Accellion, Inc. today announced new, enhanced features for SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013.  The extended capabilities increase the productivity of SharePoint users, giving them mobile access to enterprise content anytime, anywhere and providing secure file sharing and external collaboration directly from within SharePoint.  The announcement was made at SPTechCon, the SharePoint Technology Conference produced by BZ Media, being held this week in Boston.
“More than 125 million information workers have licenses for SharePoint, and organizations are looking to maximize the productivity of employees utilizing SharePoint in their daily activities,” said Thevi Sundaralingam, vice president of product management at Accellion. “In our mobile-enabled world, having secure mobile access to the enterprise content stored in SharePoint is an imperative.” 
The latest release of the Accellion SharePoint plug-in provides rich file sharing and collaboration tools directly within the SharePoint UI.  Significant new functionality was also added to the Accellion web interface and mobile app, enabling users to self-administer their mobile experience by selectively connecting to the SharePoint sites they interact with most. 
According to a recent Forrester report, “Accellion has an initial foray into system-of-record integration, and the architectural approach is both different and compelling.  Accellion allows full search of SharePoint content repositories and fully respects all SharePoint security and library services… Consistent with its legacy, Accellion continues to place a premium on security and emphasizes a private cloud architecture that provides IT with extensive control over data access and location.”¹ 
 
The new user self-service feature lets users dynamically optimize the presentation of SharePoint sites and Windows File Shares on their mobile devices by selecting which sites are visible in the Accellion UI. Users can add or remove sites as needed, making it easy to access just the content they need. Once added, sites are accessible to the user from any mobile device or Web browser, without requiring a VPN or a separate login. Because the content continues to reside behind the firewall and is not replicated onto a public cloud, the organization maintains compliance and security around the content, while removing the burden of support from IT.
The new plug-in integrates directly into the SharePoint UI, providing rich file sharing and content collaboration tools for users who prefer to work from their SharePoint environment. Authorized SharePoint users can easily share files with external users, while the tight integration between SharePoint and Accellion maintains strict control over who can edit, create and share new versions of documents. Users can maintain version control and manage access, while IT and corporate compliance can track who has downloaded the document, and monitor usage. The one-click solution for external file sharing and collaboration enhances the usability and convenience for SharePoint users and value chain partners, inside and outside the organization.