If your organization is evaluating inventory management systems, consider that a hosted solution inventory management solution may be ideal for your needs if you feel this way. Hosted inventory management solutions such as Invendia eliminate the justified concerns of many companies that another software implementation is the last thing they want to devote resources to – capital, time, talent.

So, the top seven reasons why a hosted inventory management solution might be right for your organization?…

7. Quicker ROI. From an initial ROI perspective, hosted solutions shorten time-to-value by eliminating software implementation and cost issues. You focus on collecting your data, refining your processes, and defining your business goals.

6. Lower total-cost-of-ownership. Users of hosted inventory management solutions need not ever implement software upgrades, pay for maintenance, or add hardware. The net effect is to keep total cost of ownership in check.

5. Increased flexibility. Customers of hosted solutions subscribe for the user license they need today. As their needs change, they add or reduce the users. In this way, they never face the license over-capacity that plagues so many enterprise software deployments. Even more importantly, they increase their flexibility in responding to rapidly changing business conditions.

4. Reduced risk. Any enterprise software implementation takes time. The longer the elapsed time from project kick-off to go-live, the higher the likelihood that the project will lose momentum and management and staff support. Hosted solutions like Invendia do away with many of the preliminary steps of a software implementation (hardware selection, for example), and cause less friction and trauma within the organization. And hosted solutions offer you the advantage of single-source accountability because of the elimination of multiple vendor relationships that would be the norm in a standard enterprise software deployment.

3. Faster deployment. A faster deployment of the software is always a strong positive factor into how well it will be adopted and used by your organization. Hosted solutions typically offer faster deployments, with fewer internal pressures and distractions from day-to-day operations and activities. In short, the focus of the deployment is on end-user training and acceptance, since you won’t have to install or maintain servers, networking equipment, security products, or other hardware or software.

2. Easier innovation. Another key advantage of the hosted model is that it facilitates on-going process innovation as new functionality can be introduced incrementally over its lifecycle. The traditional model of purchased and locally implemented software binds companies into big-bang versioning where updates are introduced in batches – typically every 12 to 18 months. That model inhibits the real-time improvements of software and processes as they become available. In a hosted environment, major new product releases and improvements can literally be made overnight.

1. Lower cost and smoother cash-flows. Hosted solutions like Invendia have a decided cost advantage over traditional packaged software offerings like SAP and Oracle: low hardware and software costs (you need only outfit your users with PCs, which they likely already have), no depreciation costs, no software or hardware maintenance costs, and lower implementation costs.

With hosted solutions, the first year total cost of ownership can be five to ten times less expensive than enterprise software with the majority of savings resulting from the elimination of upfront integration and customization projects. Thus, the payback period is considerably shortened.

And hosted solutions offer much smoother cash-flows, with no large up-front cash outlays that need be subsumed by your organization.

So, the hosted model of enterprise software lowers risk, simplifies licensing, eases deployment, encourages innovation, and decreases costs, all of which result in faster return on investment, lower total cost of ownership, reduced risk, and the flexibility that you need to successfully compete in today’s fast-moving business climate.

Ash Seha is a marketing manager at Invendia, a leading provider of Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) and Web-based Inventory solutions.

The following eScan range of products are available for download in Italian & German language; eScan Virus Control Edition, eScan Professional Edition, eScan Internet Security Suite, eScan Corporate Edition, eScan Corporate for MailScan, eScan Anti-Virus Edition, eScan Corporate for Citrix, and eScan Enterprise for Microsoft SBS.

MicroWorld products are reliable and time tested and have been awarded some of the most prestigious awards and certificates in the internet security industry like VB 100%, Checkmark, People’s Choice Security Award, Advanced CheckVir, 5 cows by TUCOWS, Best Content Security and Antivirus Software -by VAR magazine to mention a few.

MicroWorld (http://www.mwti.net) is the publisher of world’s first real time antivirus and content security software eScan and MailScan, for desktops, file servers, citrix servers, proxy servers and Mail Servers. Working on revolutionary MicroWorld Winsock Layer(MWL) technology, MicroWorld’s time tested and reliable products have seen bestowed with certificates and awards by some of the most prestigious testing bodies like Virus Bulletin, Checkmark, TUCOWS, and Advanced CheckVir, Red Hat Ready, Novell Ready etc.

MicroWorld is headquatered in Michigan with offices in Germany and India and large number of partners worldwide.

