From today, organisations and employees frustrated by large email attachments clogging up their email inbox or corporate network, can turn to PowerPressed™, a software tool offered by BT Wholesale which compresses PowerPoint® presentations to as little as five per cent of their original size.

Following the completion of a distribution agreement with FortressGate Inc (FGI), BT Wholesale will offer PowerPressed™ as a value added service to ISPs and fixed and mobile operators through its BT Contact venture.

PowerPoint® is the third most popular Microsoft® Office application, with millions of PowerPoint® presentations being created every day and transmitted across networks around the world. As one of the most popular and bandwidth-hungry applications running on networks today, the compression of PowerPoint® presentations will allow organisations to significantly reduce the data storage burden caused by these files and free up the bandwidth otherwise consumed in the sending and receiving of presentations. Organisations will benefit from optimised network performance, the smoother running of email, as well as reduced storage and network costs.

The development of PowerPoint® presentations are typically shared between a number of employees, and even between companies. With PowerPoint® presentations exceeding as much as 100Mb, and with many corporate email boxes refusing to accept files larger than 2Mb, this can prove an ongoing annoyance for organisations that need to develop and run PowerPoint® on a regular basis.

Traditional ‘zipping’ applications based on binary compression technology are unable to significantly reduce the size of a PowerPoint® file, especially when it contains images. PowerPressed™ uses a compression technology based on Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), a method developed to exploit the particular properties of image data. This delivers much more effective compression than binary compression can achieve, allowing PowerPressed™ to reduce the file by up to 95 per cent.

Andy Tipping, general manager for BT Contact, said: “Email and corporate networks are groaning under the weight of image-rich files such as PowerPoint® presentations. With more presentations containing complex, high resolution graphics and animated builds, the file sizes have increased enormously – so much so that the storing, sending and receipt of these files has become a headache for most organisations and their employees.

“With PowerPressed™, we can offer our customers a compelling value-added service to use in-house or sell through which allows them to ease the pressure on their networks caused by large email attachments”.

Peter Boswell, CEO of FortressGate Inc said: “Many users who receive a presentation file by email, drag a copy to their desktop, make changes and then email a revised version which leaves at least three copies on their system. As 50Mb presentations become more typical and a file size of 100 Mb is not uncommon, this causes massive problems which PowerPressed™ can greatly reduce by cutting down on the storage space required.

“The relationship with BT Wholesale will greatly enhance our global footprint by making PowerPressed™ available to a worldwide market of business users.”

Once the file has been compressed, the .ppt file extension is maintained, allowing the file to be used as a normal PowerPoint® presentation. The recipient of the file does not need any proprietary plug-ins or viewers, and the presentation does not need to be ‘unzipped’ in any way.

The storing of presentations in the PowerPressed™ format on hard disks or servers dramatically reduces the amount of memory required, while sending presentation files in PowerPressed™ format negates the need for organisations to invest in additional bandwidth to support large attachments. This translates into lower network and storage costs for organisations, while at the same time allowing communications networks to operate more smoothly and efficiently. The PowerPressed™ for PowerPoint® offering is the first in a series of products that BT and PowerPressed™ will bring to the market.

Notes to editors:
The PowerPressed™ application is a plug-in that operates inside PowerPoint®, accessed by a ‘Save’ button on the tool bar and is fully compatible with recent editions of Microsoft® Windows® and Microsoft® Office.

About BT
BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in more than 160 Countries. Its principal activities include networked IT services, local, national and international telecommunications services, and higher-value broadband and internet products and services. BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, Openreach, BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

In the year ended 31 March 2005, BT Group’s revenue was £18,623 million with profit before taxation of £2,354 million.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit www.bt.com/aboutbt

About FortressGate
Fortressgate Inc (www.fortressgate.com) is a unique R & D corporation which is entirely focussed on creating innovative software solutions which both optimise and reduce the size of digital data.  Headquartered in California, USA and in the United Kingdom, the company first introduced PowerPressed™ for PowerPoint® into the marketplace, through its wholly owned subsidiary – PowerPressed™.  The PowerPoint® plug-in enables users to more easily receive, send and store PowerPoint® files by substantially reducing their size while still retaining their fitness for purpose and the standard ‘.ppt’ file format.  The PowerPoint® offering is the first in a series of products that PowerPressed™ will partner with BT on.

PowerPressed appoints QBS Software as a reseller
13/02/06

PowerPressed is delighted to announce that QBS Software, a leading UK reseller, has been appointed to resell PowerPressed products. Please see below for the QBS/PowerPressed press release.

Announcing PowerPressed v3

The low-cost, high value solution to manage large PowerPoint® files.

WEMBLEY, UK. 13th February, 2006 -- QBS Software is pleased to announce that it has been one of the first appointed UK business to business resellers for PowerPressed for Microsoft® PowerPoint®.

PowerPressed is a utility which solves the problems of large PowerPoint files – compressing them by up to a massive 95%*.

With an estimated 30 million PowerPoint presentations created every day globally the problem of storage dedicated to PowerPoint and its effective communication and distribution grows ever larger. At the same time, PowerPoint file sizes are also growing. PowerPressed is a software solution providing a unique add-in for the Microsoft PowerPoint application.

PowerPressed is designed for the end user and allows the user to specify the amount and type of reduction they wish to achieve (quality over size, size over quality etc).

*Source: Microsoft, October 2004

NO PROPRIETARY PLUG-INS OR VIEWERS ARE REQUIRED

Availability and Pricing

PowerPressed can be purchased for £29.99 per user plus VAT. Volume discounts are available. Please visit www.qbssoftware.com/POWERPRESS, email marketing@qbssoftware.com or call Mike Paterson or Marc Price on +44 (0)20 8733 7108 for an evaluation copy and sales information.

