas Instruments, The Boeing Company, Lockheed
Martin, General Electrical Medical and Cessna Aircraft. Astoria is
based in San Mateo, Calif. (www.astoriasoftware.com)
    CONTACT:
    Eileen O'Rourke                      Lisa Kelaita
    Astoria Software                     New Venture Communications
     eorourke@astoriasoftware.com          lkelaita@newventurecom.com
    +1-650-357-7477 ext. 111             +1-650-340-6766
    Web site: http://www.gilbane.com/conferences/Amsterdam_05_program.html
              http://www.usa.siemens.com/medical-pressroom
              http://www.astoriasoftware.com

Contact:

Eileen O'Rourke of Astoria Software, +1-650-357-7477, ext. 111, or
eorourke@astoriasoftware.com; or Lisa Kelaita of New Venture
Communications, +1-650-340-6766, or lkelaita@newventurecom.com, for
Astoria Software