For additional information please visit http://www.mwti.net or write to sales@mwti.net

In each case you have to use set of new Microsoft technologies: web service, SQL stored procs, C#, VB.Net programming, etc. In this small article we give you customization overview when you receive Purchase Order Receivings in Great Plains and automatically transfer them to the RMS Store Operations via web services. Plus we can push serial number info from Great Plains to Store Operations (there is no way to store serial number in Headquarters)

Item Transfer Trigger in Great Plains

Microsoft Great Plains is written in Great Plains Dexterity ? proprietary programming language and development environment, which has strong ties with SQL stored procedures and queries

When Items are transferred in Great Plains via the Item Transfer Entry window, the interface must recognize this transaction. This can be accomplished via two mechanisms:

1.Dexterity Trigger, which would identify that the transfer occurred and it would populate an interface table

2.SQL Trigger on IV00200, which would populate an interface table. The assumption is that all transferred items will be serialized

Handling Headquarters Initiated Inventory Transfer Requests

Once the interface table is populated, there might be either a timed procedure or a trigger that will push the transfer from Great Plains into RMS Headquarters and it will create automatically a Style 307 Worksheet in Headquarters.

The next time that the store ?receiving? the inventory communicates with Headquarters, it will receive the Inventory Quantity Adjustment notification, which will increase the item?s quantity on hand.

In each store, a web service should be installed to handle transfer of Serial Number information. Therefore, when communication is established between Store Operations and Headquarters, an application that continuously monitors Stores (in the computer hosting Headquarters) will communicate with the web service at the Store level to transfer the Serial Number information and to update the serial number tables in Store Operations.

About The Author

Luis Leung is Lead Software Developer in Alba Spectrum Technologies ? USA nationwide Microsoft RMS, CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, with offices in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Madrid, Moscow, Europe, Brazil, Mexico (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Microsoft CRM SDK, C#, VB.Net, SQL, GP Dexterity developer. Luis can be reached: 1-866-528-0577 or help@albaspectrum.com.

The first thing is to check for upgrades for Windows, it will download any important security updates. Go to the following link below.

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Once upgraded go to the Control Panel and open the Security Centre. Ensure the Firewall and Automatic Updates are turned on. If the Security Centre is not in the Control Panel you don’t have Service Pack 2, you can run Windows Update to upgrade or see Microsoft’s guide for turning on the Firewall with Service Pack 1. See the following link below.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283673#XSLTH3134121122120121120120

Computer Associates are offering Windows users a high quality anti-virus program with a 1 year subscription for free. Ensure you run a full scan after installation. Go to the following link below.

www.my-etrust.com/microsoft

Also if your sick of spyware/adware download Microsoft’s Anti-Spyware. Ensure you run a full scan after installation. Go to the following link below.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

If you following these few simple steps you will have the latest in Internet security and shouldn’t have too many problems with viruses/hackers etc.

If you have your computers networked or use for business purposes it is advisable to seek help from a qualified computer technician.

Wez Bryett Web Developer New Business Media http://www.nbm.com.au

The following eScan range of products are available for download in Italian & German language; eScan Virus Control Edition, eScan Professional Edition, eScan Internet Security Suite, eScan Corporate Edition, eScan Corporate for MailScan, eScan Anti-Virus Edition, eScan Corporate for Citrix, and eScan Enterprise for Microsoft SBS.

MicroWorld products are reliable and time tested and have been awarded some of the most prestigious awards and certificates in the internet security industry like VB 100%, Checkmark, People’s Choice Security Award, Advanced CheckVir, 5 cows by TUCOWS, Best Content Security and Antivirus Software -by VAR magazine to mention a few.

MicroWorld (http://www.mwti.net) is the publisher of world’s first real time antivirus and content security software eScan and MailScan, for desktops, file servers, citrix servers, proxy servers and Mail Servers. Working on revolutionary MicroWorld Winsock Layer(MWL) technology, MicroWorld’s time tested and reliable products have seen bestowed with certificates and awards by some of the most prestigious testing bodies like Virus Bulletin, Checkmark, TUCOWS, and Advanced CheckVir, Red Hat Ready, Novell Ready etc.

MicroWorld is headquatered in Michigan with offices in Germany and India and large number of partners worldwide.

For additional information please visit http://www.mwti.net or write to sales@mwti.net

*** Heard about the Quark ?killer??

Adobe InDesign CS2. Will it really ?kill? Quark? Adobe has been saying ?it will? for the last six years or so, but it hasn?t happened. Adobe Pagemaker didn?t kill Quark, either, but was instead replaced by InDesign. And InDesign is also at a distant second place so far.

