Workshare Press Releases

Workshare Unveils Industry’s First Enterprise Document Control Solution Inside Microsoft Office System That Integrates Content Analysis, Security, Audit and Policy-enabled Workflow

Trusted by 6,000 Organizations in 65 Countries, the Solution Enables Risk-free Content Collaboration for 200M Information Workers in a Market Expected to Reach $4.2B

San Francisco - October 2, 2007 - Workshare, a global leader in secure content compliance, unveiled its Enterprise Document Control (EDC) Solution, an industry first that offers both a set of server-based web services as well as an integrated client suite inside Microsoft Office System that delivers the industries’ most comprehensive solution for risk-free content collaboration within and between organizations world-wide. The EDC Solution combines content analysis and classification, document comparison, automation of the review workflow, security, policy enforcement and an audit trail. This release enables organizations to easily create more multi-party collaborative documents to increase productivity and decrease the document review and approval cycle. Furthermore, by automating policy enforcement within user-centric ad-hoc workflows from the point of document origination inside Microsoft Office, Workshare protects intellectual property and prevents information leaks while enabling organizations to comply with corporate policies and regulatory requirements.

Forrester report, titled Office Productivity Software Trends: 2007 And Beyond [Dec 7, 2006] states that “CIOs must stress that their office productivity software decisions cannot be made in isolation and should instead be made as a part of their enterprise's broader Information Workplace strategy. Finally, innovation has returned to office productivity”.

Workshare’s Enterprise Document Control Solution is comprised of two offerings. The first is Workshare’s server-based Document Control Services that can be deployed in corporate intranets or extranets to offer document comparison and audit services. Second is the client-based Workshare Professional product suite that provides complete compare, secure, review and audit functionality for mobile and desktop users without the need to connect to a central repository.

Workshare’s policy-driven user-centric workflow for creating accurate documents is a fully integrated suite that leverages an organizations existing infrastructure investment in Document Management Systems, Portals and Microsoft Office. Competitive solutions force users to work outside Microsoft Office and simply create a PDF of a document. This approach doesn’t scale, adequately protect the content, or provide a detailed audit trail of the document lifecycle from cradle to grave. Workshare’s solution is fully integrated in Microsoft Office, providing multiple levels of security, and a comprehensive audit trail that begins the moment a user changes a word in a document.

By securing and automating the document review process within the enterprise and beyond its perimeter, Workshare’s continued history of innovation extends its lead in delivering solutions that ensure safe, compliant and usable document lifecycle management while increasing information worker productivity by an average of 15%. The Workshare solution is already in use by more than a million users in 6,000 organizations throughout 65 Countries – including 60% of the Fortune 1000 companies.

“Not only do we stand to save a million dollars a year with Workshare and Office SharePoint Server 2007, we’ve also gained the ability to add new clients and greatly expand the structured finance business” stated Web Engineering Manager at a major Global Law Firm. “With this solution, we can consume Workshare’s services as a Web service within a highly secure client extranet.”

Document Control Web Services Easily Accommodate Secure Content Collaboration Between Employees and Business Partners
Workshare’s Document Comparison and Audit Services are part of the server-based Document Control solution —a set of Web Services based on Microsoft .NET platform. This enables organizations to easily integrate with any Web Service or application to support the unification of the document work flow across every communication channel used for content collaboration including the Extranet and Intranet. The Web Services also enable organizations to extend the life of their existing document management system or future-proof their investment by leveraging the portal as a new channel for electronic collaboration. Workshare’s server-based solution is designed for integration with Web-based enterprise content and document management systems and portals. Furthermore, the solution supports an enterprise’s strategic move to gain competitive advantage using integrated business intelligence solutions over SOA architectures.

The Workshare Solution, a 2007 Microsoft Partner of the Year for ISV/Software Solutions is fully integrated with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that provides a paperless, collaborative Extranet solution so employees and business partners can accommodate higher volumes of secure and accurate document processing by sharing, comparing, storing and archiving documents with an audit trail in a central location. At any point in the workflow, a reviewer can see exactly how the document was changed, and by whom, since the original document was created. A comprehensive and detailed audit trails is also produced.

