Colligo Networks Unveils First Unified, Enterprise-Class Solution for Email and Document Management in SharePoint

Colligo Networks, the leading provider of email and document management solutions for Microsoft SharePoint, today announced a new integrated product offering that eases deployment and increases user adoption of SharePoint for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) applications. The Colligo for SharePoint line now encompasses a comprehensive suite of eight email and document management applications, with support for PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones, whether connected or offline. Available now, the solution can be centrally deployed and managed for both on-premise and cloud-based SharePoint installations.

ECM is a rapidly growing application for SharePoint. As reported in the “AIIM State of the Industry 2011” survey, 70% of organizations with 5000+ employees use SharePoint, and 45% consider it to be one of their primary ECM systems. According to Microsoft*, “ECM systems rely on one key dependency more than technology, feature set, or amount of information managed: user adoption.” Enterprise IT departments struggle to achieve high user adoption in ECM deployments due to several factors, including:
1) Consumerization of IT – Users demand easy access to SharePoint on mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones; failure to support these devices may increase corporate risk through divulgence of company information via consumer technologies such as online file-sharing services;
2) Growth of Cloud Computing – Hybrid systems, consisting of a mix of on-premise and cloud-based SharePoint (Microsoft Office 365), are becoming more commonplace, leading to a scattering of sites that can be confusing to end users;
3) Need to Manage Email – Email is a growing proportion of the content that needs to be managed, and it can be difficult for end users to file, tag and search for email in SharePoint out-of-the-box.

Colligo’s newly-introduced products are designed to solve these user adoption issues, enhance productivity, and achieve ECM success by simplifying and extending the email and document management capabilities of SharePoint 2010 on-premise, and of Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud. New products introduced at the SharePoint Conference 2011 include:
· Colligo Email Manager – Powerful and scalable email management solution for Windows PCs and laptops, with deep integration between SharePoint and Microsoft Outlook , including federated search;
· Colligo Briefcase – Enterprise-class application for securely browsing, viewing, and storing SharePoint content on Apple iPads, providing a way for organizations to easily support a rapidly growing segment that includes employee-owned devices;
· Colligo Administrator – Centralized configuration and management that integrates all of Colligo’s desktop and mobile applications through a single server-side console, eliminating the need for end users to configure access to SharePoint.

The new products extend the functionality of the existing Colligo Contributor suite, which, in addition to extensive support for SharePoint access online and offline on Windows PCs and laptops, enables users to file emails to SharePoint on any mobile device (smartphone or tablet) connected to Microsoft Exchange. Colligo Contributor supports both on-premise SharePoint (2003/07/10) and Microsoft Office 365.

Colligo also introduced an enterprise services offering, to help organizations achieve rapid adoption of SharePoint for email and document management. Services are delivered through Colligo consultants located in company offices in North America and EMEA.

“Today’s enterprises face increasingly complex content management challenges, including the consumerization of IT, and the increasing awareness that email is an essential component of corporate records management initiatives,” says Barry Jinks, Founder and CEO of Colligo Networks. “We are focused on ensuring our solutions allow organizations to easily address these challenges, without placing additional overhead on the end user. Extending our product line to encompass personal devices, while strengthening an IT department’s ability to administer our solutions, affirms Colligo’s commitment to ensure that users and enterprises can easily access and manage their SharePoint content, whether it’s on-premise or in the cloud, regardless of device.”

Colligo Email Manager
Colligo Email Manager is the enterprise solution for managing email in SharePoint 2010 and Office 365 on Windows PCs and laptops. Users can file, tag, find, view, and share email and attachments in SharePoint, all from within the familiar Outlook interface. Colligo Email Manager provides enterprise-grade scalability, powerful federated search capabilities, and easy deployment/administration via Colligo Administrator. Colligo Email Manager enables organizations to:
· Easily manage email and documents in SharePoint, without changing end user work habits
· Increase the quantity of content captured and tagged in SharePoint
· Reduce risk, and improve compliance and records retention
· Reduce uncontrolled content in personal archives and PSTs
· Improve collaboration, document management, and project management
· Drive SharePoint adoption by improving ease of use

athenahealth, a leading provider of cloud-based business services for physician practices, was one of the early adopters of Colligo Email Manager. According to Meghan Carey, Program Associate at athenahealth, “My team was tasked with implementing a records management program for email. After evaluating a number of third-party tools to connect Outlook with SharePoint, we chose Colligo Email Manager. Colligo offers the simplest way for our users to classify, tag, and move vital content to the SharePoint Records Center. In fact, our users were up and running without any training. Colligo Email Manager not only ensures effective email management, it’s also increasing SharePoint adoption.”

Colligo Administrator
For enterprises requiring centralized deployment and administration, increased scalability, and management of SharePoint content on personal devices, Colligo Administrator is an optional administration suite for Colligo’s desktop and mobile products, which enables organizations to:
· Decrease time and cost of deployment and increase IT efficiency with centralized deployment tools
· Reduce IT management overhead through centralized administration
· Support corporate governance initiatives and address the democratization of IT with secure, centrally-enforced role- and policy-based SharePoint access
· Gain deep insight into Colligo and SharePoint usage to ensure that factors determining SharePoint adoption and ROI can be tracked, communicated, and optimized (planned future release)

Charter Communications, a Fortune 500 company, uses Colligo Administrator as part of their Charter Online Information Network (COIN), an enterprise-wide platform for document and records management, built on SharePoint 2010.

“The SharePoint Server 2010 and Colligo toolset has helped us achieve our goal of making records management so easy that employees will do it every day with minimal effort on their part,” says Dan Vasey, Director of Records and Information Management at Charter. “Colligo Administrator helps to make the deployment of the email management component even easier.”

Colligo Briefcase
Colligo Briefcase is an iPad application that makes it simple to store, sync, find, view, and share files, lists, documents and emails, including Outlook .msg files, in SharePoint. SharePoint content is automatically synchronized to the iPad, providing instant access, even when offline. Colligo Briefcase is as easy to use as consumer file-sharing applications, encouraging use of SharePoint while still ensuring security of enterprise content. It works seamlessly with Colligo Administrator, allowing enterprises to deploy and manage Colligo Briefcase with zero user configuration.
· Keep iPad users productive, in the field and on the road
· Support BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) in the enterprise while maintaining corporate control of critical data
· Ensure a consistent SharePoint experience with automatic configuration of sites, folders, and favorites through Colligo Administrator

Anthem Properties is a real estate investment, development and management company that extensively uses SharePoint to manage their property portfolio and provides iPads for its busy staff. “With personal device use skyrocketing, we needed a way to support our iPad users on SharePoint, without sacrificing security and control of corporate data,” says Bob Clark, Vice President of IT at Anthem Properties. “Colligo Briefcase is the ideal solution for keeping our iPad users productive, while ensuring critical content is still managed within SharePoint.”

Availability
Colligo Email Manager 5.0 and Colligo Administrator 1.0 are available now. Colligo Briefcase is currently in beta, with commercial release in November, 2011. A free edition of Colligo Briefcase for personal use will also be available from the Apple App Store.