Let?s start by saying that it would be a good idea to wait for any new purchases or ?conversions? until the upcoming release of the next version of Quark XPress.

Some of the features that Quark has unveiled (Job Jackets for example, for workflow streamlining and increased productivity) as part of their new version, in our view are very compelling and offer more value than InDesign.

Other features are necessary updates that fulfill current needs and put it on par with available technologies currently provided by other programs (i.e. transparency support, Open Type font support, etc, so InDesign and Quark have standard common features). There are plenty of reviews out there detailing all the new features of Quark and we encourage you to read them, you will find the new Quark a very useful ally in your road to productivity.

*** Adobe: positioning a product at any cost

Recently Adobe acquired Macromedia, because Adobe couldn?t compete with Macromedia?s web software, another area where Adobe is weak. In our view and that of many people we interviewed, that was the only way Adobe could obtain a leading position in the web design arena: by buying out their competition. The lead Adobe has with Photoshop, doesn?t translate to a lead in other fields.

For the last few years, Adobe has been trying to position InDesign against Quark as the leader in the publishing area without success.

*** Bundling InDesign: the key strategy of Adobe to gain market share

The strategy used by Adobe is very similar to some of the strategies Microsoft has used in the past to eliminate their competition.

It?s a well-known fact (painstakingly proven by Microsoft) that among other things you can do to gain market share, you can kill your competition by giving your product for free (or way below the real cost of the product) and forcing people to acquire it through bundling or embedding it with other necessary software that people MUST buy anyway.

Which is one of the reasons why Microsoft has been sued in every country they have sold software. They have engaged always in proven, documented unfair and illegal competition practices; and their ?product bundling? practices force consumers to use products that they would have never looked at otherwise. Adobe is doing the same.

Of course, Adobe can say that InDesign sold alone has a street price. But, like everybody else in the field of graphic design, you MUST buy Photoshop, and very likely, Illustrator or/and Acrobat. If you compare the price you must pay for these applications, it becomes cheaper to buy the full Creative Suite. And you get for the same price, InDesign, GoLive, ImageReady, and other things that come bundled in for free.

So the situation is that people are getting InDesign as part of a bundle. In other words, for free. See the price comparison we included to verify this. And don?t forget that the upgrade versions are even cheaper (usually 50% off or more)!.

For reference, just check out the prices: Creative Suite 2 full (includes Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, Adobe Bridge, GoLive CS2, Acrobat 7.0 professional, Version Cue CS2, and more. Only for $1119.12, the highest price I found, at:

There are other, much lower prices out there for the full version or the upgrades.

*** Compare with purchasing the individual products: the full cost of the retail versions is:

Adobe Acrobat 1 user: $383.73
Adobe Golive $386.15
Adobe Illustrator $480.67
Adobe InDesign $676.79
Adobe Photoshop $548.51 (only Photoshop Illustrator are $1030 at these prices)
The value of the retail products is $2475.85. so, InDesign is absolutely FREE.

*** Compare with Quark 6.5 that retails at $707. Upgrades are priced lower.

So, after verifying that in fact we are getting InDesign for ?free? and assuming that Quark was successfully muscled out of the market, for how long do you think that InDesign would remain ?free?? not long. It would be unbundled right away, and sold separately. Think of programs such as Premiere, etc.

In this market, eliminating your competition means also eliminating the reasons to innovate. Historically, competition proves beneficial to the end user, assuming that it is done with fairness, focusing in product quality to win the user, instead of resorting to a marketing, sales and business strategy to trick the user into ?converting?.

*** Cost is a part of the equation

Think about it: entities such as universities need to cut costs, and they teach students the software that they will use in their future jobs, so getting the software for free is a HUGE incentive to switch. We have read about some people saying in their advertising-paid columns that several universities (which ones, exactly?) are saying that they will soon switch to InDesign (when will they switch, exactly?). That sounds kinda cheesy given the fact that you need to know Quark to get a job nowadays, anywhere. The reason being manifested is mainly economic, without any practical reasons actually mentioned to justify such a decision. However, that choice will likely mark the future of many designers out there who will likely find themselves subject to having to take additional training courses to learn BOTH programs. Not funny at all.

There is nothing like a ?free lunch?. So how much does it really cost to ?switch??

