Zope Corporation to Build on Duke University Experience to Offer Content-Management System for Universities

FREDERICKSBURG, VA--(MARKET WIRE)--Oct 9, 2003 -- Zope Corporation, the leader in open source content management, announced plans to build on an extensive project with Duke University and develop Zope4Edu -- a CMS product platform designed to address the common content-management needs of higher education.

Among the many features Zope4Edu will provide are:

--  Library of content templates for academic requirements
--  Extensible user authentication including out-of-the-box support for
    the Shibboleth and LDAP protocols
--  Structured and collaborative workflows
--  Loosely coupled interconnections between servers to facilitate smooth
    adoption in the academic environment; support for XML-RPC, SOAP, and RSS to
    support integration with incumbent on-campus systems
--  Extensive use of syndication servers and services to facilitate the
    reuse of content (text, audio, video, images, templates, CSS styles, etc.)
    between and among academic departments

Zope4Edu will be commercially available in January of 2004. p>"We are currently working with the central IT office and several major units at Duke to create a content-management system to meet the needs of a decentralized academic environment where schools and departments have more autonomy than you typically find in a big corporation," said Rob Page, CEO of Zope Corporation. "We'll build on our experience with Duke to provide an affordable, enterprise-class CMS that's targeted specifically at higher education. Colleges and universities will no longer have to spend an inordinate amount of time making local adaptations to generic CMS packages. Instead, Zope4Edu will come packaged with source code, empowering our customers to make any and all local adaptations they need."

Senior officials at Duke said the university decided to work with Zope after a careful review of the content-management marketplace. "None of the leading CMS packages seemed quite right for our situation," said Tracy Futhey, Duke's vice president for information technology and chief information officer. "Our challenge was political and institutional as much as technical. We needed a system that was very flexible, with open source code, that would encourage people to share resources and work together. Zope was responsive to our needs and we're now working with them to create a CMS solution that we hope will transform Duke's online activities. Zope will then adapt this solution in Zope4Edu for other universities with a similar 'federated environment.'"

About Zope Corporation

Zope Corporation, the leading provider of Enterprise Content Management solutions based on the open source Zope application server, rapidly creates and deploys high-performance, scalable systems. Source code is included, giving clients complete control over their software. Fortune 1000 companies, newspapers, broadcast media, telecoms, government agencies, military and educational institutions are among its clients. Products include Zope4Media, Zope4Intranets, Zope Replication Services (ZRS), Zope Managed Hosting (ZMH), Zope Registration Manager (ZRM). Zope Corporation is backed by Opticality Ventures.

Fredericksburg, VA 540-361-1710
http://www.zope.com/

Source: Zope Corporation

Contact:

     CONTACT:
     Lois Snitkoff
     Zope Corporation
     540-361-1720
     lois@zope.com

     DUKE CONTACT:
     David Jarmul
     Office of News and Communications, Duke University
     919-684-6815
     david.jarmul@duke.edu

	Press Release Source: Zope Corporation