WorkLight Announces Strategic Relationship with Microsoft
June 2008 by Emmanuelle Lamandé
WorkLight Inc. launched a new product that allows employees, for the first time, to securely access and update Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 information using popular Internet consumer tools. Titled WorkLight for SharePoint, the new offering combines the consumer web experience and Office SharePoint Server 2007 to deliver secure, enterprise-class collaboration tools with an easy-to-use interface of familiar tools like Windows Live, iGoogle, Facebook, and others.
This announcement, made at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston as part of a new strategic relationship between WorkLight and Microsoft, marks yet another milestone in the introduction of consumer Web 2.0 technologies into the corporate world.
WorkLight for SharePoint addresses both enterprise and employee needs by combining the collaborative capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 with popular consumer social networks such as Facebook, personalized homepage gadgets, desktop widgets, RSS, mobile devices and more. Companies can now take advantage of SharePoint Server 2007’s collaboration, portal, enterprise search, enterprise content management, business intelligence and business process capabilities using popular consumer web-based gadgets; the same type of gadgets they use in their personal lives.
With WorkLight for SharePoint, companies and employees are able to:
– Access SharePoint Server 2007 information such as document updates and contact information via consumer web-based and desktop gadgets, running on a wide variety of platforms – e.g. Windows Live, Vista Sidebar, iGoogle, Netvibes, etc., or from within Facebook.
– Receive notifications originating from SharePoint Server 2007 on mobile devices such as iPhone and BlackBerry.
– View and revise enterprise application data from secure gadgets running as SharePoint Server 2007 Web Parts, enabling employees to perform daily tasks like time reporting, task acknowledgement and purchase approvals right from their SharePoint Server 2007 dashboard
– Search for colleagues and expertise in the organization across both SharePoint Server 2007 and Facebook, using WorkLight’s secure Facebook application – WorkBook