*** Training time: Quark 12 hrs vs. InDesign 50 hours to migrate, 3-6 months learning curve.

In our experience of several years providing training and private/group coaching to hundreds of students in the use of Adobe / Quark software, the average training time required to learn InDesign up to an advanced level, is usually about 32 hours, and involves a much longer training curve to become an expert user (usually 50 hours) if you don?t have any previous experience with Adobe products, particularly if you need to use the integration features of the Adobe Creative suite (Adobe Bridge, etc.), learn to use third party plugins, styles, compatible features from other Adobe programs, etc.

*** Mastering the program takes at least 3-6 months of use, after receiving full training.

Most people who take InDesign seriously enough to migrate, will spend a lot of time in re-training (see above) and many more months of researching and re-learning things (the dreaded ?learning curve?) will be spent outside of the training room, figuring out how to do things that they already knew how to do well with Quark. That?s some very expensive ?converting?. Did you know that it was going to be that long? All that lost time is lost productivity, and therefore lost money (and lost nights), too.

Of course some users will tell you that they already know InDesign and it was easy to learn. You bet they were old Adobe Suite users already. Unless they are seasoned pros, with 10 years in the field, knowing every nook and cranny of most graphic design programs, particularly Adobe programs, it is VERY unlikely it was a short time learning InDesign. But if they are truly novice users, ask them how long it really took them to master (if they do) InDesign. You?ll be surprised at the answers. Most people use barely 20-25% of the program, because learning the whole thing is overwhelming in practice.

Compare this with Quark training, where in barely 8 hours or less you can be working with most program options. Quark advanced level is achieved in 16 hours, and expert level in 24 hours. AND you don?t need experience with other Adobe programs. In our experience, mastery of the program is at your fingertips, since mostly everything you need to do is rather easy to achieve in Quark and there are myriads of tutorials on the Internet documenting every imaginable Quark trick.

In other words, training in InDesign takes 2 – 3 times more than learning Quark. And the learning curve is much higher than Quark, since you need to learn to ?integrate? InDesign with other applications that you may or may not know. The novice user will have the hardest time, since he will be expected to learn not only one but at least other 2 or 3 programs (Photoshop and Illustrator, and lately, Acrobat) in order to be able to use InDesign to its fullest potential.

Which is one of the most overwhelming reasons we have seen always for people choosing Quark over InDesign over the years: A kid can use Quark. It?s easy. In fact, many parts of the interface used by InDesign, are very similar to the one developed by Quark. Adobe decided to do things the way Quark was doing things in order to improve their program.

Why? Adobe had to design something that could be easily related to Quark, in order to facilitate the transition from Quark to InDesign, since PageMaker failed to convert people to Adobe?s way of doing layouts, as it was a lower-end, very expensive and limited program that couldn?t remotely compete with a high-end program such as Quark. For these and other reasons, Pagemaker always played second to the Quark powerhouse, even to programs such as MS Publisher, which are cheaper and more powerful.

*** Training Costs:

Let?s think now about the training costs involved in switching all your designers to the new software. Training costs for 2 people only are more expensive than buying the full Creative Suite 2. That is, from $349 – $800 in average per person, for the 8-hr, 1 day seminar only. Usually 3 days are required, or $2400 (group) – $5400 (individual), for up to 6 people. In some cases, it can be higher depending on other factors. These are corporate training prices, according to the prices of several schools in New York that provide this training and don?t include advanced or expert training costs, nor do they include the costs of learning additional Adobe programs, or the integration features. So the real cost of learning InDesign is much higher than Quark. Quark, average training price on the streets: $199.

*** Hardware costs:

Now include the cost of buying new computers (since you will need to get a new computer to run InDesign due to the sluggish performance that the new Creative Suite 2 has unless you have a 3 GHZ CPU Pentium IV or a MAC G5 with 1 – 2GB RAM or more computer). If you have a 2GHZ and 512mb ram, forget it, your computer is not good enough for the creative suite 2. And don?t even think about installing it on your laptop and run several applications at the same time, or you will be waiting for a very long time to do anything.

Because let?s face it, older computers (let?s say 1 year old) will choke and kill your productivity trying to run the new Creative Suite 2, and waiting for anything to load, and run. You need a new computer to run the software, period. And if someone tries to say otherwise, try to run Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign plus Adobe Bridge at the same time in your laptop, to take full advantage of the ?integrated? features of Creative Suite 2. Have fun waiting while your competition is selling to your clients. A new MAC computer with the necessary specs will cost you in average $2000, not including the price of the warranty for your new computer.

