The latest release sees the transfer of the entire system to the PostgreSQL database. This provides an ideal basis for the virtualization of the system while retaining all the functionality and advantages of MPS Production 5.

Virtualization of the previous version, MPS Production 5, was made prohibitively expensive by the Oracle license model. This motivated our development team to look for a new solution so our customers could benefit from the advantages of virtualization without this large expense. The solution was found in the PostgreSQL database, which provides all the functionality required by MPS Production without the punitive license costs.

The entire system has been converted to run with PostgreSQL and released as MPS Production 6.

The advantages of virtualization
MPS Production 6 can use the virtual environment chosen by the customer, in which case the customer provides both the environment and the virtualized systems, or ABB provides these using the Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization solution.

Virtualization means that the application can be moved to a new platform very simply, thereby freeing users from the challenges imposed by the hardware and operating system life cycles.

Virtualization allows an additional copy of the application to be deployed in parallel with the original version. As a result the new application can be tested thoroughly on the target hardware and, when the tests have been completed successfully, a simple switch between the two versions is made.

Virtualization ensures that the data can be stored redundantly, thereby providing a hot-backup solution that is even more robust than a conventional cluster solution.

Functionality of MPS Production 6
MPS Production 6 retains all the user functionality of MPS Production 5. The new release also sees an architectural simplification as no MPS Production 3 application is required any more in the background.

New customers and those upgrading from older versions of MPS Production will enjoy a wide range of functional extensions that have been added to the system in the course of its many release versions. For example, customers migrating from the old MPS Production 3 system will experience the following additional benefits:
•    Intuitive, graphical user interface providing an enormous improvement of usability and functionality
•    Reduction of operator work through use of templates and default values
•    Automated inker curves
•    Comprehensive imposition generator and editor
•    Full support for all aspects of variable product formats (including reel size, plate size etc.)
•    Sophisticated version handling of print products and page contents
•    Support of multiple RIP definitions
•    Full support of multisite installations
•    Forecast information in scheduler
•    Print form composite thumbnails in product planner
•    Grouping of paper types into classes for automated inker curves, ink density regulation profiles, soft-proof ICC profiles
•    Online Production Viewer

ABB is a leading automation supplier to the newspaper industry. ABB Printing (http://www.abb.com/printing) delivers solutions that provide unique and totally integrated end-to-end control, protect existing investments and provide management information essential to improving profitability.

ABB (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) is a pioneering technology leader in electrification products, robotics and motion, industrial automation and power grids, serving customers in utilities, industry and transport & infrastructure globally. Continuing more than a 125-year history of innovation, ABB today is writing the future of industrial digitalization and driving the energy and fourth industrial revolutions. ABB operates in more than 100 countries with about 132,000 employees.
(http://www.abb.com)