Web, print, and video publishing vendor Adobe Systems Inc. is getting into the Web services game with an update to its AlterCast imaging server software.

AlterCast automatically creates multiple versions of an image based on one original version, so they can be easily modified to use across Web sites in various formats (in different sizes, colors, and so on). The new version will further simplify the process by letting AlterCast communicate with content-management systems and application servers via the Simple Object Access Protocol Web-service standard. "One of the key advantages of Web servers is being able to create Soap packets on any system that can talk to AlterCast servers, whether the server runs on Solaris or Windows," says Gregg Brown, group product manager for Adobe AlterCast servers.

Customers who previously had to buy multiple versions of AlterCast, depending on the import and export formats they needed to support, now only have to buy one copy of the software.

E-business integrator Burntsand Inc. uses AlterCast to help its clients access advertising images, and channel director Christian Pease is looking forward to the upgrade. "With Web services, we can take ad content that we've already created and make it available to a broader set of players in a supply chain or business-to-business environment, without having to do extra coding," he says.

The AlterCast Web-services upgrade will be available free to existing users Monday on Adobe's Web site. The product is priced at $7,500 per CPU for new users.