Open Text boosts social media credentials

Open Text Social Media promises to let users collaborate in a controlled manner

Enterprise content management (ECM) giant Open Text has launched a platform designed to provide large organisations with cutting-edge collaborative and social media capabilities which meet strict security and compliance requirements.

Open Text Social Media is the latest layer built on top of the firm's flagship ECM Suite. The platform has borrowed much in look, feel and functionality from popular consumer sites such as Twitter and Facebook, in a way that enables customers to maximise productivity and improve knowledge management, according to Open text.

"People are finding new ways to communicate and interact, work in global teams, share information, comment and so on. They use sites like Facebook and Twitter because it requires little or no effort," said Craig Hepburn, director of social strategy at Open Text.

"We have built a technology platform that allows people to collaborate like on Facebook, but in a controlled manner within the enterprise."

Open Text Social Media features personalised dashboards, real-time search, and 'communities' spaces where users can collaborate through document sharing and wikis in a secure and auditable way, according to Hepburn.

The platform also offers blogging and micro-blogging capabilities on which others can view and comment, and Facebook-style profile pages to which users can add photos, update their status and 'follow' others.

Open Text Social Media can also be accessed on the go via iPhone and BlackBerry devices, with more to follow in the future, the firm said.