So, after totaling the cost of installing and getting your people and equipment up to speed in the migration to InDesign, you will have spent in average about $5000 or more per user, including the licensing and the necessary hardware, etc. This is far, far more expensive than just upgrading to the next version of Quark. If you are a medium-sized company, it?s going to be, let?s say a hundred thousand dollars in training, learning curve, lost productivity expenses, new equipment, and software licenses. If you are a large corporation, your cost is in the millions. Yay!

Did you think about that one yet?

*** Is there truly a reason to switch?

Overall, compelling arguments to choose InDesign over Quark are difficult to find, even among those who have already made the jump. We will see what the new version of Quark brings.

Adobe still has to deal with the WHOLE industry being trained in Quark. It would seem obvious that Quark is wisening up, improving their customer support, asking users what they need, analyzing and creating tools to improve production flow, and thinking ahead in order to bring enhanced, truly compelling productivity features, and this is a good thing for users.

It remains to be seen if people are going to dump their existing life-time expertise, spend their money in new training and invest in new hardware and software to make Adobe feel satisfied about their sales and stock profits.

*** In our view, simplicity wins always.

Adobe wants design professionals to adopt a far more complex, harder to learn, more expensive to run and more difficult to handle program (InDesign) over a simpler, easier to use, and much more intuitive program: Quark. That makes no sense.

We think that INSECURITY is not really a reason to switch. Which is the desired result of the marketing strategy of the whole industry is moving to InDesign, what are you doing? that Adobe has been running for several years. Why would you switch otherwise, particularly considering that the upcoming version of Quark is far more powerful and productivity-enhancing than InDesign? We think Quark is living up to their promises and will deliver a superior product. We shall see if they manage to do what they have promised.

Right now, don’t buy anything unless you have a very specific and particular need that ONLY InDesign could possibly satisfy, and that will not be provided in an upcoming version of Quark. What might that be?

Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your e-zine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at articles@valorcrossmedia.com.

by Sherwin Steele and Galina Arlov

Sherwin Steele is a Multimedia and IT expert with more than 15 years of experience in the field, CEO of a multinational Marketing & web company and he is also a design teacher at a prestigious design school in NYC. http://www.ptedu.com

Galina Arlov is an E-Business Professional and a creator and founder of Valor Cross Media,http://www.valorcrossmedia.com a Web Site Services, E-Marketing and Online Advertising company based in New York City on the Upper East Side.

In each case you have to use set of new Microsoft technologies: web service, SQL stored procs, C#, VB.Net programming, etc. In this small article we give you customization overview when you receive Purchase Order Receivings in Great Plains and automatically transfer them to the RMS Store Operations via web services. Plus we can push serial number info from Great Plains to Store Operations (there is no way to store serial number in Headquarters)

Item Transfer Trigger in Great Plains

Microsoft Great Plains is written in Great Plains Dexterity ? proprietary programming language and development environment, which has strong ties with SQL stored procedures and queries

When Items are transferred in Great Plains via the Item Transfer Entry window, the interface must recognize this transaction. This can be accomplished via two mechanisms:

1.Dexterity Trigger, which would identify that the transfer occurred and it would populate an interface table

2.SQL Trigger on IV00200, which would populate an interface table. The assumption is that all transferred items will be serialized

Handling Headquarters Initiated Inventory Transfer Requests

Once the interface table is populated, there might be either a timed procedure or a trigger that will push the transfer from Great Plains into RMS Headquarters and it will create automatically a Style 307 Worksheet in Headquarters.

The next time that the store ?receiving? the inventory communicates with Headquarters, it will receive the Inventory Quantity Adjustment notification, which will increase the item?s quantity on hand.

In each store, a web service should be installed to handle transfer of Serial Number information. Therefore, when communication is established between Store Operations and Headquarters, an application that continuously monitors Stores (in the computer hosting Headquarters) will communicate with the web service at the Store level to transfer the Serial Number information and to update the serial number tables in Store Operations.

About The Author

Luis Leung is Lead Software Developer in Alba Spectrum Technologies ? USA nationwide Microsoft RMS, CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, with offices in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Madrid, Moscow, Europe, Brazil, Mexico (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Microsoft CRM SDK, C#, VB.Net, SQL, GP Dexterity developer. Luis can be reached: 1-866-528-0577 or help@albaspectrum.com.

Whether or not you need customer service software or a more advanced customer service solution depends on the unique needs of your internet-based business.

There are many types of customer service software ranging from your basic point-of-sale systems to complex customer relationship management systems. Databases are customer service software solutions that enable you to store all types of data, including customer information, which facilitates information management making customer service data more easily and quickly accessible.

