GMG, a developer and supplier of high-end color management software products, has announced the commercial launch of GMG CoZone Collaborate, a comprehensive online project collaboration, soft-proofing and approval solution.

“The way that jobs are produced today is radically different from even a few years ago,” the company says. “Time pressures and the requirement to work in more mobile and dynamic environments mean that people are starting to expect the same from their applications and services. Consumers have embraced cloud-based solutions for the storage, management and retrieval of their data whether it be music, photographs, documents or films and they now want the same flexibility in the workplace.

“In order to keep pace with an evolving and technologically-savvy customer base, the graphic arts industry needs to adopt these new content management and workflow methodologies. Integrating the best of these technologies with the best that the industry has to offer is crucial for print and media content providers to best serve their clients in the future.”

Recognizing these changes in customer behavior and expectations, GMG has developed a web-based platform – GMG CoZone – that integrates the cloud and project collaboration with the high-quality color management toolsets for which the company is world-renowned. The first GMG CoZone module to be released is CoZone Collaborate.

According to the company, CoZone Collaborate allows project participants to manage, review, proof and approve graphic arts content and multimedia content by the end of 2013, within an online Amazon Cloud Service hosted soft-proofing environment. While CoZone Collaborate features a powerful soft-proofing engine, future CoZone modules will allow seamless connection to GMG-calibrated hard-copy output devices, delivering an end-to-end color-accurate workflow. CoZone Collaborate allows even inexperienced users to collaborate, review, proof and approve content.

“The system is completely cloud-based – there’s no software or hardware to install and manage, and users do not require anything more than a web browser. GMG have invested heavily in cloud based services so that we can offer a robust, enterprise-level cloud platform accessible worldwide, day or night, with a guaranteed service level uptime of 99.95 per cent. Unlike most other solutions, CoZone offers no restriction of the number of users, file sizes, or even storage,” the company says.

Marcus Wright, CoZone product manager at GMG, says: “The way that jobs are produced, and the growing expectations of customers, mean that the industry has to sit up and take note. Adopting a more distributed and collaborative methodology that exploits the clear benefits of the cloud when producing content means easier, faster and more streamlined output, which is good for the industry as a whole. CoZone Collaborate has been developed from the ground up to address the needs of those looking for a cost-effective, scalable and easy-to-use system for collaborating, reviewing, proofing and approving media files prior to production.”