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| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Document Output for Customer Communications Management (DOCCM), Computer Software, Information Technology, Document Management Services, Print Publishing, Business Process Automation |
| Founded | Los Angeles, United States (1985) |
| Founder | Basit Hamid |
| Headquarters | Ojai, California, United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Tango, Opus, Opus Director, Vitesse, Transformation Suite, DesignPro Tools, Blue Ocean |
| Website | elixir.com |
Elixir Technologies is a private multinational software development company, founded in 1985 and headquartered in Ojai, California, United States.[1]
The company develops software for the dynamic publishing of high-volume documents, on-demand correspondence, and multichannel communication. They employ over 250 employees globally (2011), and have customers in more than 70 countries along with technical support operations in Czech Republic and Pakistan, with sales and marketing operations in the United States, Europe, Dubai, Singapore and China.
History
edit1975 - 1984
edit
In 1977, the first promising laser printer, the Xerox 9700, was out in the market and gaining popularity. However, with all their speed, these printers had no way of connecting to the Xerox’s form design systems at the time; the Three Rivers PERQ minicomputer and Xerox Star 8010. Both lacked any communication interfaces with the Xerox 9700 printer, which meant that users had to program documents in a non-graphical manner using proprietary languages directly on the printer. The technical inabilities of the Xerox design station and printer opened up an opportunity for Basit Hamid in 1980 who co-founded the Intran Image Management Group at Intran Corporation and developed tools based on PERQ to eliminate the need to program documents. Basit Hamid eventually left Intran in 1984 and set out to found Elixir Technologies and develop the first What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) line of products to interface with the Xerox 9700.
1985 – 1990
editIn 1985, Basit Hamid and Eric Searle founded Elixir Technologies in Los Angeles, California to develop and sell document composition software for the Xerox 9700 laser printer. The tool would design and run production print jobs without the requirement to program. The aim was to capitalize on the convergence of the then new personal computer and the revolution occurring in high volume print.
Elixir continued to develop and release software tools to support Xerox production printing, including ElixiForm in 1987 which was an interactive forms design tool meant for the creation and editing of Xerox forms. By the end of eighties, Elixir had a working font designer (ElixiFont and the EFont Factory for raster and scalable Xerox fonts 1987-88), image editors and transformers (ElixiGraphics 1989)and the company had been signed on by Xerox, under the Xerox brand for worldwide distribution.
By 1991 Elixir had expanded support to include a production print environment for IBM as well, becoming the first graphical interface to manage the design and format conversion process while running on a DOS-based PC. The company redesigned the graphical interface metaphors of the Xerox Star 8010 (icons, and windows) with the GEM graphics environment from Digital Research Inc and integrated these tools with IBM PCs. Elixir thus played a key role in the birth of the GUI and commercial desktop publishing.
Elixir Transformation Suite and Opus
editBy the early 2000s Elixir's products were ported to the new Microsoft® Windows® platform and the Elixir AppBuilder and several other products were added to the suite. Elixir's market share became dominant as its tools became a standard for the high volume electronic printing industry.
From 1990 through to 2003, Elixir launched applications focusing on page description language {PDL) transformation and PDL data mining. Elixir’s PageMiner and Transformation Suite could serve the needs of many organizations that required converting input files from one PDL format to an alternative PDL. In addition, this tool can be used to convert legacy print streams into other formats such asXML, CSV, indexed PDF, web presentation, archive and for use as an input file to other applications that support these formats.[13] PageMiner provided a GUI interface in which a user could graphically view the composed print stream to see how it would print. In the PageMiner interface the user could select any data element on the page and apply formatting and business rules, as well as, applydata processing and extraction. Extracted data could be then used in a new composition process and thus provide a way for legacy application to be easily updated and improved without touching the application code on the host system.[14] In 1994 Elixir Technologies launched Opus, the first GUI-based document composition system for variable data print based on Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows platform and introduced the ability for a single design to support to any output. Opus extended Elixir’s solution offering to support dynamic variable data print through the use of conditional logic to drive the format and content of the document as well as the method in which it was produced. With Opus, 100 percent of the document formatting (images, data, etc.) could be dynamically formatted based on conditional logic as could the output method including AFP, PostScript®, PDF, web delivery, Xerox print streams and others.[15]
By this time Basit Hamid, had established another software laboratory, this time in his home country of Pakistan. As the market continued to mature, many new companies entered into the document composition race and new applications were introduced.
DesignPro Tools
editIn 2003 DesignPro Tools (DPT) was developed. DPT is a collection of tools that includes forms,fonts and graphic editors along with conversion tools for IBM and Xerox printing systems. DesignPro Tools was derived from one of Elixir’s earliest products, the Elixir Desktop. DPT provides a graphical interface and does not require any programming knowledge to use.[16] DesignPro Tools supports both Xerox and AFP proprietary print systems and allows conversion of print resources (forms, fonts, graphics) between the two environments for companies who have both Xerox and AFP printers. Users may create and edit forms, fonts, and graphics in either format and at any time convert the design and use it on either printer.[17][18] In 2003, Elixir launched Vitesse, which supports graphic design for Xerox VIPP Pro (Variable Data Intelligent Postscript Printware). Vitesse uses VIPP, which is an open language from Xerox to produce variable-data PostScript documents.[19] Elixir’s document archival system, Blue Ocean, was launched in 2005 adding the ability to archive documents. It provides indexing and search capabilities for a number of formats including, AFP, Images, LCDS/DJDE, Line data/3211, Metacode, Microsoft® Office® and PDF documents. It provides library services and lifecycle management that allows for risk reduction.[20] By 2006, the company was moving solutions to the web and introduced the Elixir Correspondence System (ECS). ECS included document and content editing, support for distributed content creation, versioning, reviewing and approval processes.[21]
Tango
editIn 2010 Elixir introduced Tango; a web-based platform able to integrate and manage the people, activities, and processes associated with creation, management, and delivery of highly personalized content with zero footprint on the client desktop. (Forrester reference can be given here)
Tango provides web based modules for all aspects of the workflow including document design, data handling, business logic, and production composition and thus eliminating the need for shrink-wrapped software. Tango can be deployed as a hosted model or within a company’s infrastructure.
Tango enables customer communications and correspondence for documents, email, web, and to mobile devices and supports the workflow and activities in a unique way by providing three distinct application interface layers. The business application, the management layer and an underlying development layer used to build the business application.
Each business application represents a specific communication initiative such as marketing, customer support, or human resources and then within that, relevant correspondence types are packaged for example a sales promotion, letter, contract, or other. At the business application level, users work in an interactive query process. The steps presented are functional to a specific business process and options display dynamically based on the selections made in the previous step. This process, driven by a library of business rules, quickly combines the appropriate text, images, and data together to create the customer communication required.
Separate development modules provide the foundation for the business application functionality including template creation, data processing, business rules development, and workflow definition. Tango allows you to create business applications with simplified, straightforward screens.
A management layer sits between the business application and development foundation. This consists of administrative modules to provide control for system access, task assignment, workflow monitoring and reporting, and to establish the rules related to how content is managed and used across
the various business applications; all of which can be done from any computer or device with the appropriate log-in credentials.