“Workshare’s server and client-based Enterprise Document Control Solution, together with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007 make it easy for organizations to support a multi-party collaborative environment,” said Giovanni Mezgec, Senior Director, Information Worker Business Group, Microsoft “Workshare has successfully combined a server and client-based environment that supports extranet collaboration between multiple parties to deliver safer Office 2007 document sharing and integrated, secure PDF creation.”

Enhanced Workshare Professional client-based Document Control Ground-breaking Integrated PDF Conversion & Comparison
Today, more than 60% of Fortune 1,000 companies rely on Workshare to compare, review, manage and secure key documents across many divisions and departments. With the release of Workshare Professional 5.1, Workshare continues its history of innovation. This version of Workshare enables users to compare any combination of PDF-to-PDF and PDF-to Microsoft Word documents to ensure document control across the broadest range of documents; quickly convert PDF documents to Microsoft word documents to review and edit; and easily create a “secure” PDF from any Microsoft Office application without leaving Microsoft Office.

Workshare’s new one-to-many comparison feature enables an organization to easily compare a single master document with multiple versions that are received from various users who were asked to review the document. This feature is critical to ensure the integrity and accuracy of documents in a multi-party review cycle while reducing the number of revisions.

Workshare Professional is the only solution that is integrated with all major versions of Microsoft Office, including the 2007 Microsoft Office systems and is Windows Vista ready. Workshare is also integrated with major email and messaging systems including Microsoft Outlook, Live Meeting, and IBM Lotus Notes. Users can also easily access Workshare Professional from a SharePoint environment that ensures they are working on the correct version, and that all documents exchanged inside and outside the organization’s perimeter are secured by enforcing company policies for managing external document distribution and hidden data.

Integrated Document Control Suite with Unparalleled Information Leak Prevention (ILP)
The seamless integration of the Workshare Protect client as part of the Workshare Professional Document Control product suite adds another layer of security and policy enforcement. Millions of removable drives including USB flash and R/W CD drives and iPods, exist within organizations and store large volumes of data that can be easily lost. To prevent the accidental leak of intellectual property or regulated personal data, Workshare’s content audit and leak prevention capability enforces security policies that remove metadata and content that might violate corporate policy before the data is moved to these devices that can be easily lost or stolen. Furthermore, the solution would flag any policy violations while generating a secure PDF for distribution during a document review cycle.

Workshare has been a leader in recognizing and promoting document control solutions with integrated security and policy enforcement capabilities that protect against privacy, intellectual property and confidential information leaks when sharing documents over email, USB or mobile devices like Blackberry. The solution further helps organizations meet their compliance requirements with regards to both corporate policies and regulations. Workshare Professional’s ILP security is fully configurable and delivers centralized security policy management, risk alerting, auditing and reporting.

Pricing and Availability
Workshare Professional 5.1 Release Candidate is immediately available at www.workshare.com/downloads/ and will be generally available for purchase on October 9th from Workshare resellers globally and online at www.workshare.com/purchase/. 1 year term license pricing is US $175/user/year and perpetual license pricing is US $349/user plus annual maintenance. Workshare server-based Compare Service will also be available for purchase on October 9th at an introductory price of US $15,000 per server and US $99/user/year.

About Workshare
Workshare, an information security company delivers Secure Content Compliance solutions to over 6,000 organizations worldwide. Workshare solutions uniquely combine policy enforcement, management control and user entitlement to ensure safe information exchange without business disruption. Its products include Workshare Protect, Workshare Professional, Compare Service and TRACE! Workshare’s customer base spans small to large organizations in every industry segment and includes more than 60 percent of the Fortune 1000 and 85 percent of the ProServices 250. Over one million professionals in 65 countries use Workshare software. The company has offices in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Washington DC, London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Paris and Sydney. Workshare is the sponsor of www.metadatarisk.org, the definitive source for content security. For more information, visit www.workshare.com.