German media corporation Gruner + Jahr, said to be the largest in Europe, has signed for a 120-user CCI NewsGate system to be the editorial cockpit for print and digital editions of ‘Financial Times Deutschland’.

Markus Dingler of the publisher’s corporate services division, says the product meets current key requirements and will provide a platform for development of future products.

"NewsGate provides us with a strong and future-oriented cross-media publishing platform boosting our capacities within digital publishing including the possibility to develop products for the iPad and other tablets,” he says. “In addition, its capability to support efficient template-driven workflows will provide efficiencies that will enable us to focus on the challenge of developing and producing new and innovative products.

CCI says the requirement for a future-oriented system was an important element in the selection process.

"In a dramatically changing media market, it is essential that you are running your operation on a system architecture that allows you to develop and launch new products in time-to-market. We are confident that with NewsGate, we are well-prepared for all eventualities," says Dingler.

A key element will be bidirectional integration between NewsGate and the FirstSpirit online publishing system, with other points of focus including open system architecture enabling import/export interfaces, CCI's integration to Adobe InDesign in addition to LayoutChamp, CCI's own design tool, and the NewsGate user interface.

Roll-out is planned for the beginning of 2012, starting with a business consulting process aimed at analysing and defining optimal editorial operations and workflows.

Gruner + Jahr is Europe's leading magazine publisher with about 13,500 employees and more than 500 magazines and a range of digital offerings in 30 countries. Among these are ‘Stern’, ‘Brigitte’ and ‘National Geographic’ in Germany and some other countries.