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By Gareth WardRealTimeImage, the company responsible for the RenderView softproofing technology sold by Scitex and offered by Vio, is striking out on its own. The company has come up with a three- pronged direct sales strategy to take its "pixels on demand" streaming Internet technology to market and is aiming at a much broader range of users than Scitex has managed to attract.Under the new strategy, RenderView itself becomes RealTimeProof Classic; there is an ASP version; and a version which combines the attributes of both. The revenue model changes from a pure sales path based around software licences to one based around transaction and subscription fees to use the software.Steve Ploussard has joined the company after five years with Creo as vice president sales and marketing to head this expansion, the intention is to make RealTimeImage "a global company".Under Scitex's 18 month stewardship, around 50 sites have been using the technology, split evenly between the US and Europe. The UK has proved most open to the concept with 15 sites including Cradley Print using the software. It allows an accurate softproof to be viewed across the Internet and letting the customer decide to magnify areas of the image for a closer look at fit or retouching, and then streaming only this portion of the image in high resolution, making it both flexible and fast.Scitex marketed the product as part of its Timna data management solution giving it a high end user price. This has proved a high barrier to entry, explains Mr Ploussard. "Getting away from a culture based around hard proofing is difficult enough. It is difficult to justify the money and then having to sell the concept on to the client."To get round this, RealTimeImage is making the software available as an ASP service, where the application resides on a remote file server to which files are sent and called off. This will start at a monthly rate of $1,750, or the UK equivalent. For that the customer not only gets use of the system but service and upgrades are included, making it cheaper than buying the software outright.This also responds to questions over service levels that Mr Ploussard says the company has been receiving. The drawback to this is that a high bandwidth Internet connection is needed to transmit and receive filesThe third version circumvents this by offering the data management and tracking facilities that RealTimeProof.com offers, but from a file server on the user's premises. Thus while the application is downloaded from the remote server, the files are not transferred from the remote server in California.This version, RealTimeProof Express will, says Alex Granat, the regional manager for Europe, be "the big hitter". He adds: "There is also a tremendous amount of interest in RealTimeProof.com with pilot users in the UK."RealTimeProof Classic is available now selling as a software package requiring a two or four cpu NT server, while the ASP version is finishing its beta phase and will be released commercially in the next few weeks while RealTimeProof Express is scheduled for a Q4 release. There will be a clear migration path between the applications.RealTimeProof Classic will be upgraded to use a new faster version of the core imaging technology in the next few weeks, but RenderView users will not get this upgrade. According to Mr Ploussard, Classic will have a niche for those customers, who like Cradley, have been able to integrate it into a workflow system.A further development which Mr Granat is excited about is the ability to generate not only a softproof for remote viewing but also to drive a high quality proofing device and generate a top quality proof in a remote site. This will support 300 dpi or 600 dpi devices from any Tiff or EPS file, an Iris or Digital Cromalin for example.CreoScitex will along with other Oems be able to sell the product, but with Creo buying a Toronto software development house that has a rival product to RealTimeImage, the Californian company has pre-empted any decision by CreoScitex to switch loyalties.