Field Note: Workshare - document control & content protection
One of the most interesting parts of my role at Microsoft is getting out into the field to meet with our partners, understand their product vision, discuss their growth plans and identify opportunities where our objectives align. Over the rest of the year I'm planning to write up a series of short Field Notes to share some of the interesting (non-commercially sensitive) parts of my discussions.
Workshare is a company I've know for some time. They were awarded Partner of the Year Award for ISV/Software Solutions at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver in July this year.
Yesterday I met with Samia Rauf - UK Sales Director, Mark Thomas - Channel Sales Director EMEA and Frank Boening - VP Sales EMEA. [Frank and I last met when we worked together in the early days of Remedy Corp in 97 - he's not changed a bit!].
Workshare's business has been built on the phenomenal success of their Deltaview document comparison toolset. The product is the tool of choice today in most legal practices and in-house legal departments. They're now expanding the footprint of the product set to include Content Protection and Document Control. This broader functionality is starting to gain traction in some very significant Financial Services organisations and they are now targeting the Government and Manufacturing sectors.
The guys from Workshare shared some truly amazing stories about customers inadvertently divulging confidential information in PDFs, Metadata - something their product suite can completely prevent.
I won't try to explain how their technology work - needless to say the whole application fits seamlessly into Outlook and intervenes whenever user-defined policies are going to be breached by the user. The application enables organisations to monitor first, set-up policies and then automatically educate users on the appropriate sharing of information. In one of their key Legal accounts, the combination of SharePoint and Workshare is providing a complete document management platform. To quote one of their users:
"Workshare Professional 5’s advanced comparison capabilities, secure PDF and document lifecycle control will make our Microsoft Office 2007 implementation both safer and more usable for everyone here at Lewis Silkin".
Jan Durant, Head of Information Technology Lewis Silkin LLP
You're probably wondering why I included a picture of Wembley stadium at night. Well, as part of the visit to Workshare, Chris Eyres and I were invited to watch the England v Germany friendly as guests of Workshare. The game started well with England going 1-0 up early in the first half. The final result was less good with England losing 2-1. Still, at least Frank was happy - Germany is his home!!
More Field Notes to follow......