Customer service software and applications that improve efficiency in regard to customer service are highly desirable because they enable you to provide customers with quality service which can help with customer retention and referrals.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a fabulous tool for any business. There are several different types of CRM software as well as alternatives for customizing CRM systems to meet the unique needs of any business.

CRM customer service and relationship management software is generally pre-programmed and is suitable for small businesses. Some customer service software and CRM software can be customized, though there are sometimes some limitations to the customization that can be accomplished using customer service software or CRM software that is pre-programmed.

In such cases, employing the services of a software developer or computer programmer to design and create customized customer service software and CRM solutions may be necessary. For internet-based businesses that are small, home-owned businesses customer service software is usually sufficient without the need for extensive programming support.

Some customer service software and CRM options involve monthly fees for their use while others are a one-time purchase. Some require special database hosting while others can be installed and operated from your personal computer or small business network.

Microsoft has customer service software and CRM software solutions that enable the integration of customer relationship management modules for internet businesses. Various solutions and modules have different features and relatively different costs associated with them.

One of the viable customer service software packages from Microsoft is the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 which is available in a small business edition with a pretty reasonable licensing fee. It integrates with other Microsoft applications such as Outlook and Excel for effective customer communications and report generation.

Some of the modules enable the automation of marketing functions including organization of leads, campaign management and follow- up capabilities as well as service scheduling and customization of various customer service functions and communications.

Salesforce.com is another source for customizable customer service software and CRM solutions. The customer service software solutions provided by Salesforce.com are really good solutions for integrating and automating your sales, marketing, customer service and support functions.

There are quite a few other customer service software and CRM solutions that can be used to automate your sales, service, support, recordkeeping and marketing functions.

When selecting any software solutions for your new internet business, even customer service software, you should consider your future needs and plan ahead to ensure the software you purchase today will meet the needs of your business in the future in terms of functionality and compatibility with software and information systems that may need to be added later as your business grows and demands greater capabilities from your customer service software and information systems.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

*** Heard about the Quark ?killer??

Adobe InDesign CS2. Will it really ?kill? Quark? Adobe has been saying ?it will? for the last six years or so, but it hasn?t happened. Adobe Pagemaker didn?t kill Quark, either, but was instead replaced by InDesign. And InDesign is also at a distant second place so far.

Let?s start by saying that it would be a good idea to wait for any new purchases or ?conversions? until the upcoming release of the next version of Quark XPress.

Some of the features that Quark has unveiled (Job Jackets for example, for workflow streamlining and increased productivity) as part of their new version, in our view are very compelling and offer more value than InDesign.

Other features are necessary updates that fulfill current needs and put it on par with available technologies currently provided by other programs (i.e. transparency support, Open Type font support, etc, so InDesign and Quark have standard common features). There are plenty of reviews out there detailing all the new features of Quark and we encourage you to read them, you will find the new Quark a very useful ally in your road to productivity.

*** Adobe: positioning a product at any cost

Recently Adobe acquired Macromedia, because Adobe couldn?t compete with Macromedia?s web software, another area where Adobe is weak. In our view and that of many people we interviewed, that was the only way Adobe could obtain a leading position in the web design arena: by buying out their competition. The lead Adobe has with Photoshop, doesn?t translate to a lead in other fields.

For the last few years, Adobe has been trying to position InDesign against Quark as the leader in the publishing area without success.

*** Bundling InDesign: the key strategy of Adobe to gain market share

The strategy used by Adobe is very similar to some of the strategies Microsoft has used in the past to eliminate their competition.

It?s a well-known fact (painstakingly proven by Microsoft) that among other things you can do to gain market share, you can kill your competition by giving your product for free (or way below the real cost of the product) and forcing people to acquire it through bundling or embedding it with other necessary software that people MUST buy anyway.

Which is one of the reasons why Microsoft has been sued in every country they have sold software. They have engaged always in proven, documented unfair and illegal competition practices; and their ?product bundling? practices force consumers to use products that they would have never looked at otherwise. Adobe is doing the same.

Of course, Adobe can say that InDesign sold alone has a street price. But, like everybody else in the field of graphic design, you MUST buy Photoshop, and very likely, Illustrator or/and Acrobat. If you compare the price you must pay for these applications, it becomes cheaper to buy the full Creative Suite. And you get for the same price, InDesign, GoLive, ImageReady, and other things that come bundled in for free.

So the situation is that people are getting InDesign as part of a bundle. In other words, for free. See the price comparison we included to verify this. And don?t forget that the upgrade versions are even cheaper (usually 50% off or more)!.

