Tomoye Announces New Community and Social Networking Platform for Microsoft SharePoint

Oct. 7, 2009 - PRLog -- First Open Social Platform for SharePoint

Tomoye today announced a new community and social networking platform for Microsoft SharePoint.  The platform combines the key capabilities that fuel communities and social networking combined with an open source approach which delivers customers and partners with unprecedented flexibility and extendability.  The product is available for both Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) enabling organizations to leverage their SharePoint infrastructure and data.

Communities and social networking are one of the fastest growing market segments in the enterprise software market, as organizations recognize the powerful benefits of these applications including collaboration, informal learning and more. Tomoye`s approach to community and social networking is based on industry best practices from the consumer market, and proven strategies based on nearly a decade of developing and deploying some of the world`s largest communities.

”Organizations are looking for ways to deploy these new collaborative technologies in the context of their existing IT assets and data and our new platform enables them to do this,” said Eric Sauve, Co-Founder and CEO, Tomoye Community Software. “Tomoye is available for both Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, meaning organizations can adopt communities and social networking no matter where they are in the SharePoint adoption lifecycle. This is a real value add for both customers and partners as they can leverage enterprise 2.0 immediately and maximize their existing SharePoint investments.”

New benefits and features in this platform include:
•   SharePoint Add-On: This platform is installed as a SharePoint _layout application, deployed via SharePoint central administration, and utilizes SharePoint search and authentication provider.  This means no additional costs to organizations as is deployed on existing SharePoint servers.  Integrated search and authentication gives unprecedented access to security trimmed SharePoint data.
•   Crowdsourced Content Management: Alleviating the need for content management, Tomoye crowdsources this function to users.  As users explore and mark-up content, the software tracks implicit behaviour and aggregates explicit user actions to present data to community members by what their peers are using and liking.  
•   Real-Time Expertise Rosters: Delivering a dynamic roster of expertise in the organization’s communities and across the enterprise, Tomoye tracks and reveals experts by their online activities and by the votes of others.  Changing on a daily basis, expertise rosters becomes real-time.
•   The Social View of the Enterprise: Tomoye aggregates the most valuable and relevant content across communities and SharePoint data so users can now identify the best information assets from across the enterprise, in  a single place.  This is done by tracking user behaviour and explicit user endorsements.
•   New Open Source Licensing: In addition to a full application programming interface and standards based template engine, Tomoye is releasing its Web UI Source Code with every deployment for unprecedented flexibility and cost savings to Tomoye developers.
•   New Partner Model: Along with open source licensing, Tomoye is offering partners a series of incentives including free deployments of 50 seats or less.

Pricing and Availability
Tomoye Community Software v 3.0 is available immediately through the company and its partners. Pricing starts at $35 per seat, with discounts for volume and externally facing deployments.

About Tomoye Community Software – The Community and Social Networking Platform for SharePoint
Tomoye’s Community Software has been focused on community and social networking software for more than nine years. The company’s platform Tomoye Community Software Version 3, is deployed on top of Microsoft SharePoint, both the WSS and Enterprise versions.  It is designed to enable organizations to drive value from their social media, community and social networking investments with rich, user-friendly features, within an open source environment. Tomoye’s approach to enterprise 2.0 is currently being used in leading organizations around the world. For more information please visit:www.tomoye.com.

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For more information please contact:
Maggie Patterson
Consultant, Tomoye Community Software
(613) 989-1866 (office)
mpatterson@ripnet.com

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About Tomoye Community Software – The Community and Social Networking Platform for SharePoint
Tomoye’s Community Software has been focused on community and social networking software for more than nine years. The company’s platform Tomoye Community Software Version 3, is deployed on top of Microsoft SharePoint, both the WSS and Enterprise versions. It is designed to enable organizations to drive value from their social media, community and social networking investments with rich, user-friendly features, within an open source environment. Tomoye’s approach to enterprise 2.0 is currently being used in leading organizations around the world. For more information please visit:www.tomoye.com.