About PowerPressed

PowerPressed is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fortressgate Inc. (www.fortressgate.com), a unique R & D corporation which is entirely focussed on creating innovative software solutions which both optimise and reduce the size of digital data. The PowerPoint offering is the first in a series of products that PowerPressed will deliver to the 'office user' market. Fortressgate and PowerPressed are headquartered in California, USA and in the United Kingdom.

About QBS Software Ltd

QBS Software has been supplying and supporting software for more than seventeen years and is a leading reseller of programming tools in Europe. It works with more than three hundred publishers and sell more than eleven hundred software tools to the developer, the corporate customer and to approximately two hundred resellers throughout the world. QBS is a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner. See www.qbssoftware.com

PowerPressed Version 3 is Released
12/12/05

PowerPressed today announces the release of Version 3 of its highly successful offering for Microsoft PowerPoint optimisation and compression.

As the world leader in optimising and compressing PowerPoint files, PowerPressed is committed to continuous improvement in all aspects of the product – which is an integrated plug-in to PowerPoint.

Version 3, which is the result of both customer and development team feedback further increases functionality and capability in a number of key areas. Amongst the major developments are –

• Programming developments have substantially improved the speed of the optimisation process.
  
• The handling of ‘transparencies’ within PowerPoint has been further optimised and improved.
  
• More streamlining is now applied to the management and handling of animated GIFs
  
• The ability to manage and optimise imported images is further improved.
  
• The highly acclaimed PowerPressed registration technology has been developed to a new level which now allows multiple ways to register and features a simplified user interface

Said Peter Boswell, CEO of PowerPressed, “having completed rigorous testing I am delighted that version 3 has now been unveiled. I am particularly pleased with the large number of positive comments that we have received already from our customers and resellers. I look forward to the imminent release of additional PowerPressed products and further developments to come shortly on our PowerPoint offering”.

PowerPressed at SIMO in Spain

Following on from the success at GITEX (see below) the PowerPressed team exhibited at SIMO, the largest consumer IT exhibition in Spain. We were joined by our first partner in Spain - Canalsoft - and the show coincided with the launch of the Spanish website and the planned launch of the Spanish version of PowerPressed.

Customer reaction was again superb, with our on-stand team frequently unable to cope with the demand for discussion and demonstration. SIMO generated substantial business for PowerPressed, a very large number of inquiries and interest in PowerPressed from across all commercial and public sectors in Spain. In addition a number of resellers also approached PowerPressed at the event.

We are absolutely delighted at the response from the Spanish market and look forward to working with our Spanish customers and helping them to achieve greater efficiencies and cost reduction for their organisations.

PowerPressed at GITEX

In October 2005 the PowerPressed team attended GITEX – one of the world’s largest business IT shows – in Dubai.

Customer interest was exceptional, and at times overwhelming. The PowerPressed stand was one of the busiest at the show – despite being one of the smallest. The PowerPressed team found it particularly useful to have a number of organisations visit the stand with their own PowerPoint presentations, which the PowerPressed team then optimised in front of them. With live, corporate PowerPoints the PowerPressed team was regularly achieving a file size reduction in excess of 80% while still maintaining the native PowerPoint format and presentation quality. These presentations varied in size from around 2MB to well over 150MB.

Of particular interest was the mix of visitors from a broad range of countries. It is fair to say that those who came onto the stand fell into four distinct groups –

GITEX clearly proved the broad appeal and increasing need for PowerPressed in today’s marketplace. We look forward to sharing in the success of our new customers in the Middle East region and to continuing to help them in the future.

The Power of Presentations Unlocked
02/05/05

BIRMINGHAM, West Midlands - FortressGate, the Midlands based software development specialists has today announced a 3 year contract with the Bath based organisation, Eduserv Chest to supply its unique software tool 'PowerPressed' designed specifically to compress large Microsoft® Powerboat presentations, to all of the UK's Universities and Colleges of Further Education.

The unique and simple to use plug-in for Microsoft's® Office® PowerPoint® application provides PowerPoint users with the ability to reduce the size of any presentation by around 80% - 95% without altering the native PowerPoint format (.PPT) extension. This means that the presentation continues to be edited and used in the normal way even after optimisation. The recipient of a PowerPressed presentation only requires the PowerPoint viewer or application to view and edit the presentation. The application is fully compatible with Windows 98, 2000/XP and Office 2000, 2002 (XP), 2003.

"Most PowerPoint users have at some time in their lives experienced the problem of either sending or receiving a large presentation electronically" Peter Boswell, Business Development Director with FortressGate went on to say, "It is not unusual in today's world to find presentations that have been created using high resolution images. These presentations are often referred to as suffering from 'PowerPoint bloat' and they present the users with significant problems of communication across networks and archiving on local or server hard drives"

Eduserv Chest (www.eduserv.org.uk/chest) has gained a reputation for negotiating successful agreements for software and online information on behalf of UK Higher and Further Education. This contract not only benefits the UK education community but also enables FortressGate to gain a further foothold into the education market place.

FortressGate Inc specialise in the conceptualisation, design and development of desktop and server software applications designed to improve data communication and archiving for all network environments. The Microsoft's® Office® value add-in products have all been designed in such a way that they compliment the ecommerce business model perfectly. FortressGate have leveraged its unique skill sets - rapid product development, high-quality coding, technological innovation and service to successfully develop the product and bring it to the market.

The value add-in utility 'PowerPressed' strives to meet workflow demands by providing an innovative solution to the problem of communicating large multimedia intensive PowerPoint presentations across networks and the Internet. The company has found it has received considerable interest from a number of intensive PowerPoint users such as the NHS, Local Government, Ministry of Defence and several large private corporations such as British Telecom.