For reference, just check out the prices: Creative Suite 2 full (includes Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, Adobe Bridge, GoLive CS2, Acrobat 7.0 professional, Version Cue CS2, and more. Only for $1119.12, the highest price I found, at:

There are other, much lower prices out there for the full version or the upgrades.

*** Compare with purchasing the individual products: the full cost of the retail versions is:

Adobe Acrobat 1 user: $383.73
Adobe Golive $386.15
Adobe Illustrator $480.67
Adobe InDesign $676.79
Adobe Photoshop $548.51 (only Photoshop Illustrator are $1030 at these prices)
The value of the retail products is $2475.85. so, InDesign is absolutely FREE.

*** Compare with Quark 6.5 that retails at $707. Upgrades are priced lower.

So, after verifying that in fact we are getting InDesign for ?free? and assuming that Quark was successfully muscled out of the market, for how long do you think that InDesign would remain ?free?? not long. It would be unbundled right away, and sold separately. Think of programs such as Premiere, etc.

In this market, eliminating your competition means also eliminating the reasons to innovate. Historically, competition proves beneficial to the end user, assuming that it is done with fairness, focusing in product quality to win the user, instead of resorting to a marketing, sales and business strategy to trick the user into ?converting?.

*** Cost is a part of the equation

Think about it: entities such as universities need to cut costs, and they teach students the software that they will use in their future jobs, so getting the software for free is a HUGE incentive to switch. We have read about some people saying in their advertising-paid columns that several universities (which ones, exactly?) are saying that they will soon switch to InDesign (when will they switch, exactly?). That sounds kinda cheesy given the fact that you need to know Quark to get a job nowadays, anywhere. The reason being manifested is mainly economic, without any practical reasons actually mentioned to justify such a decision. However, that choice will likely mark the future of many designers out there who will likely find themselves subject to having to take additional training courses to learn BOTH programs. Not funny at all.

There is nothing like a ?free lunch?. So how much does it really cost to ?switch??

*** Training time: Quark 12 hrs vs. InDesign 50 hours to migrate, 3-6 months learning curve.

In our experience of several years providing training and private/group coaching to hundreds of students in the use of Adobe / Quark software, the average training time required to learn InDesign up to an advanced level, is usually about 32 hours, and involves a much longer training curve to become an expert user (usually 50 hours) if you don?t have any previous experience with Adobe products, particularly if you need to use the integration features of the Adobe Creative suite (Adobe Bridge, etc.), learn to use third party plugins, styles, compatible features from other Adobe programs, etc.

*** Mastering the program takes at least 3-6 months of use, after receiving full training.

Most people who take InDesign seriously enough to migrate, will spend a lot of time in re-training (see above) and many more months of researching and re-learning things (the dreaded ?learning curve?) will be spent outside of the training room, figuring out how to do things that they already knew how to do well with Quark. That?s some very expensive ?converting?. Did you know that it was going to be that long? All that lost time is lost productivity, and therefore lost money (and lost nights), too.

Of course some users will tell you that they already know InDesign and it was easy to learn. You bet they were old Adobe Suite users already. Unless they are seasoned pros, with 10 years in the field, knowing every nook and cranny of most graphic design programs, particularly Adobe programs, it is VERY unlikely it was a short time learning InDesign. But if they are truly novice users, ask them how long it really took them to master (if they do) InDesign. You?ll be surprised at the answers. Most people use barely 20-25% of the program, because learning the whole thing is overwhelming in practice.

Compare this with Quark training, where in barely 8 hours or less you can be working with most program options. Quark advanced level is achieved in 16 hours, and expert level in 24 hours. AND you don?t need experience with other Adobe programs. In our experience, mastery of the program is at your fingertips, since mostly everything you need to do is rather easy to achieve in Quark and there are myriads of tutorials on the Internet documenting every imaginable Quark trick.

In other words, training in InDesign takes 2 – 3 times more than learning Quark. And the learning curve is much higher than Quark, since you need to learn to ?integrate? InDesign with other applications that you may or may not know. The novice user will have the hardest time, since he will be expected to learn not only one but at least other 2 or 3 programs (Photoshop and Illustrator, and lately, Acrobat) in order to be able to use InDesign to its fullest potential.

Which is one of the most overwhelming reasons we have seen always for people choosing Quark over InDesign over the years: A kid can use Quark. It?s easy. In fact, many parts of the interface used by InDesign, are very similar to the one developed by Quark. Adobe decided to do things the way Quark was doing things in order to improve their program.

Why? Adobe had to design something that could be easily related to Quark, in order to facilitate the transition from Quark to InDesign, since PageMaker failed to convert people to Adobe?s way of doing layouts, as it was a lower-end, very expensive and limited program that couldn?t remotely compete with a high-end program such as Quark. For these and other reasons, Pagemaker always played second to the Quark powerhouse, even to programs such as MS Publisher, which are cheaper and more powerful.

*** Training Costs:

Let?s think now about the training costs involved in switching all your designers to the new software. Training costs for 2 people only are more expensive than buying the full Creative Suite 2. That is, from $349 – $800 in average per person, for the 8-hr, 1 day seminar only. Usually 3 days are required, or $2400 (group) – $5400 (individual), for up to 6 people. In some cases, it can be higher depending on other factors. These are corporate training prices, according to the prices of several schools in New York that provide this training and don?t include advanced or expert training costs, nor do they include the costs of learning additional Adobe programs, or the integration features. So the real cost of learning InDesign is much higher than Quark. Quark, average training price on the streets: $199.

*** Hardware costs:

Now include the cost of buying new computers (since you will need to get a new computer to run InDesign due to the sluggish performance that the new Creative Suite 2 has unless you have a 3 GHZ CPU Pentium IV or a MAC G5 with 1 – 2GB RAM or more computer). If you have a 2GHZ and 512mb ram, forget it, your computer is not good enough for the creative suite 2. And don?t even think about installing it on your laptop and run several applications at the same time, or you will be waiting for a very long time to do anything.

Because let?s face it, older computers (let?s say 1 year old) will choke and kill your productivity trying to run the new Creative Suite 2, and waiting for anything to load, and run. You need a new computer to run the software, period. And if someone tries to say otherwise, try to run Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign plus Adobe Bridge at the same time in your laptop, to take full advantage of the ?integrated? features of Creative Suite 2. Have fun waiting while your competition is selling to your clients. A new MAC computer with the necessary specs will cost you in average $2000, not including the price of the warranty for your new computer.

So, after totaling the cost of installing and getting your people and equipment up to speed in the migration to InDesign, you will have spent in average about $5000 or more per user, including the licensing and the necessary hardware, etc. This is far, far more expensive than just upgrading to the next version of Quark. If you are a medium-sized company, it?s going to be, let?s say a hundred thousand dollars in training, learning curve, lost productivity expenses, new equipment, and software licenses. If you are a large corporation, your cost is in the millions. Yay!

Did you think about that one yet?

*** Is there truly a reason to switch?

Overall, compelling arguments to choose InDesign over Quark are difficult to find, even among those who have already made the jump. We will see what the new version of Quark brings.

Adobe still has to deal with the WHOLE industry being trained in Quark. It would seem obvious that Quark is wisening up, improving their customer support, asking users what they need, analyzing and creating tools to improve production flow, and thinking ahead in order to bring enhanced, truly compelling productivity features, and this is a good thing for users.

It remains to be seen if people are going to dump their existing life-time expertise, spend their money in new training and invest in new hardware and software to make Adobe feel satisfied about their sales and stock profits.

*** In our view, simplicity wins always.

Adobe wants design professionals to adopt a far more complex, harder to learn, more expensive to run and more difficult to handle program (InDesign) over a simpler, easier to use, and much more intuitive program: Quark. That makes no sense.

We think that INSECURITY is not really a reason to switch. Which is the desired result of the marketing strategy of the whole industry is moving to InDesign, what are you doing? that Adobe has been running for several years. Why would you switch otherwise, particularly considering that the upcoming version of Quark is far more powerful and productivity-enhancing than InDesign? We think Quark is living up to their promises and will deliver a superior product. We shall see if they manage to do what they have promised.

Right now, don’t buy anything unless you have a very specific and particular need that ONLY InDesign could possibly satisfy, and that will not be provided in an upcoming version of Quark. What might that be?

Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your e-zine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at articles@valorcrossmedia.com.

by Sherwin Steele and Galina Arlov

Sherwin Steele is a Multimedia and IT expert with more than 15 years of experience in the field, CEO of a multinational Marketing & web company and he is also a design teacher at a prestigious design school in NYC. http://www.ptedu.com

Galina Arlov is an E-Business Professional and a creator and founder of Valor Cross Media,http://www.valorcrossmedia.com a Web Site Services, E-Marketing and Online Advertising company based in New York City on the Upper East Side.

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